Guide
Ear Cropping, and Why Mine Keep Their Ears
What the surgery involves, what it runs to, what it does and does not do for the dog, and where I stand.
I don’t crop, and every puppy here goes home with natural ears. Ear cropping is the surgical removal of part of the ear flap, done at around nine to twelve weeks and followed by weeks or months of posting and taping. It is cosmetic. No health benefit stands up to scrutiny, and the usual claim, that it heads off ear infections, is not supported by the evidence.
What the surgery actually is
The outer part of each ear flap is cut away under general anesthetic and the remaining edges stitched. It is normally done at nine to twelve weeks. Afterwards the ears are posted, meaning taped onto a support, and reposted again and again over a stretch that runs from a few weeks to several months depending on the style and the dog.
Expect somewhere between two hundred and eight hundred dollars depending on the vet and the crop, plus the aftercare, plus the anesthetic risk that rides along with any surgery on a young animal. The posting is not a formality; it is weeks of handling a sore ear, and done poorly the result does not stand.
Should you decide to have it done later, that sits between you and your vet and is not mine to police. I simply won’t put a puppy that can’t be asked through it.
The medical case, taken seriously
The argument usually made is that cropped ears ward off infections and injuries. It deserves a fair hearing, and it does not survive one well.
On infections: ear disease in this breed is overwhelmingly driven by allergy, not by airflow. A dog with atopic skin disease gets ear infections because the lining of the canal is inflamed as part of the same condition, and taking part of the flap off changes none of that. The major veterinary bodies that have examined it call cropping a cosmetic procedure with no demonstrated medical benefit, and several national veterinary associations oppose it outright.
On injuries: torn ears are a genuine hazard for dogs in work no companion bully ever does. For a house dog it is not a meaningful risk to cut for.
On the other side of the ledger: a general anesthetic in a nine-week-old puppy, real pain afterwards, weeks of taping, and a plausible cost to communication. Dogs signal with ear position, and there is a fair argument that removing part of the flap removes part of the signal, which bites hardest in exactly the moment you want a dog read correctly by another dog.
Then why is it so common in this breed?
Because of the look. The cropped silhouette is the one most people see in their heads when they picture the breed, and a cropped dog reads sharper and more angular in a photo. That is the entire reason, and I would rather put it in plain words than pass it off as health.
It helps to know this is not a world norm. Cropping is banned or tightly restricted across most of Europe, Australia and much of the rest of the world, and those countries keep the same breeds without it. It survives in the United States by habit, not need.
None of which makes it illegal here, and none of it makes people who crop bad owners. It does mean the case for it is cosmetic, and a cosmetic case is a thin reason to put an animal that cannot be asked through surgery.
Where I stand, and what it means for you
Puppies leave here with natural ears at nine to twelve weeks. I don’t crop, I don’t arrange it, and I won’t put a puppy under a general anesthetic for a look.
If you want it done afterwards, that is between you and a veterinarian. I would ask three things of you. Use a licensed vet and never anyone offering it cheap outside a clinic, which happens and is exactly as bad as it sounds. Check the law where you live, since some places restrict it. And do it because you have chosen to, knowing it is cosmetic, not because someone told you it prevents infections.
A natural-eared bully is not a lesser dog or a lesser example of the breed. The ears change nothing about temperament, health or structure, nor anything else the dog will be judged on across a life. Natural ears and all, a puppy here is the same puppy as every other.
Every puppy here, natural ears and all
Ten available now in Sedona, Arizona. Ask me anything you like about how they’re raised.