A natural bobtail is an animal's tail which due to a mutated gene grows unusually short or is missing completely. The genes for the shortened tail may be dominant or recessive.
Due to legislation restricting or preventing docking, natural bobtails are growing in importance in the hobby of dog fancying for some traditionally docked breeds. For example, one Boxer breeder and geneticist in England has successfully petitioned the Kennel Club for permission to cross Corgis into his lines and then backcross to Boxers, introducing the gene into his lines. This would have been unheard of in decades past. A number of these bobtail Boxers have been successfully exported to various countries around the world.
Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or bobtail:
“It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“Gwine to run all night!
Gwine to run all day!
I’ll bet my money on de bobtail nag—
Somebody bet on de bay.”
—Stephen Collins Foster (1826–1864)