I've just had a puppy age up into a dog for the first time (I have only been playing Sims for 17 years, it takes time to get round to these things!) and don't know what to do about her tail. She has a short one, but I think tail docking's abhorrent and want to restore it to full length. How?! I've been having a Google but nothing's suggested. Is there a way to change it?

There's an option for short and long tail in the second or third circle in CAS, where you change the body shape of the dog.
There's one for fur and one for the overall shape. I think you get roughly the same options in "change appearance" too.

You can’t change it in game. Only if you save it in cas and then make them in cas and change it there but won’t be the same dog.

You can change everything about a dog by making their owner go to a mirror and "Change appearance of..."

I always found this stupid!

Oh, including the tail?! I thought that was for collars, and maybe fur colour! I'll have a look now, thank you!

You can fully change pets with "change appearance" - but I'm not sure if it changes their genetics or not. It probably does (the genetics for pets most likely work as a mix between the parents and not through dominant/recessive traits that can run in families like for sims, but I'm not 100% sure. Changing sims' hair color or face ingame only changes their outward looks and not their genetics, but I don't play enough with pets to have tested out if this is different for pets, but I expect so. I'm not sure if you can change the pet's size, gender or other personal info, so that's probably stuck unless you do that with a mod).

Change appearance only changes fur colours and patterns and their collars - it does not give option to change their tail or face or anything like that you can only do that in cas

note:

a post that adds to the discussion I'd rather discuss this here than make my own thread please don't erase this

I always thought that the short tail was normal for that breed, since their is only 2 tail options and certain breeds come with an ugly short tail by default in the game, I didn't come to think that the tail was docked or cut short from it's original form. Of coarse I don't know anything about tail docking in real life other than the fact some people for some odd reason want their pet to have no tail at all, I never heard of short tail in real life. I never seen a dog with a short tail, but I have seen dogs with no tail at all, with the tail being cut down to the butt, but never like how the sims have theirs

Well I agree that it looks like hell in the games form, it looks stupid in the sims 2, and I've never in my life seen a dog with half a tail it's either been no tail or full tail, who the heck cuts half a dogs tail off in real life? better yet what dog breeds are born with half a tail or part of a tail?

But I don't really know because I never studied dog breeds.

My question is? are there dogs born in real life with a short tail like the Lynx? I know a Lynx is a wild cat that has a short tail naturally in the wild so are there certain dog breeds with the same type of tail like a Lynx cat in the wild? I never understood tail docking, or why a Lynx has such a short tail

ok back to the sims 2 discussion, why does anyone think that EA would think we would want to dock certain breeds? or is that how they are born in real life? and whats with the just 2 tail choices just curious sorry