Well, I was quite surprised at how painless and easy this was. Our local vet wanted to charge us 25000 yen ($250)per puppy for the procedure and they had never done an Airedale before. We shopped around and decided to go to Sora’s (father) mother’s vet who did each puppy for 7000 yen ($70). That was a big saving and a big relief.
The vet talked to us for a while before accepting to make sure she was going to do it all properly. We showed her the correct way to judge the length of the tail. The top of the tail should align exactly with the top of the head when the dog is standing tall. You have to hold the pup and make him pose in your hands so you can see how much needs to be cut off. A lot less than I expected. The rule of thumb is a third but the tail lengths are not always uniform in length. Sora’s breeder was there to supervise.

The pups were anesthetized, and the front paws thumbs were also removed. (standard procedure for Airedales). The thumbs serve no real purpose and probably get injured in adult dogs easily as they stick out in the air. They would probably do a bit of damage in a fight too.

I dropped them off at 10:30a.m and they were already by 3p.m. They got home and mother and babies acted like nothing had happened at all.
After they filled their bellies I finally got around to putting colored ribbons around their necks. Now we an tell from a distance who is who. We also spoke to a lady in Yokohama who is interested in taking one of the boys.