You shouldn't need to worry about the procedure.....your breeder would have already had the tails docked at somewhere between birth to 5 days of age maximum.....with the preference being between 2-3 days.
I have seen some tails (in fact saw a dock job on a 6 month old last weekend at a show) that was outrageous.....nearly 4" tail. However that dog's breeder is rather well known around these parts as being a "do it yourselfer". Personally I would never have the stomach for
that.
There are actually a couple of different ways that puppies tails are typically docked. The first (and I would say probably more common)....puppies are taken to the vet, tail shaved, anaethesized with local and then cut with scaple at between 1-2 vertebrae typically. Then the vet stitches over the tail flap and ensures that the nub is glued with a special surgical glue to aid in the stoppage of the bleeding.
The other way that I have heard of but personally have never done is by banding....ie putting a high strength elastic banding around the tail and then waiting for it to essentially fall off after several days not receiving blood flow.
I have personally never had the banding method done by my vet.....it just somehow strikes me as an inhumane method....although I have heard people swear by it. I have only heard of one acquaintance who banded with their first litter and heard thereafter that she would never dock tails with that method again. I never got into the details as to why or why not but it just hasn't been a method that I'm prepared to try.
Heather Peters