I think the thing with tanning hides or doing mounts etc is that people are unlikely to perform those tasks themselves. At least from what I gathered in the comments (someone mentioned keeping their dog in the freezer for a few months), people are doing these Euro mounts themselves and, well, decapitating, skinning out the head of your dog and then pouring their cooked brains down the driveway just seems like another level. At least at the level of intimacy with dogs we are talking in this thread, dogs are family. So, to live with a dog for 15 years and then perform that task is hard to wrap your head around. If you can maintain the type of objectivity to do that to your pet dog, you probably are incapable of the type of emotions that would inspire you to want to preserve a skull in the first place. And that just makes the whole thing weird.