"Happy" tail

[Gypsydals]

Ok guys, I need a bit of help. For the past 4to 6ish months I have been battling against Ivan and his "happy" tail. NO idea why anyone would call it happy tail, its anything but. Short of cutting the last 2 inches off his tail, what can I do? The worst part is it starts to heal, gets down to the size of a pencil lead and we start all over. Right now I have been covering it, for as long as he will leave it on. Sometimes he leaves it on and sometimes he doesn't. It doesn't seem to bother him any, but its bothering me. Could I put new skin on it? Would that help it?
I wanted to add, hes getting pretty touchy about me messing with his tail. So the more I can do with the less touching it, the better.

 

[FG167]

Ok guys, I need a bit of help. For the past 4to 6ish months I have been battling against Ivan and his "happy" tail. NO idea why anyone would call it happy tail, its anything but. Short of cutting the last 2 inches off his tail, what can I do? The worst part is it starts to heal, gets down to the size of a pencil lead and we start all over. Right now I have been covering it, for as long as he will leave it on. Sometimes he leaves it on and sometimes he doesn't. It doesn't seem to bother him any, but its bothering me. Could I put new skin on it? Would that help it?
I wanted to add, hes getting pretty touchy about me messing with his tail. So the more I can do with the less touching it, the better.

I've heard with really hard cases, taping the tail to the leg is the only way to give it time to heal. We have a dog at work that we battled this with. I put him on strict crate rest with monitored exercise breaks and his finally healed up just fine. It took FOREVER though.

 

[sassafras]

This is like magic, in my experience: http://leerburg.com/tail.htm

(The part about making a pipe insulation bandage, not the part about using an electronic collar for tail chasing.)

 

[sillysally]

Jack had a bad case a couple of years ago. We ended up wrapping his tail using pipe insulation.

Here is a site: http://www.instructables.com/id/Happy-Tail-Solution/#step1

There is a separate step on each page. We actually just put the insulation directly on his tail rather than putting on gauze and vet wrap. It worked very well though, and I owe the fact that his tail healed to this--he can wag like nobody's business and it stayed put.

Before that we had been seriously considering amputation, because it had just gone on for so long. Also, I don't know if Ivan is crated while you are gone but Jack is, and we bought a 4 ft tall ex-pen and put him in that so he had more room to wag with out hitting the sides.

 

[Gypsydals]

Hmm I might have to resort to taping his tail to his leg. I've tried the pipe insulation. That lasted maybe 30 seconds, if he didn't wag it off, he ripped it off (not something I'm comfortable leaving on him when not supervised). An ex-pen isn't really an option because of the floors we have and no way to secure it. I wonder if the husband would be ok with me bubble wrapping any hard objects in the house.
How did you tape the dogs tail to their leg where it didn't come off FG??

 

[karladaune]

I had a foster with a horrible, horrible case of happy tail. NOTHING worked. Tape, vet wrap, syringe casings to create 'armor'...nothing...until I found New-Skin liquid bandage. Coat after coat on the owwie over a period of about two weeks created a flexible bandage on it that allowed it to heal, even with him wapping it on walls, crates, doors, people...

 

[LostAndConfused]

I will first say that I have never used this on a dog, but my MIL used it on one of her cats who had something like a hot spot on it's foot. I did use this on a horse of mine that had a cut on her leg that I was trying to get to heal. It created a barrier between Nova's injury, kind of like an artificial scab I don't know if it would work on his tail, but just a thought I had.


It's called Well-Horse
http://www.well-horse.com/index.php