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bleeding tail problem

8K views 12 replies 8 participants last post by  DJsMom 
#1 ·
My one year old boxer mix, Boone, has recently developed a problem. He still stays in his crate when we are not at home. When we arrive home, before we can get to him and let him out of his crate, he wags his tail like crazy. For about 2 weeks now, his tail has been bleeding when he gets out of the crate and he continues to wag his tail getting blood all over everything. He has a really long tail. We have tried wrapping it with all kinds of different things to give it a chance to heal, but he removes whatever we put on it. I am at a loss as to what I should do. It is getting to be quite a problem and a mess. Any ideas?
 
#2 ·
Tail injuries are one of the worst to have heal. I know first hand when my dog had a freak accident and lots 1/2 a inch of his tail in a window accident.Took us almost 3 months for it to fully heal. Only way I got it to heal was lots gauze under a bandage.

Seems like its much trickier for you , as he is crated, which is how he is re damaging it. Do you have a room you could keep him in that is safe? that way he will not be wagging his tail like crazy against the bars, and that way it might have a better chance at healing.
 
#4 ·
I too recommend a vet visit to start. Happy tail injuries are common but very difficult to heal. If he keeps removing the bandaging etc you may have to put a bite not or elizabethan collar (cone) on him to prevent this while it heals. Not being very careful about letting it heal may mean a partial tail amputation in the future.

Part of the issue is the crate walls, a bigger crate where tail won't hit, padding inside the crate or moving him to a small dogproofed room can help.
 
#5 ·
I recommend a vet visit to begin with to make sure there's not any sort of permanent damage to the tail. Then I'll suggest what I did with Brutus when he had the same issue. I took an old tshirt, wrapped it around the injured area and duct taped it. This fixed his problem. When he smacked his tail against stuff it was padded by the tshirt and the shirt basically acted as a bandage to let the tail heal. He looked like he had a white flag wagging out of his butt, but I figured that was not nearly enough punishment for all the problems he caused me. Stupid hound. I miss him.
 
#6 ·
Ah, the joys of happy tail. The problem is that for it to heal, the tail needs to be protected from further damage. BUT, a tail is a very, very difficult thing to keep a bandage on. Definitely visit your vet to get the extent of the injury assessed and make sure it's not infected. Then the goal is to keep that tail padded. Like hulk, I've occasionally used duct tape to keep a bandage in place in a very difficult area.
 
#7 ·
I had a dog like that in the past. It was a dog that continually injured his tail but it started out just like that. Happy wagging, banging it on things and injuring it time and time again. Sadly for him, it ended in a short tail docking. The vet had just had it with trying to heal this dogs tail unsuccessfully. I hope it won't come to that with your dog but if it does... do NOT let them do a longer dock. If the tail is short enough to not hit the ground when they sit down, it heals much quicker and without much issue. If they are forever banging the poor nub on the ground, I would think it would hurt quite a bit. My dog had no issue recovering from his adult dock. Others I have known that had to have that done, didn't want to dock the whole tail. Their dogs ended in second surgery.

Hopefully, your dog can heal up on it's own and not continue the problem.
 
#10 ·
do NOT let them do a longer dock. If the tail is short enough to not hit the ground when they sit down, it heals much quicker and without much issue. If they are forever banging the poor nub on the ground, I would think it would hurt quite a bit. My dog had no issue recovering from his adult dock. Others I have known that had to have that done, didn't want to dock the whole tail. Their dogs ended in second surgery.
Excellent point to make! For ahile I really thought amputation might be what we'd have to do with Coco's tail - partial amputation anyway. The vet told us they would just amputate a few digits of the tail, maybe more, just enough to prevent so much force from the full swing.
Luckily, it didn't come to that, I had not even thought about the problems caused if it were left too long.
 
#8 ·
As Inga said, dogs can get a long with a fully docked tail. Some breeds just look weirder I think. Zero is a cocker and I love his docked tail. If it wasn't docked he'd severely injure it on something because it's always going. One would look like a very silly beagle with a docked tail though.
 
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