Lucia Injures Tail

Whoever says having a dog does not prepare you for having a kid clearly never had a dog like ours. Lucia actually has a disorder called Happy Tail Syndrome...I am serious, it is an actual diagnosable disorder. Anyone who has met our dog knows she has a vicious tail. Wags it like mad when she is happy taking anything its path with it. Kristen has more than a few bruises on her leg to prove this! Well, this, apparently does not go unpunished. A couple of weeks ago Lucia hit her tail against something hard enough to cause it to split. Picture a bloody tail wagging back and forth vigorously...do you see the art potential? Anyway, to prevent it from bleeding and to prevent Lucia from chewing on it, we had to wrap it in several layers of different medical tapes and spray it with something that taste so bad, Lucia wouldn’t go near it. This went on for about a week with us wrapping it and treating it and Lucia unwrapping and beating it up more. The vet told us the dog might lose some of her tail because it was so baldy beaten. But we fought hard, keeping it protected as long as we could and keeping Lucia calm and under 24 hour surveillance. For awhile, it seems like we might have saved it. But just this last weekend, when no one was looking, Lucia did the worst...she chewed the last few inches of her tail off...yuck, god forbid we find it lying around somewhere. So today she went under for a quick surgery to clean the tail and properly doc it. In total, her tail is about 4” shorter. Now we have to keep an eye on her for the next 2-3 weeks so she doesn’t go for it again. If she does...she is going to lose the whole tail!

A very guilty looking dog with bandage.

Lucia Post Surgery doped up on pain meds and VERY unhappy with her cone that she now gets to wear most of the time.