The Tail Tale Continues....

So perhaps we didn’t explain well enough the trauma of the past few weeks regarding Lucia’s tail. Like we said in the earlier entry, Lucia injured her tail due to a devastating disorder called, “Happy Tail Syndrome”. Below is a list of some of the many tactics we tried to prevent Lucia from further damaging her tail:

1) Bandage the tail in gauze, self-stick wrap and a little bitter apple spray...she ate it. Apparently bitter apple spray (marketed as a deterrent, is Lucia’s favorite flavor)

2) Repeated the above this step...except this time we added some of the clear bandage to her badly beaten tail. Same result, except this time with matted hair and flaky skin.

3) Repeated above steps without the clear bandage and with twice the wrapping...she ate it. It is important to note here that we tried most of these ideas a couple of times.

4) Now we got the vet involved. This time it was bandaged professionally. Lots of layers of impervious wraps. Lucia ate it.

5) Okay, obviously layering doesn’t work. So now we moved on to 24/7 surveillance. This mostly worked, but was trying on all involved. I say mostly cause when she was left alone for all of 20 minutes after showing very calm and restrained behavior, she immediately ate the bandage off. Oh yeah, and the end of her tail.

6) Surgery, tail is repaired, looks good. Same problem. She can’t touch her tail for two weeks. We move on to the famous lamp shade collar cone to stop her from attacking her own butt. This is where we all learned that we greatly under-estimated Lucia. First, she ripped off the cone and chewed off her bandage. She was caught before she took the stitches out. Re-bandage, put cone on tighter...that ought to do it. Again, Lucia will not be put off by some silly lamp shade. This time, she shows us the futility of man made inventions for dogs. She chews off the new bandage WITH THE LAMP SHADE STILL ON!!!!

7) So here we are at the present. The picture above is the final result. Muzzle. Now only a couple of days ago I would have felt bad strapping this thing on her...right now, I am okay with it.

In-fact, if she beats the muzzle, and let’s not put it past the great Ludini, I am thinking either duct tape, tranquilizers, or perhaps shooting her. I am not convinced any of those will work either....

Hannibal Lucia