When I adopted Freckles in October, I chose his picture from adoptapet.com after I filtered for breed and age. He looked perfect. (Side note: he is.)
I hadn’t met him yet, but he seemed to be just what I was looking for – a bird dog, not a puppy, with a sweet yet energetic temperament. I had pretty much made up my mind that I was going to rescue him from the pound before I even met the little feller. (That’s kind of how I operate; decide what you want, then go get it.)
So imagine my surprise when I arrived, and the dog of my dreams had one minor (possibly major) health issue. Happy tail. For those of you who don’t know (and I didn’t), happy tail occurs often in shelter dogs that are, well, happy. They are so appreciative of any sort of attention that they wag their tails, hard. In a kennel where there is limited space combined with concrete walls, this can be detrimental to their health. They will wag (and continue to wag) their tails so hard that it rubs them raw and creates a bloody abrasion on the tip of the tail.
When I met Freckles, he was sporting a fashionable cone around his head and had his tail bandaged. Immediately falling in love with him, I overlooked what I thought was a minor health issue and took him home that day. Oh, how I was wrong.
Being a product of my generation, I Googled happy tail extensively, and what I found was not comforting. There were many tales of tails that had to be docked, which for an adult dog is the traumatic equivalent of amputation of a limb. Not to mention expensive. I looked and looked for different solutions and alternatives to docking, but did not find much encouragement.
The outlook worsened when I took him to the vet 10 days later and she informed me that in her opinion, the majority of Freck’s tail would have to be removed.
Being stubborn, I refused to let this be an option. I tried everything.
I wrapped the tail in vet wrap, which would last a couple days and then slip off. I cut holes in a tennis ball and put it around the tail so he would hit the ball against walls and furniture before the tail tip. I used band-aids and cotton balls. Socks. I sprayed wound-care and slathered the abrasion with puppy skin cream so it would not break so easily. Everything I could think of. (Luckily, Freckles is a pretty tolerant dog.)
And finally, I moved out of my grandparents’ house. (For other reasons than the tail, of course, but in the end everyone benefited.)
And guess what? With all that extra care, he began to heal. In my apartment there is a limited amount of furniture, and thus he had less stuff to run that tail into. But even before we moved, I began to see improvement. All it took was patience, stubbornness, and consistency. I had to be constantly vigilant. But he lived with a tail for 5 years before I met him, so I had faith that it was possible for him to recover.
And today, I’m proud to say he has a happy, healthy tail-tip. It’s even grown fur back onto it (after being shaved by a well-meaning vet.) We switched veterinarians, because I lost respect for the one we had when she told me his tail would never recover and I proved her wrong.
So this blog is for every poor sap who has a dog who wags too much. When I adopted Freckles, there were way too few success stories out there. But we are one. All it took was a little extra love.
