Tigger Club News
By Animals - For Animals
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Happy Tail

Happy tail sounds like something positive, but unfortunately it is a problem for a lot of dogs and their humans.

Sometimes the human is not aware of the problem until they discover what looks like a mini crime scene at home.
This is usually a scene of drops of blood or what seems like masses of blood either smeared or if the dog has a particularly waggy tail, splatters of blood around the floor, walls and even the ceiling !!

What is Happy Tail?
Happy tail is when the tip of the tail gets split or injured due to wagging and banging it off hard surfaces.
Once the tip of the tail is injured it is a very difficult part of a dog to heal as they tend to continue to wag their tail and causing more injury.
Or sneaky nibbling at the tail preventing it from healing properly.

What causes Happy Tail?
As the name suggests it is usually caused by over enthusiastic tail wagging near to solid objects such as walls, furniture or any other hard surface.

Can Happy Tail be prevented?
To be honest you can try, but if a dog is going to go overboard with the tail wagging there is not a lot that can be done.

How do you treat Happy Tail?
The way to treat Happy Tail is to have a breathable bandage that both protects the tail and protects it from further injury and nibbling.
The bandaging would need to be checked and changed daily.
This is obviously easier said than done.
There have been a few inventive suggestions for the treatment of Happy Tail.

Whatever method is used, it is important to get the tail healed as soon as possible. As the tail has no real protective muscle it is easily infected.
Some dogs unfortunately had to have surgery to remove the tip of the tail to enable it to finally heal.