A Tale of Two Tails – Cat and Dog Tail Amputation Story
By: Lucy CloughIn just one week we had two different tail amputations!
Our first Star is Brian the cat!
Brian is a lovely 9 year old cat who, after a night on the town, was found by his owner with a sore tail! Brian’s brilliant owners acted right away by taking him to our out of hours provider, Vets at Night at Pride Park in Derby. After being assessed they discovered that Brian had a possible fracture of his tail.
It is not clear how this happened to Brian but it was very sore and painful. The vets at Pride Park provided Brian with some pain relief and antibiotics with instructions to come and see us at Bright Side the next morning!
When Brian came in the next morning he was still very painful and didn’t want anyone looking at his tail. His tail was suspiciously bent and the wounds on the tail were quite deep. It was decided that Brian would benefit most if the damaged portion of his tail were to be removed. This is known as tail amputation. With the consent of Brian’s lovely owner our Head Vet, Kelly, went ahead later that morning to amputate the damaged part of his tail.
Brian is so far recovering very well and seems much more comfortable now that the damaged tail is no longer bothering him.
We hope he will go on to live a long and happy life… albeit missing half his tail! We think it gives him character!
Our second superstar of our cat and dog tail amputation story is Apollo the Labrador!
Apollo is very handsome 11 month old Labrador, who’s waggy tail got him into a bit of bother!
Like many dogs in the world at the moment Apollo has been very excited about his owners being home more than usual recently! This excitement lead to Apollo wagging his tail at light speed! Unfortunately Apollo’s tail is very long and had been hitting things all around the house. So much so, that he ended up splitting the end of his tail open! This is very sore when dogs get a split in their tail, not to mention messy! Due to Apollo’s nature he continued to wag through the soreness and pain. Despite his owner trying to bandage the tail, the wound would continually reopen.
Apollo’s owner booked an appointment with us at Bright Side to see if anything could be done to help.
This condition is endearingly called ‘Happy Tail‘ in the veterinary community as it is often seen in very happy waggy dogs!
With a thorough examination and discussion with Apollo’s owner, our vet, Lucy decided that it would be best to amputate some of Apollo’s tail. Unfortunately in these cases bandaging is very difficult and waggy dogs just wont stop for anybody (even vets)! Therefore any other treatment can be very unrewarding and not to mention painful. By amputating some of Apollo’s tail we can make sure he can wag it safely without him damaging it again.
So, like Brian, Apollo also underwent surgery to amputate his tail that morning. Whilst Apollo was under anaesthetic he was also castrated as his owner intended to have this done anyway. We all decided to utilise the time under anaesthetic effectively. Thankfully for Apollo, this means he wouldn’t need another anaesthetic again for castration in the future.
Apollo lost more than just his tail that day!
That concludes our tale of how we performed a cat and dog tail amputation in two days here at Bright Side Vets!
