Wow this week has been crazy! Gus, our adorable Mantle Great Dane has something the vet calls Happy Tail. He gets so excited and so happy that he wags his tail so hard that it hits a wall or whatever is available and splits his tail open. This has been going on for at least a year and although it is annoying and leaves a lovely blood splatter trail that makes the house look like the scene from your favorite murder mystery, it has mostly just been an inconvenience until this week.
Sunday Gus whacked his tail so hard that both sides of it were bleeding, this had never happened before! We cleaned it up, put some Neosporin on it and bandaged the entire end of his tail. As the week went on things got kind of crazy at our house. A visit to the ER for my husband Dave, a morning spent at the Endoscopy Lab at the hospital and then finally a normal day on Thursday until...
We arrived home Thursday night to find Gus's bandage soaked with blood. We removed it and discovered that it was infected. We jumped in the car and headed to the Animal ER! They shaved his tail, determined that he had a severe infection and gave him antibiotics, pain meds and re-bandaged his tail and then gave us instructions to contact our regular vet in the morning because we would probably need to have the tip of his tail removed. He was supposed to be neutered on Friday morning, so we took him home and prepared to take him in to our regular vet instead of going to the spay and neuter clinic. Friday morning I loaded Gus in the car and headed for our veterinarian's office, Dr. Mary Smart is wonderful and as soon as she saw Gus and his tail, she said we needed to amputate his tail immediately. She also felt like it would be OK to go ahead with his neutering so that he wouldn't have to be anesthetized more than once. About 3 p.m. the doctor's office called and said that Gus had done very well in surgery but unfortunately there was a major concern once they got in there that the infection was in his tail bones, so instead of losing 4 or 5 inches of his tail, Dr. Smart removed all but about 6 inches. She kept him over night and we picked him up today.
His poor little tail is bandaged and he has to wear that wonderful cone so that he won't lick or damage his stitches. Poor guy, he has to wear the biggest cone that we could find because his tongue is so long and with the normal size ones he can still get to his tail with it. He is very drugged right now, pain meds and really strong antibiotics. He has to wear the cone of shame for at least 14 days and we have to go back to have his bandages changed on Monday afternoon.
This afternoon we finally let Peaches come in and see Gus. Peaches is our 4, almost 5 month old Fawn Great Dane puppy. We were told they can only be together if we are closely supervising them because we have to keep Gus calm so his blood pressure will stay low. Apparently, dogs have a major artery that runs the length of their tail and of course Gus's had to be shortened dramatically, so there is a huge concern about the stitches tearing and him bleeding to death. Anyway, Peaches came in, Gus lifted his head and then for the first time he waged his short little stump of a tail. It was so heart warming. He had seemed so depressed up until that moment and suddenly seeing her made him happy!
Not sure how we are going to handle the next week or so, trying to keep him calm and quiet is not going to be easy! Right now all the drugs are keeping him pretty sedate but I have a feeling that by monday or tuesday he will start to perk up and then things are going to get a bit more difficult. Great Danes are such sweet dogs and they are usually kind of like a couch potato, but they do get the "zoomies" and that is not allowed for the next 14 days. I think I might have to hire a babysitter to watch my dog. That just seems too funny.
It is hard to imagine him without his tail. He has always kind of used it as a rudder as he runs full blast around the yard. That tail has had a life of it's own. He has been so happy that it has left a welt on my leg before where he whacked it. It has dropped Dave to his knees when it whacked him in the most private of locations, it has knocked things off of shelves and left us wondering if our home was a crime scene. Can't wait to find out what he can do with his new short, stubby tail...
