Sigh. Tuesday morning I heard a ruckus in the dog yard. I went out and saw that Magic, one of our older dogs who was the only dog in the upper yard who lived off of his chain, was in between Rocket and Spike. Rocket was yanking on Magic’s tail and Spike was shaking his neck. I ripped Spike off of Magic. I wasn’t sure where to put her because if I let her go, she’d jump on him again. Luckily Rocket lost his grasp of Magic’s tail and Magic ran away. I took a look at his wounds. They didn’t look too bad. He had a cut on his eye from a previous injury. His tail looked a little raw and was painful. I didn’t see any wounds. I cleaned off his eye and put him on a tie-out.
Later that night, Greg and I took a closer look at his tail. He had a laceration on the backside of his tail, around three inches from the base. We shaved the area, cleaned it with a water/betadine solution, gave him cephalexin (and antibiotic) and Rymadyl (doggie aspirin), and put him in the pen in the front yard.
Wed. night when we were cleaning his tail, I noticed that it wasn’t painful– meaning he just didn’t have any feeling in his tail. We decided if the emergency vet was open, we’d bring him in. It wasn’t an emergency, but the ER vet is sometimes cheaper than the regular vet, and I was stressed about his tail. Turns out the ER vet isn’t open on Wed., and we opted to not call McKinley or Aurora to have a doc on call look at him.
Greg dropped him off at Aurora this morning. The doc told him that he had circulation in tail (there was blood flow), but he didn’t have any feeling (nerve damage), so the best thing to do is to amputate his tail.
Whaaaaaa!!!! Poor Magic. While Greg is out of town, I may try to integrate him with the inside dogs and see how he does. I’ve tried this before, and he didn’t really want to be inside, but maybe he’ll change his mind.