To let my dog's tail heal on its own?

[lopsys]

We always joke that our Labrador will end up breaking her tail at some point with how hard she whips it around.

I've come home today to find blood all on my walls/door - it's from the end of her tail (only found it as I can see the crusty dry blood on the end of it). She won't let me check it thoroughly enough to actually find a cut but it's definitely from there.

She's still wagging, can't see anything visible in the multiple times I've checked and the bleeding has stopped.

Do I let it heal on its own? I hear such horror stories about tails and their healing.

It did occur to me that a terrier backing out of a tight hole would be more at risk of tail breakage if the tail was full length.
Apparently it's also do to with turning in tight tunnels underground. Foxes look bigger than they actually are, so if you expect a terrier to fit down a fox's earth, you should be able to span its chest behind its front legs with your hands. That gives you some idea of how limited the space is underground.

Take to vets. One of ours had the tip of the tail amputated and the other a complete tail amputation because they wouldn't heal.

Well our lab did this. It was a very tiny cut. Kept splitting it open and one vet wanted to chop the whole tail off which is a major op.
Anyway we put Elastoplast off the roll round the end of the tail, moved as much as possible that the tail could hit round the house and a couple of months and a few rolls of tape and the tail was healed. Been fine since.

I had a dalmatian that kept damaging the end of his tail. The vet advised bandaging it but the bandages never lasted more than 5 minutes. The tail would eventually heal only to be damaged again. The dog is long gone, but I still have blood stains on the hall walks. RIP Herbie. The best dog ever.

Walls not walks

I would tape up - we use a bit of old piping held on with duct tape. It’s works well - obviously if it doesn’t heal or is inflamed etc then the dog goes to the vet.

That's really interesting @EdithStourton .

I'm quite alarmed by the fact that my current PRT does seem to want to go to ground from time to time. I had the same breed before and although he was just as interested in hunting, he was indifferent to holes.
Am quite scared of my current dog getting himself stuck somewhere.
(Sorry - bit of a digression from the thread. Perhaps I should start another on this topic!)

Yep, be careful of a keen terrier going to ground. I don't want to alarm you but...

I've known one who got stuck and could not be traced or found. One locally got stuck but was dug out by someone with working terriers who knew what he was doing. She'd been down there something like 36 hours.

As I say, don't panic: these are the only examples I know of in decades of knowing quite a lot of stroppy working-type terriers. Just exercise caution: we had a proper farmyard JRT years ago who would have tried to bring down a mastodon given the chance, and I was careful with her near warrens and setts.

We had a Patterdale near us who had to be dug out of a hole after he got himself stuck 😳 he was absolutely fine but I think his owner was a bit traumatised!

I do remember my beagle trying to squeeze himself into a rabbit hole once. He couldn't even get his head in before he got stuck and had to be pulled out backwards by his harness!

Patterdale though....
Even arsier than JRTs.

(Said with love: I have a huge soft spot for working terriers.)

I luuurve Patterdales. Lots near me. Many are gorgeous but some have skulls of solid steel.
They look so like PRTs, other than the colour, but I think PRT's have a largish nugget of compromise and sound judgement at the centre of their otherwise-steely skulls

Oh, most definitely

Patterdales are known as Twatterdales for good reason!