A Tale of A Tail

 

Long Post

It’s been a busy and tiring couple of days, on Thursday, we noticed that something was wrong with Louie, his tail didn’t look right, when I touched it the hairs fell out. Boston Terriers don’t all have the same size of tail, some are cork screw, some are stubby an inch or two long, some are what is called a button which is what Louie had, a little roundish tail about 1/2 inch long, There was never  enough of a tail to wag.

Louie

When Sophie was about two years old her tail inverted, we didn't,’t know anything about tail inversion and neither did our vet, so it was  a scary time for us when she had to have surgery to have  her tail removed.

When we noticed Louie's tail on Thursday, we immediately thought his tail was starting to invert. We knew there wasn’t a vet in Borrego Springs, so we would probably have to take him  into Indio or even Yuma, I emailed  Al and Kelly to see if they knew of a vet, Kelly emailed back right away with the name of a vet she’d heard good things about in Brawley. I phoned and got an appointment for 8:30  Friday morning.

Neither one of us got much sleep that night,it’s hard to take your pet to a strange vet, when you know that surgery might be necessary, By morning I had come to the conclusion that if the vet couldn’t manipulate the  tail to it’s right position, we would take him home to our own vet on Vancouver Island.

We left Borrego at 7 Friday morning, of course we were 1/2 hour early when we arrived at the vets office, so we waited in the parking lot.

When we met the vet I was surprised, he appeared to be quite old for a practicing vet, he walked slowly with a cane, and he was quite deaf. 

As soon as he examined Louie, he knew what the problem was, he could feel the tail inside and said it was pressing on his colon. We knew then we wouldn’t be able to take him home, if his colon was perforated or damaged  he would  be in real trouble, so we signed to agree with the cost estimate and the surgical release to have his tail amputated. The vet had done the surgery before but only on bull dogs.

Now Louie has never spent any time away from us, if we leave him behind for any reason, he has Sophie and Jake for company, and he is still sits at a window and watches for us to come back. Every time. It was so hard to leave him, I promised him I would come back for him.I wanted  to pick him up after the surgery, they wanted us to leave him, but I said if he was okay we would take him home.Which we did.

His poor  butt was a mess, he was pretty sore Saturday night and couldn’t get comfortable, so no none got much sleep.

This morning ( Sunday ) it looks much, much better, and we are all feeling better.

I was going to put in a picture of his butt post surgery but it is a pretty graphic so I didn’t

Jean