You love to see your dog wagging their tail. When they greet you, when they’re excited, when they’re playing – you know your dog is in a good mood when their tail is wagging! But too much tail wagging can actually be dangerous, and lead to a condition known as “Happy Tail Syndrome.” Despite the name, it can be pretty serious and painful for your dog.
What Is Happy Tail Syndrome?
In happy tail syndrome, dogs wag their tail so vigorously that it smacks into walls, furniture, brambles, or anything that causes it to split open. It’s not only painful for your dog — it’s also hard to heal.
The condition most often affects dogs with long, slender, short-haired tails, like Greyhounds. A study also found that working breeds were at higher risk for happy tail syndrome than non-working breeds. But many other breeds, such as Great Danes, Irish Wolfhounds, Labrador Retrievers, German Shepherd Dogs, Dalmatians, Pointers, English Springer Spaniels, Cocker Spaniels, and bully breeds are at increased risk.
Signs can range from a sore tail tip, with hair loss or broken skin near the tail tip, to all degrees of bleeding. While these signs can be caused by other problems, the dog is usually spotted wagging its tail to the point that it bangs into hard surfaces.
Treating Happy Tail Syndrome
A bleeding tail can be hard to heal, and the closer the damage is to the tail tip, the harder it is to fix. The tail is extremely difficult to bandage correctly. Sutures don’t work well there and even with surgical glue the wound may split back open. Follow these steps to clean and bandage wounds on a dog’s tail if you can’t get them to a vet or are delayed in taking them.
- Cleanse the wound with saline or a medical wound cleanser. Flush away debris and clip away hair.
- Keep the wound moist. If it’s already moist, apply ointment and a wet saline bandage. If it’s dry, moisten it with a hydrophilic gel covered by a medical grade foam dressing. Ideally, an airtight hydrocolloid dressing that holds in moisture can then be applied. Your veterinarian may suggest newer antimicrobial dressings that will speed up healing. The Irish Wolfhound Club of America has a detailed list of medicated coverings to use in happy tail wound healing. When changing a bandage, make sure the outer layer of the wound isn’t stuck to it. If it is, wet the bandage until it comes loose.
- Finally, wrap the entire area with an elastic bandage or Vetwrap to hold it in place. These wraps get tighter after you apply them, so be careful and never overstretch them. Always check bandages to make sure they’re not constricting the blood flow to the tail, which could cause the tip of the tail to become gangrenous.
By shaving the fur on the tail you can tape the bandages to the tail, but some dogs will still rip them off. You’ll need to use one of the methods below to protect the tail, or have the dog wear an Elizabethan collar. Your vet may recommend sedation or pain medication may help prevent the dog from biting at it.
Preventing Happy Tail Syndrome
The obvious solution is to prevent the tail from whacking into hard surfaces. You may want to refrain from crating your dog if wagging inside the crate is a problem. Or you can try removing all your hard furniture from your dog’s happy areas — for example, remove any tail-height chairs or tables near the front door or kitchen. You can also cover corners and edges with foam pipe insulation or sheets of foam. However, that can be hard to do all over your house, and some dogs really enjoy just ripping up the foam.
Dog owners have devised many methods to protect a dog’s tail. For example, foam pipe insulation can be used to wrap the tail, as can empty toilet paper rolls, hair curlers, pool noodles, heavy tube socks, baby socks, and thick gauze padding. However, some owners caution that a cushion that’s too thick can attract the dog’s attention, encouraging them to catch and chase the “toy” at the end of their tail.
Other preventives center around preventing the tail from wagging. Retired veterinarian and current AKC judge Camille McArdle D.V.M. treated so many happy tails through the years she improvised several easy inexpensive ways of dealing with them. “I’d have the owners buy kids’ pajama bottoms of the appropriate size for the dog, and feed the tail down one leg … use a duct tape ‘belt’ and ‘suspenders’ and keep it on at all times except when safely through the door to go out to potty. Velcro the ‘suspenders’ together over the withers, so you can easily take them on and off,” she explains. “An option to the pants is to use wide adhesive tape to connect the tail to the thigh, but this requires diligence on the owner’s part to keep the dog from pulling at the tape. Either method is much better than bandaging, which can cut off circulation if messed with by the dog.”
Methods of Tail Protection
Rita Stackable has had three Greyhounds with happy tail syndrome. Stackable also prefers immobilizing the tail over bandaging it. Her method is to create a sling for the tail by first placing a loop of material around the dog’s waist. She then hangs an eye-bolt clip from the bottom of the loop (just wrap a leash around the belt and let the clip hang down). The tail is bandaged with a ring (like a key-ring) attached to the bandage so that when the tail is brought forward and under the dog, the clip can be attached to the ring, holding the tail beneath the dog.
“The sling around the waist gives them tail movement enough to potty,” explains Stackable. “That’s why the only tight part is just the Vetwrap on the end of the tail. I usually pull the Vetwrap through the ring a couple of times, so it’s secured to the tail.”
Several store-bought products are also available, includin the Happy Tail Saver, which uses a harness and straps to contain the tail within a padded bag-like container. The Lewis Bright-Sight Tail Cover is specifically designed to protect the tails of gun dogs in the brush. It’s a long piece of hollow plastic that slips over the dog’s tail and is taped into place.
What Happens if the Wound Doesn’t Heal?
If your dog keeps experiencing Happy Tail Syndrome over and over again, or their wound doesn’t heal, a vet might suggest amputating the tail. McArdle cites a few reasons that could potentially lead to amputation as the best choice. “[Amputation] might be an option if there isn’t enough skin to close the wound using surgical glue, or if the distal tail became gangrenous.”
“So much depends on owner compliance in changing the environment to prevent recurrence,” she notes. “Some owners, confronted with the need for all this, will just opt for docking the tail to get it over with. I had a 180 pound Mastiff that I had to sit on the floor to dock the tail because he didn’t fit on our surgical table. This was the dog’s third time and the owner had had enough. It was quite a surgery.”
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