A Tail's Tale

I should have known things were going too well with Reyna. She hadn't had anything significant wrong since the bump on her rump back in January. Which was a good thing, since pretty much all of my energy was taken up with Dad, Mikey, Per'la, Duncan and Loki.

Last Friday, I was testing out the theory that Ben-Gay might keep Reyna from chewing on her tail. I was drying off her tail and I noticed little streaks of blood on the paper towel. Sigh. I checked her tail and finally found this:

It doesn't look too bad, right? Of course, this being Reyna, I took some photos and sent a couple off to Dr. L so he would be aware of it. His recommendation was to monitor for a week or so and see how it progressed. By Sunday, the red bump was gone. My guess is that Reyna managed to snag it with her paw during on of her many fits of chase-the-tail. It was raw, but not awful. By Monday evening, Reyna was obsessing over the spot and had created a second sore. By Tuesday evening, we had ickiness (I'll spare you that image. But trust me, it was icky). Wednesday morning, Reyna was on her way to the vet. They shaved it and put her on antibiotics for two weeks, hoping we can get ahead of the infection. I also have to hot-pack it and clean it with betadine twice a day. Reyna's very tolerant of that, thankfully, although she's already fighting me on the antibiotics. Here's what it looks like as of Thursday evening:

The top area is the result of the initial mass. The bottom spot is what Reyna contributed. Paws crossed it doesn't get any worse.

Oh, and it turns out that Ben-Gay *will* keep Reyna from chewing her tail. But she doesn't seem to realize its on there until she gets a big mouthful of it. Silly girl.