My Lab bitch has recently given birth to 8 pups and one was born with a broken tail, luckily near the end, the vet advised to splint it, which we did but when splint was removed at 2 1/2 wks the tail just hung at the break. He now suggests that it will have to be amputated at about 8wks. under a general anaesthetic which terrifies me. Has anyone else experienced this with any breed?? I thought that it may have been because it was quite a large litters of big pups. Any advice greatly appreciated. :(

I had a puppy born once with a tail that was how do I describe this....like at 90 o. It was not broken but it did have a kink half way down the tail.
My breed are docked and the vet said it was absolutely fine, so it made no difference to it. The vet said they saw lots of tails like this in all breeds.
Nutkin

I occasionally get kinked tails and seems to be able to occur at any point to any degree and if it is severe I now have them docked. Strangely enough very few other Dober-folk seem to have kinked tails, wonder if it is because they can "remove" the evidence :)

Christine

Thank you both, it probably is a 90 o kink actually, I thought it was broken because it still hung after splinting it, I guess it is fortunate that your breeds are docked :) Looks like I shall have a Lab with a Weimeraner tail :) :)
Debbie.

Hi Debbie

I would definitly dock it (although most people dock Dobes I don't :) ) as the one I left with a 90 degree kink calcified and grew what looked like a golf ball on the bend which is why I now get my vet to remove the kinks if they are very obvious. The less obvious ones don't seem to do anything.

Just out of curosity I mated two kinked Dobes (where I considered everything else matched) and none of the offspring had this problem. This has probably been done before but as the evidence is removed at birth no one would know.

Christine

Hi Christine, thanks, the vet did say that they would have to go back to the next 'joint'? so she is gonna have quite a short tail by the time it's all over, I had hopes of showing her too but now she will look like a chocolate rottweiler.

It is a curious thing why it happens.

:) Debbie.