doggie tales

This is quite literally a dog's tail. We went camping this past weekend at Manning Park. Check out all the photos (note that I think you need a Flickr account to view). As you can see, Nikita had a blast! She swam in the lake both days and LOVED it!


Unfortunately, when we got home, we noticed that she seemed a bit out of sorts. We realized that she wasn't wagging her tail at all and she wasn't walking and sitting properly on her hind quarters. We gave her hind legs a good doggie massage and she didn't seem to be in pain, but she was still acting really weird.

Finally, I decided to get online and google it. We discovered that Nikita has a broken wag! I kid you not - her tail is broken! It seems to happen to sport dogs after an active day of swimming or hunting. It can actually happen even just from a cold bath. The tail is attached directly to the spinal cord and I guess all the tail exercise from swimming just tired it out! Who would have thought?!

Anyway, it's really sad right now for me to see my dog with a broken wag - Nikita ALWAYS wags her tail. But the article says she will be back to normal in a few days, so we'll just wait and see. Man...just when I thought I had heard it all, now we have to deal with limber tail syndrome!