Pink bandage AND a trip to see the vet!

Apparently several miles of tape and bandage with dressings thrown in for good measure, not to mention half a tube of fusciderm are not sufficient when it comes to clobbered tails. We changed the dressings this morning and it wasn't looking -or smelling- too good. An hour of open air and more disinfectant scrub and anti-everything gel before a lighter, to let the air in, dressing which seemed ok. BUT twenty mins left unattended one Friday afternoon and Finnegan had not only ripped the dressing off but chewed an enormous hole in his tail gushing blood all over. I know a little blood goes a long way but this was more than a little and required a pressure bandage to make it stop. Mum was recalled from an afternoon "tea party" and off to Eastgate we went. Favourite vet Katie greeted him with a "what have you done now, Finn?" before clipping all the hair off the bottom half of his tail. Cleaned again, lathered in chamomile cream and more dressings, which unfortunately didn't last the journey home. With a bag full of 'shopping' and a few pounds lighter in the wallet we came home. Stupid hound is feeling sorry for himself, partly the trip to the vets, partly a bit on infection, partly the antibiotics and antinflamatory but also that he's still careering about like a crackpot and belting the great long appendage on doors, walls, chairs, people, tables - pretty much anything that happens to be vaguely within range.
A weekend of feeling sorry for himself and having his tail grabbed everytime it went anywhere near any hard (or even soft) surface / upright and it's looking loads better, a few hours of no dressing to let it dry out helped enormously too.  A check up on Tuesday and he gets signed off, we have another bag of 'shopping' to keep him wrapped up until it's healed.
Nearly two weeks later and he's bandage free.

The answer is? Lots and lots of bandage

Remember the question? How to bandage the bottom third of a nearly 3 foot long tail.
Like this:

First cut your dressing to size and in pieces so it will flex with the tail, next tape it in place with several metres of microtape. then cover it all with multiple layers of vetwrap.  As you can see it's Hebe's favourite colour - PINK!  It was the threat when the tail licking was going on, "if you don't stop, I'll wrap in in a pink bandage!"  Well the threats didn't work but so far the bandage is.  I'm amazed that it's not been wagged off or ripped off or battered off against cupboards, tails or people. Although some of the tape is coming off, but that's easy enough to replace.
The addition of the dressing has made an already painful weapon into an offensive one!  Everyone has bruises of varying degrees and differing locations  - all except Finnegan who is oblivious to it all.  It's wound check and redress tomorrow morning; fingers crossed it's healing well under there but regardless of the mendedness it's staying covered until it's skinned over again.  Remembering the hock injury this could take a while.  The spare bandage is violent cat sick green, not sure if that's preferable to day-glo pink.  I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.  But not too soon please Finn.