Salsa, my pinoy tail-less mini-doberfake aso

At the time that we had acquired Salsa, we already had four dogs: Austin (the mixed breed), Sarah, Hagar and Kooky (all with no breeding at all). It started out one day when I went home; I noticed that there were drops of fresh blood in the front lanai of my lola’s house. Turns out there was this tiny dog with his tail ending in a bloody stump hiding amongst the potted plants. This dog came from the neighbors next door and according to our house help, Jojo they tried to amputate his tail because he looked like a Doberman or another version was “Nasagasaan daw ng Tricycle ang buntot!” (His tail was ran over by a tricycle).

My tatay (father) took pity and adopted the dog. So, he was taken care of, brought in the house, had medical attention, enough food and in due time, his tail was healing beautifully. I was happy at the thought that the little dog was going to be ok.

NOT.

There were drops of blood on the floor. Again.

Salsa, (so named now) the little f*cker was biting his tail. The itchiness of the healing stump was driving him crazy. It wasn’t enough that he was rasping his mangled tail with his teeth, he was biting right through the bone!

Not only was he suffering WE were suffering as well! He was howling in pain the whole DAY AND NIGHT! I tried to soothe his pain by washing it and putting Betadine over it (I had to wrap the wee bastard in old basahan just to do this).

And he didn’t do this once; he bit it until he had NO MORE TAIL! Now I can’t imagine how a dog can bite his tail to nothingness but Salsa did.

There were times that we couldn’t sleep because he was crying in pain THROUGH the night, running around in circles, chasing and biting his ever diminishing tail. His cries sounded like a rasp going right through my ears.

Salsa sunning, parang ang bait ano?

Things came to a head one day when his whole rear end was swollen, bloodied, bursting with pus, a mass of bites and a small portion of his tail bone sticking out.
Gross. Away we went to the vet. I was scolding him the whole time on the way. He was mewling pathetically in pain while his tail was dripping with blood and discharge. At the vets, we had to give him THREE shots of general anesthesia and even then he didn’t go totally under. Salsa, the scandalous blighter, was still howling and gurgling each time the vet jabbed and stitched his butt.

I asked the vet to put a cone around his neck so he won’t bite it again. He wore that cone for a month, looking like a circus mascot.

Now, Salsa’s butt has healed completely. He looks like a small Doberman, never grew past his height of 1-1/2 ft tall.

But he still screams and chases his tail once in a while just for the heck of it.