Pet First Aid Level 2 (VTQ)
Course Content
- Introduction to Pet First Aid
- Course introduction
- Course overview
- Before we start - Coronavirus COVID 19 advice for pet owners from the government
- Meet Your Vet
- Pet First Aid and The Law
- The vet and your role in first aid
- When is Veterinary Care Required?
- Keeping your pet safe in an emergency
- Car Accidents
- Pet Proofing your home
- How Pets Show Pain
- Checking Your Pet's Health and Finding Out What Is Normal
- Taking a Pulse
- Pet First Aid Kits
- CPR, Pet Accidents and First Aid
- Medical Conditions
- Types of Bleeding
- Dressings, Bandages and Controlling Bleeding
- Collaclot - Collegen pad to stop bleeding and promote clotting
- Pet Wrap Bandages
- HaemoCap™ MultiSite - Pets
- Paw Problems
- Nail and Claw Injuries
- Eye Injuries
- Bandaging the Ear
- Bandaging the Tail and Tail Injuries
- Bandage Aftercare
- Dog Digestive Process
- Vomiting in Animals
- Dehydration in Pets
- Fluid balance in dogs and cats
- Oralade - treating dehydration
- Oralade - The Science
- Pets and Illnesses
- Stings on animals
- High Temperatures and Heatstroke
- Hypothermia Treatment
- Choking Overview
- Choking
- Snake Bites
- Fleas
- Ticks and Lyme Disease
- Fly Strike
- Illnesses
- Different types and sizes of animals
- Summary of Pet First Aid
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Get StartedBandaging the Tail and Tail Injuries
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We are now going to look at tail injuries. Now, a dog can injure its tail very, very easily. It could get it caught in something, it could be pulling, jumping through a fence something like that and rip it. Same with other animals. Cats are very notorious for getting their tails caught because the tail tends to be up, and they go through a hole and they get it caught. The other thing with the tail is there is a lot of blood vessels in there, so when the tail does bleed, it will bleed quite a lot. Now, is it life threatening? No, not normally. However, it can look a lot worse than it is. The other key problem particularly with dogs is, is a dog will wag its tail. If it had a very small cut in there, the wound is not getting much chance to heal. Because it's continually wagging its tail, so the actual wound is just it is forcing the blood out and there is not a hope of it actually clotting. If there is a tail injury, another thing just worth mentioning is sometimes, and this is very rare, a tail injury can be not necessary that bad, however, sometimes it might be a section of the tail even has to be removed because the bleeding cannot stop. With a tail injury, the first thing to do is try and stop the bleeding where possible. And if you can lay the dog down and calm them and stop them wagging their tail that will be a great help. Then the thing is to try and get the dressing onto it. The next problem is, "Well where is the skin?" Her tail is pretty much the size of my finger and you see how bushy it is, so we need to try and get a pad on there and a bandage on there just to really help it in the recovery process. We can use one of two things, we can either use the gauze pads and the pet wrap bandage or we could use a conventional dressing on her tail. On this demonstration what we are going to try and do is use the standard dressing on there. Because with Deco, her hair is quite large, so the dressing will stay on there because as soon as we compress the fir down here it is going to hold it in place. But if we do put any dressing on a tail of a dog, we need to really get them to the vet to get it looked at because this is only a temporary measure. So, the first thing we are going to do is just to open up the dressing until we get to the pad. Open up the pad itself and then we can lay the pad over her tail so we can cover the wound. And then just pass the bandage underneath, and then we are just applying the bandage around and it will squash the hair down, which is what you want. And just work your way up, just go above and below the pad, and the higher we go up there the more stressed she is going to get, but just try and avoid it. In this case, the cut is here, we do not need to go to the very top. So just run that round and then once we have put enough bandaging on, we can then just tie it off. Do not over tighten these dressings. Just put it on so it is just on firmly. We do not want to put too much pressure. I know we need pressure on a cut to stop it bleeding, but if we put too much pressure on it will act like a tourniquet. This is really just to hold it in place, just enough time to get him to the vet where they can deal with the bleeding, but also if they start wagging it will just keep the blood within the dressing. And then as with all dressings, all we need to do is cut these little tails off here, so that they have not got something that they can grab hold of and pull the dressing off themselves.
- The tail in a dog usually has between 6 and 23 movable vertebrae.
- A tail is used for many purposes including communication, balance, even in some breeds as a rudder when swimming
Tail injuries or problems can include
- Skin problems, Dermatitis
- Tumours
- Deformity
- Typical injuries include bites (from other dogs) the tail getting caught or crushed
- Minor cuts can be treated by bandaging and monitoring
- The more serious injury should be treated by a veterinary professional.