As a young dog, Tanda had a habit of bolting through the door the moment it was opened. This was usually followed by me having to chase her through the neighborhood, cursing and praying she wouldn't get run over by a car.
One day she made a run for the door and in the rush to close it before she ran out, her tail got caught, taking the last inch or so of skin off her tail. A friend of mine had recently had a baby and as a result I had a plastic cigar tube. I wrapped her tail in cotton and taped the tube to the end of her tail to keep it from being further damaged.
I took Tanda to see Dr Howard, her vet, and when he saw the cigar tube on her tail he laughed for several minutes before saying "Absolute genius, I couldn't have come up with a better protector myself."
Dr Howard sewed up her tail and put one of those plastic cones on her neck and of course the cigar cover back on her tail.
Now, those cones are supposed to keep a dog from chewing wounds and pulling out stitches, but I honestly think they were made by someone with a twisted sense of humor as an excuse to laugh at our pets. Tanda hated that cone, I remember watching her try to walk through a doorway. She'd bump one side of the doorframe with the cone and back up and try again only to hit the other side then look up at me with the saddest expression on her face....I lovingly called her "my little daisy" for years afterward.
One afternoon we went out and left Tanda in the back yard, with the cone on her neck and the cigar tube on her tail. I came home to hear a commotion in the back yard and went out to find the neighbor's dog laughing, yes laughing, at poor Tanda who tried her dogged best to hide from him. She looked so pitiful, I took the cone off and she never wore it again.
