My First Surgery Case

A dog was presented to the clinic with a broken tail this morning. According to the owner, the dog bite its own tail until about 3cm of the tail being bite off. It's called self mutilating of tail. Luckily it was not a maggot wound yet and I didnt see any protruded coccygeal bone. However after checking at the wound and condition of the dog, the underlying cause of the self mutilating of the tail is most probably due to the generalised and chronic malassezia(a kind of skin disease).The itchiness cause the dog kept on licking and eventually biting off the tail. Anyway, tail amputation was indicated for this case as the wound would not be able to heal if there's no skin closure at the wound. I have got the chance to do tail amputation on the dog's tail this evening around 4pm. I was pretty nervous initially although it seems easy when I read through the surgical protocol. A bit awkward too when I performed the surgery. My helpful senior vet was there to help me throughout the surgery. I am so fortunate to have her all this while. The tail was amputated about 4cm long and closed up with simple interrupted suture pattern. I am crossing finger now that hopefully the suture wound will heal properly and will not have any post op complication :P The dog is going home tomorrow and to come back for suture removal in 10 days time. That is my first surgery case.