Hollow tail not a real disease

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jkoch

By John Koch, DVMQuestion: I have a dog that stays skinny all the time. He eats well, and the vet says he is healthy. I have never worried much about it because Hyper, as I call him, is extremely energetic and does everything at a full gallop. My granddad came by the other day and said the dog looks like it has a case of hollow tail. He said he saw a lot of it growing up on the farm in the Ozarks. I did not ask him about hollow tail because granddad loves to talk and at that moment there simply was not time for it. Since then, I have asked several people about hollow tail, and no one seems to know anything about the condition. Do you know what hollow tail is?

Answer: Hollow tail is a folklore name for a disease that does not exist. Many years ago before veterinarians received any formal training, backwoods self-proclaimed veterinarians diagnosed this disease in cattle. I have never before heard the term applied to dogs.

If you carefully examine the underside of the tail in cattle, you will find an area where there is an indentation. In cattle that are extremely thin, this area is particularly noticeable. For some reason, these old veterinarians thought this hollowed area was the cause of a disease that made these cattle emaciated.

In reality, this larger than normal indentation was nothing more the result of weight loss often due to starvation. The prescribed treatment was to make an incision in the skin of the tail and pack the incision with salt, then bandage it. Needless to say, the treatment certainly caused these moribund animals to perk up at least for a while.

It is interesting to note that as more educated veterinarians moved into these backwoods areas their clients were resistant to any diagnosis other than hollow tail. Old ideas sometimes die hard.

Dr. Koch is a Cape Girardeau area veterinarian.