Our Sammy is a 3 yo and appears to be thriving without any obvious problems.
However, we have noticed that she has had substantial loss of hair from the
very last 1/2" of her tail.  The underlying skin is not inflammed, scaling
or ulcerated...it looks quite normal.  She does not chew or bite at it....we
have observed her for hours upon hours.  The rest of her fur and skin looks
great.  It's the end of the summer for us in the Northeast.
 
She sleeps where ever she wants during the day, most of the time rolled up
in one of our closets or under the bed in one of many bedrolls which are
washed regularly.  She has the run of our large bedroom and bath.  At night
she always sleeps with us, getting under the covers and plops down leaning
against either me or the wife.  It's amazing we don't crush her but our
sleep patterns have gotten use to her behavior.  She gets up in the middle
of the night once or twice to hit the litter box, climbs back into
bed...licks me all over my face until I wake up and then she settles down.
If ANY of our 2 dogs ever did this ritual to me, I would lockling them up
for the nite.  BTW, the dogs appear to be flea/mite free as well as a dog
can be.  With Sammy's hair problem, we have kept the dogs out of the bedroom
for the past 4-6 weeks, thinking it was something they were passing on to
Sammy.
 
We wash Sammy now only once every 2-3 weeks but she loves the water and will
run into the shower each morning with me or my wife and that's the only time
she gets her tail wet as she runs around our feet as we dry off.  I brush
her regularly with a soft natural hair brush but I have stopped doing so for
the past month just to see if it would make any difference.
 
It doesn't seem to be spreading but I don't want to wait until a bigger
problem sets in.
 
Any advice would be appreciated.
 
Jerry, the missus, Sammy (and the dogs.)
 
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[Posted in FML issue 2064]