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.) mailto:[log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 2064]