Consider yourself lucky. My girl's beautiful, thick, touch-the-ground, black-and-white tail was ruined when she got it stuck in something and yanked the black part out from the roots on the tip of her dock. You got off easy. =]
I tried to keep up on trimming, so her tail wasn't constantly trying to nourish dead hair. I also used MTG and kept her tail in a bag. It seems to have helped.