Crisis

Last last night while I was at work, Pete went out to feed the dogs and discovered that Dottie had eaten her bowl. Her metal bowl. He called me, but said she was acting fine and had eaten her supper. It was nine at night already, and there was nothing I could do.

When I got home at eight this morning, she still seemed fine. She was acting normal, she ate breakfast & pooped. No blood. No bloody gums, even (although Peter said last night her teeth were coated in aluminum.) A few hours later, she drank a whole bowl of baited water with no hesitation. Still no blood, no abdominal distension, no shocky gums. She was acting normally and didn't seem to be in any distress or pain. I didn't know what to do.

Dottie is a working dog at the end of her career. It is unusual for mushers, especially competitive mushers with thirty or more dogs in their kennel racing on shoestring budgets to spend thousands of dollars on medical care for retired dogs. Dottie's owner is in Canada, training her team for the Iditarod and out of cell phone service range. She will be for at least a week. I called my vet, a dog musher himself, and explained the situation. He told me the last dog he'd seen with aluminum ingestion had died when they missed a tiny esophageal sliver after extensive abdominal surgery. But then told me to just wait and watch and see if she gets "symptomatic." So we are now watching & waiting for internal bleeding or sepsis on a dog whose owner I can't get a hold of. I have to leave for another 24 hour shift at 6am.We brought Dottie inside for a few hours to watch her. She is still energetic and cuddly, but I am sick with what may be going on inside her and with the hard decisions that may need to be made in the next 48 hours.