March 13, 2006 From the Musher...

Hi guys,

Seems Nulato has a computer and since there are very few mushers here - and they are all sleeping except me - I have a moment to post.

Here is the situation as it stands - the first sign of any concern came with Olena in Ruby. In Cripple, she and the rest of the team looked great. She developed a small split on her foot during the run and I bootied her for the rest of the trip into town. When the vets checked her, her leg was quite swollen, so she was immediately dropped, but remained with the team to rest and eat. When the vets came to pick her up 8 hours later, the foot had abscessed - despite being put on an antibiotic immediately after arriving.

Now Kara had also developed some swelling in one of her front feet on the run over and I had put her on an antibiotic on the trail. In the checkpoint Moses was also put on antibiotics for infected splits in his feet.

ALL of these dogs were bootied for the trip over from Cripple. To make a long story short (because I don't have too much time right now), now EIGHT of my remaining dogs are on a powerful combination of Baytril and Anirobe antibiotics.

Some of these splits have actually gotten worse with rest this afternoon.

The vets are at a loss as to what is going on. They have been on the computer researching a lot of stuff this afternoon. Everything from me putting the booties on too tight (that really hurt to think I might be the one doing this to them), to zinc related problems are being tossed around.

I have some ideas - and I think the problems are related to problems we had with the dogs' feet last year - but all that is speculation for later.

Right now we are on hold. If we have not seen significant improvement in the swelling in the feet by 3am (12 hours after the antibiotic combo), I will be coming home.

We will keep you posted as things develop.

Karen

(And yes, I had a visit with Orion last night. I think the prankster actually pushed my sled off the trail, 'cause when I hit the spot where I spread his ashes in '04, I began to look around for his constellation and next thing I knew the sled was off the hardpacked trail and into soft snow. He always was a brat.)

Orion (Draco's brother)