With the video in hand, I went to work trying to get it in front of the right people. Part of that was figuring out who the right people were. I think about a dozen vets viewed the video from my local vets that have done so much to help me try to figure this out and their specialty colleagues to the folks at the U of MN working on EIC and now BCC to my former vets in California.
Ultimately, I got it in front of Dr. Robert L. Gillette at Auburn University. Several people referred me to him and his writings. He specializes in various aspects of high performance canines, including exercise physiology and nutrition. With nothing more to pursue on the EIC/BCC front until they have a test for BCC, it seemed that the only other possible explanations would be metabolic.
After several phone calls and email exchanges it was finally all set up. I took Gata down to Auburn to see Dr. Gillette and his colleague Dr. Jay Barrett the week of July 9th. Following is an email that I sent to a bunch of friends after we got home. Though I have most of the results I am still waiting for an interpretation from Dr.Gillette. Unfortunately, he was away at a meeting this week, so I will have to wait a little longer.
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We are back from Auburn and are now in the waiting phase. It will take a little while to get all the results back. I'll try to give you a quick overview of what we did and what the working hypotheses are, so far.
First, I guess I should mention that this was one of the most intense and involved discussion that I've ever had with vets. We started out by discussing Gata's history for about 4 hours. Pretty much everything from the health of her parents to the "Fevers of Unknown Origin" of some of her siblings/half-siblings to her vaccination schedule to the environment that she has lived in (toxins, pests, other pets, etc.) to her conditioning program to the history of the collapses got it's fair share of time. The consensus of opinion, based on the video and information that I provided, is that the collapses appear to be most representative of a metabolic defect of some sort.
Ultimately we generated a very long list of things that we wanted to test - blood chemistry, electrolytes, temperature (rectal and core), ECG, urinalysis, and blood gases. I won't list all of the things we decided to test for in the blood chemistry - it is a very long list and I would almost certainly forget something. We included a few fliers that are extremely low probability but would absolutely change everything if any of them came back positive.
The basic set up was as follows:
Wednesday - discussion, planning and official "Rest" day
Thursday - exercise and experimental day - time points included - pre-work, immediately after work, several recovery time points
Friday - final recovery time point
At each time point several measurements were taken:
1. ECG
2. Temperature (Rectal only on "Rest" day, rectal and core at all other time points - she had to take a pill with a thermister in it)
3. Respiratory rate
4. Blood collected
5. Blood gases run immediately
6. Capillary refill time
In addition, urinalysis was run at several different points along the way.
Though I went there expecting to collapse her, they felt that was not necessary. They feel that the collapse is an extreme of what is likely occurring every time that I am working her. That if there is a metabolic defect it will show up during regular work. Plus, to be honest, none of us really wanted to take that chance. Dr. Gillette was very clear that he really didn't like to have dogs die in his studies.
So, on Wednesday afternoon, we shaved a bunch of spots on her for the ECG and jugular blood collections. We took 12 mls of blood at each time point, so it had to be jugular. Given the frequency of blood draws and other measurements we decided to muzzle her each time that a measurement was taken. It just made everybody more comfortable. Plus, there would be many people around her on Thursday taking different measurements as quickly as possible. We did the first set of measurements at that time. A couple of measurements in her blood gases were immediately unusual - in unexpected (unusual) ways that had everybody sort of scratching their head wondering what that meant.
Thursday morning we started a little early. I gave Gata the pill containing the thermister and we all headed over to a field that they use for their regular studies. We had agreed upon a protocol that I could modify slightly. I would send her out on long retrieves using the Chuck It. One of our standard conditioning routines is Chuck It retrieves in an interval training approach. At this time of the year I have been using 5 long throws per set. So we elected to do 1 full set for the "work" portion of the experiment. We would then take a full set of measurements. After that I would tell her she was done and cool her out as normal. We planned to take several measurements over the 20 minute recovery period and then a few more over the remainder of the day and Friday.
Dr. Gillette has done quite a bit of work on anticipation and its effects on metabolism. So once they had everything set up, I brought her down, letting her get a bit wound up about the work - put on my training vest and let her see the Chuck It. We took a full set of measurements at that point, prior to her working. We saw the same anomalies in her blood gases that we had seen on Wednesday.
Then I worked her and the rapid fire measurements began. A few things that were "unusual":
1. The blood gas measurements were even more bizarrely strange - in a way that no one could remember having read about before
2. While in the recovery period her temperature continued to rise, to the point that although she had looked good at the end of work we were concerned that she might progress into collapse. At that point I gave her some ice cold water to drink from the garden sprayer that I have been using to cool her after work.
3. She cooled a little but began heating up again, at which point I sprayed her down completely and we put her in the crate with the fans on her and the ice pads to lay on.
4. We initiated a second recovery period at that point.
The results will probably start coming in tomorrow or Tuesday but we won't have the full analysis for at least a week. Plus, Dr. Gillette is out of town next week. So it will be a little while before we come up with any answers or solutions. But we have a couple of working hypotheses:
1. Painful for me to hear - Dr. Gillette believe that the raw diet I have been feeding her does not provide enough energy in the form of fat and carbohydrates for her. He has done numerous studies that show dogs of different types performing sustained activities utilize fats and carbohydrates preferentially. Though Gata is not truly engaged in endurance activities, some of our conditioning routines verge on being true endurance training and when you add in her intensity and speed that may tip them over. So, we will almost certainly be modifying her diet, perhaps significantly, though we do not expect to take her off raw entirely.
2. If she does have some sort of metabolic defect, which he thinks may be likely based on some of our discussion, it is possible that she simply can't get energy to her muscles fast enough or get rid of the waste metabolic products fast enough. The blood gases suggest that she definitely does not get rid of the wastes efficiently while working. However, #1 may also have an impact on this ...
3. There are a large number of other possibilities that we also tested for with the blood work.
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