Mystery blood

I let the dogs all out together in the morning but I don't go out with them immediately. I stay inside and have at least part of a cup of coffee before going outside, still far too early, to feed. It was cold out this morning, frost on the grass and the cars, and on mornings like that Della often comes back to the house wanting back inside if I'm going out to feed right away. She had come knocking on the front door but I ignored it while I was working on my first cup of coffee. When I did go out to feed, Della was sitting on the back steps, and I noticed some dark drops on the rug out there. I thought it looked like it could be blood but it didn't look particularly fresh and I didn't give it any thought. 

I fed the dogs and went on about my day, which started with a 2.5 mile walk with Bailey and Dodger. I didn't get many pictures because my hands were cold even with gloves on and I didn't want to take them off to operate the camera. 

Bailey saw our shadows against the trees in the morning sun and was fascinated by the movement.

My hands were cold, this is the only other picture I took this morning.

Later in the morning after a bio break outside with the dogs, I noticed what was obviously drops of blood on the floor. I gave everyone a quick once over and didn't see any obvious source of the blood. There wasn't a lot of it, so I didn't worry much, until later I realized that it was definitely coming from Della. She had a tooth pulled recently, but that's been healed up as far as I knew. I tried looking in her mouth without much success, but my hand had a bit of blood on it after I was done. I closed her in her crate and waited for Clay to get home to help with the exam.

We took her outside and put her in the back of the van, which put her up at a height that made it easier for us to look her over. We looked in her mouth but everything looked fine. We considered that perhaps it was coming out of the back end of the dog. In the days and weeks after Della gave birth there were a number of gooey and bloody secretions from her nether regions, but nothing since she was spayed and that was four years ago. Plus, after she got up off the bed, it was clean, no sign of blood. 

We were about to give up the search, in fact we did, and were just petting Della and giving her lots of attention, which she loves. I bent over to kiss her head and my hand brushed her left ear. It was wet, with blood, and I had found the source. It was a narrow scratch or tear, barely skin deep, not bleeding excessively, but it was fresh blood producing the occasional drip. It looks like she could have scratched it on a piece of wire, perhaps on a fence, it's hard to say. 

I pulled out the canine first aid kit in my car and doused it with some blood stop powder. Ears can be big bleeders and can be hard to stop because they shake them around a lot. I sprayed her ear with something else that is supposed to dry and act as a bandage before taking her out on the late day hike with Elvis. We did another 3.5 miles. Good day and mystery solved, at who and what was bleeding, if not the actual cause.

Here's today's maps:

The morning route, about 2.5 miles

The 3.5 mile late afternoon walk.