Advice Please?

So when my Aunt drove down Friday she was not only coming to get a ride to the airport but also to drop off her dog. When she goes away I have regularly taken care of her 11 year old dog.

My Aunt has not always had this dog, she got him three years ago from a shelter. She got him the year after she lost her husband and he has been a great companion for her. Rick hates it when I volunteer to take care of the dog because he is not overly well behaved. Well.... actually that's not true, he is a very gentle dog, very affectionate and active, he loves to walk. He is just not very good at holding his bodily functions for long periods of time.

He is a tiny thing, only 12 pounds. At my Aunt's home she can leave for up to 7 hours and he will be good. My Aunt is retired and lives alone so it is unusual for her to leave the house for this long at once but she does occasionally. At my house though, different story. We get 4 hours maximum. He has peed on our floor many, many times. It really upsets Rick. We do not have a dog. We are not used to being so restricted in our comings and goings. And although this will change soon anyway, Rick is often a bit resentful when the dog is here.

This will probably be the last time I care for the dog as he is not good with children. He was taken out of his first home only months before my Aunt adopted him because the children were mistreating him. As soon as a small child is in his immediate vicinity he starts to growl. And he has snapped at children for the unforgivable sin of trying to pet him. Obviously once our son arrives, I will not volunteer to care for the dog anymore.

Here is my dilemma. Last night we took Benji for a walk. When we got home I gave him a treat (a small rawhide bone with some kind of stuff inside). He ignored it and came and cuddled on the couch with us. I let him out to pee before bed and when he came in he grabbed his bone. He came upstairs with me and I went to bed but I left him on the floor because I didn't want the bone remnants all over my duvet. I fell asleep to the sound of him crunching his bone. I woke up to the sound of hurt little doggie whines.

I could hear him whining and I could see him squatting, in poop position, over my floor. I called for Rick to take him outside but he had already pooped. Rick took him away and as I was cleaning up I started to think about that whine, I thought, he wasn't needing to go out, he was hurting.

I ran outside, in my housecoat, to see him throwing up, wheezing and struggling for breath. He was obviously panicking. He wasn't the only one. I ran inside, threw on a pair of gym pants and sweat shirt, grabbed my purse and my keys and Rick and we took him immediately to the emergency vet clinic. On the way there he was throwing up on my legs and still couldn't breath properly. The vet and Benji managed to get his airway cleaned of the good sized piece of rawhide bone he had swallowed and he was immediately feeling much better. Shaking like a leaf and drooling like a mad man but breathing easily!

Problem is this. In doing an examination of him to make sure there was nothing left in his airway and no problems had been caused, the Vet tells me that Benji has a heart murmur. And not just any heart murmur, but on a scale of 1 to 6, his is a 6. The kind of heart murmur that will cause heart failure in the relatively near future (remember he is already 11). She asked for behavioural signs of heart failure but he doesn't have any yet. But... she said he very well could develop them soon, even in the next month while he is here with me. She told me the signs to look for. She told me that until he shows signs there is no treatment necessary but the minute he shows these symptoms to bring him to the vet.

I don't think my Aunt knows about heart problems. She only adopted him 3 years ago so she doesn't know a lot of his medical history. I am pretty sure if she knew he had heart problems she would have warned me.

I also know that my Aunt will not treat him once he starts heart failure. She loves this dog. Loves him immensely. But she is on a very fixed income. She worked at a bank all her life but her husband was an alcoholic and they had very little savings as a result. They also were not able to get life insurance (even mortgage insurance) because of his related health problems, so she lives a very simply life and her one splurge is that she buys plane fare to Florida each winter and spends a month with a friend.

Plus she is from a different generation. She loves Benji but he is still a dog, a pet to her. He is not "one of her children" as my cats are to me. I know that when he shows signs of heart failure she will do what she feels is most compassionate and that is to put him down before he suffers.

So..... do I tell her about this problem while she is on her vacation. She just left. She has a whole month of sun and fun ahead of her. I don't want to ruin her vacation. But on the other hand, I don't want something to happen to him while he is in my care and have her taken completely by surprise because she had no idea anything was wrong with him.

Advice please?