[RahRahRah]

Hello Everyone,

I know I haven't been a presence on this board, but it sure has been a lifesaver for me. And tonight I just wanted to come on and share my brief story as a means for dealing with my grief.
As listed below on my sign on, I have two cutie pie Yorkies (along with Tucker, and Leon who has already passed on), Chelsea and Edmund. Both very good and loving members of our family. And though I recognized they were never meant to breed, nature found a way when I didn't attend to it and blessed my Chelsea girl with a single pup, born three weeks ago on September 29th. I was in shock when I discovered a mewling tiny baby in a dresser with Chelsea protecting it. We named her Kloe and immediately got her to a vet where she was pronounced extremely tiny but ready to fight.
She gained steadily but struggled with an inattentive mom who probably wasn't close to her birth mom either. Chelsea would look at us like she was confused whenever the puppy toddled over to her to nurse. Chelsea quickly grew tired of the feeding and started ignoring her pup. So we turned to bottle feeding after we realized, after daily weigh ins, that she was losing too quickly. These last 6 days she had been slowly gaining about 1/2 an ounce every other day, but then two nights ago Kloe started crying incessantly at night and would only settle down after wedging herself between her bed and her blankets. I noticed a slight gurgle in her chest last night as I was feeding her (she was on a three hour schedule) and this afternoon when my daughter got home she said that Chelsea had discharge that had dried in her little eyes. I immediately has my husband take her to the vet only 9 minutes away who announced that tiny Kloe had an upper respiratory infection and she may have had a sprain in her neck and her crying may be from that. After a shot for the pain and some antibiotics, they were sent home with the reminder from the vet that he wasn't making any promises, but with a little TLC, she could pull out of it. I got home an hour later to find her crying pitifully like a baby duck, and we started working with her to get her some water and her medicine, but as I got the bottled water prepared, she gave a tiny little cry and expired in my husbands hands. We frantically started cpr on Kloe and rubbed her little limp body, that was warm but without breath or beating heart. We cajoled and pleaded between pumps and breathing for her to just fight and we would promise her the moon, but it wasn't meant to be. Every emotion you can imagine raged between us, punctuated with sobs and crying. Her little mom was worried at the edge of the bed, but she got to kiss her little angel good bye.
My husband made me swear that we would spay Chelsea as soon as medically possible, like I had always meant to do. I mistakenly thought she was too tiny to become inseminated by our standard breed yorkie, especially after we realized how irresponsibly small she had been bred and we were too committed not to keep her. My heart aches for her loss too, but we could never live with this kind of pain again.
Again I just wanted to share my story about a little precious angel, that never asked to be born, but while she was here was the spunkiest little trooper. We are planning a memorial and burial for Sunday under our large oak in front, where she would have frolicked chasing chickens in the spring sunlight.