Day two - we made it through last night!

This morning, Piper was willing to drink and eat a bit for me - all 5 pups had made it through the night... Dr. Amsel called me with more instructions after finding out how things had gone... 

The game plan was to attempt to clean her up a little bit at least, but this was going to be a bit of a challenge if nothing else... 

Now that the first and second hurdles had been overcome (the decisions and surgery), heavy on our minds was the squalor and filth Piper had been in, along with the birth of her puppies... She and the puppies were crawling with fleas... Tons of fleas with no exaggeration... Big adult fleas and their offspring...  They were crawling all over her - even across her eye lids, forcing her to blink numerous times!

If you double click on the photo above, it will appear that Piper is tan and somewhat speckled - that is fleas and flea dirt... She has bubble gum (?) smeared on her head, dried blood and dirt all over her hindquarters and we can't get either of the two incisions wet... My daughter and I went through her coat with flea combs and manually went after those that we could find and kill...

Wiping her down with damp washcloths as instructed, they were tan with dirt and grime... Finally, we did the best we could and then bundled everyone up to get them to my vets for an examination and meds...

Piper is such a sweet, sweet girl... Not once through any of this has she growled or grimaced... She has been poked and prodded, transported and shifted around - and she's remained sweet and endearing throughout... sigh...

Back from the vets, we found one pup had passed away during the trip home from the vets - she originally had 4 males and 1 female... 

She is anemic on top of everything else - maybe from the fleas, who knows?... 

We can't locate whether Frontline or any of those products will be harmful to the pups, so we're afraid to use it on Piper... We're trying to contain the environment, making it difficult for the fleas to survive... She's already had one dose of CapStar, but I'm not so sure that doesn't transmit through the milk either...

She's nursing the pups however, and taking care of them... Adorable little farts, aren't they?