Last week Carmel started vomiting, and she quickly declined. She never spiked a fever, but her kidneys and liver were working over time and started to fail. The thought was that she had such bad morning sickness that she just couldn’t eat. Blood tests, X-rays and ultrasound showed that nothing was wrong. We had her at the vet during the day on IV fluids, antibiotics, and anti emetics, and she slept at home with us at night, but no one could get her to eat. She went into early labor Monday night. The first puppy did not survive, but the rest were saved through C-section. While in surgery, the vet discovered that she had ingested something that perforated her intestines, which was the cause of her issue. It was a string that sawed through her intestines, and it couldn’t be detected by any of the tests they ran. She came out of surgery fine, but she passed away in our home the next morning. Her death was not related to the pregnancy in any way, and she took care of and nourished her puppies perfectly all the way up until the end. Her body performed incredibly to protect and provide for her babies. Currently, we are tube feeding her beautiful and healthy 9 surviving pups. The 11-12 was a miscounted x-ray (she only had 10). The pups are putting on weight, getting lots of our human contact and love, and getting frequent checkups by vets. There are 4 girls, and 5 boys. We have up to 4 puppies that may be available (1 girl, and 2 boys), but we will be able to say that with more confidence next week if all the puppies continue to stay strong and put on weight. We are planning to keep a girl from this litter, and we are praying that one of the families to get an available boy would consider being a guardian family for us, so we could have a stud from our beautiful Carmel girl. Please pray for our grieving hearts as we love and care for our perfect girl’s last beautiful blessing.