However, when Animal Control arrived on the scene, her dog house was in two pieces and she was huddled under the top part which was sitting directly on the wire covered ground. Near as we can tell, one of her puppies had gotten its head caught in the wire and had the scalp torn off. This was Frankenbaby.
When she was found, they came calling for me as I was off by my car making phone calls trying to find places to take the dogs to. They got the mother and babies out asap and loaded them in my car and I took off for Dr Hohne's office. I held Frankenbaby in my arms the whole way. She and her siblings were crying for their mother who was in a separate dog crate and so to comfort her I put one of her brothers in the cradle of my arm with her and she settled down.
Dr Hohne had been alerted and took Frankenbaby from me when I got there. I left to go to Chi Rescue and wait for the others to get back. I had some time to spend with the mother and her babies. The mother was friendly enough, and I let her see her babies but kept her from trying to crawl into the way too small dog carrier that they were nestled in. We needed to keep them separate because she was a ferociously protective mother and until they were at their final destination, we couldn't risk getting into a battle with her when trying to move them.
The babies were SO cute. There were 5 boys who were identically black with brown patches and some white chests. The lone remaining female was all black with a bit of white and much smaller than her brothers. Frankenbaby was the same size & color as her brothers. They made little mewing sounds and were sometimes quite loud in their hunt for their mother's nipples. Everyone could hear them on the phone when I made calls.
Their destination was the Pasadena Humane Society where they were given a safe clean cage in a dark room. The mother was really happy to be someplace cool and climbed in and received her babies back with perfect grace. She seemed to understand that we were helping her since she didn't display any more aggression since the AC officers first hauled her out of the doghouse so they could get the rest of the babies .
After we got back from the Humane Society, Dr Hohne was at the rescue with Frankenbaby. That's when I gave her the name because her head was all stitches. It may not have been a pretty name but it was given with much affection. I listened carefully to Dr Hohne's care & feeding instructions and stayed up all night with her.
She cried for several hours even after she was fed. I wasn't sure if it was from the pain or missing her family but she would cry and then pass out, then wake up and cry again within the space of minutes. Finally I remembered that human babies like to be snuggled tight as so to make them feel like they're back in the womb so I took a blankie and wrapped her snuggly in it and she promptly quieted down and fell asleep for a real sleep.
I would wake her up every couple hours to feed her some more. At one point I had to change the blanket because her head wounds were oozing a bit and the first blanket was starting to stink of blood.
As the waking hours approached, I got more and more worried as she seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. I was taking dogs to be neutered that morning so I took Frankenbaby back to Dr Hohne with me but when he saw her again he changed his outlook from "good chance" to "pretty much no chance". He said that she probably had more internal injuries than we knew about. He did what he could for her.
She died a couple hours later around 1pm. I was crying. She had been so strong and such a fighter. That she lived as long as she did was amazing since the blood on her skull was already dried when we found her. Just about the entire time she was with me, she was in my arms.
Had she lived, she would have only had one ear. At this stage, the ear canals hadn't formed yet and the ear flaps were just protuding bits of skin. Dr Hohne had checked and made sure that there was nothing left when he sewed her up to prevent future problems of an interal ear system growing where there could be no outlet. She might have also had misaligned eyes and possibly been blind or impaired in the right eye. She would have had a permenant home with Chihuahua Rescue as Kimi told me later. I suspect though that I would have eventually asked to take her home myself once I had a place that I could have her at.
Instead, I paid for her cremation and bought a wooden jewelry box with a tile inset of one of my favorite works of art for her to rest in.
The box rests underneath my car seat so she can ride with me as I ride in cars with dogs.
Addendum: We found out later that Frankenbaby's little sister was adopted before the puppies were driven up to Lake Tahoe for adoption. I'm certain that their brothers were also quickly adopted as well
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