On July 23, 2005, Marti had her first litter of puppies. She had 4 puppies - 2 boys and 2 girls. The one girl was very tiny - only about half the size of her siblings. After a while, it became apparent that something was not quite right with little Bea. Sometimes after running around, she would start dragging her hind legs. A vet friend suggested doing a bile acids test on her. Since she was so small, I wanted to wait until she was a bit older so that the fasting that was required wouldn't put too much of a strain on her body. The bile acids test only indicated that she might be hypoglycemic. It didn't really tell us what was wrong with her. Hypoglycemia wouldn't cause the symptoms Bea was exhibiting.
Every Pikatti litter has a theme. This one's theme was something having to do with chance. Bea was named Pikatti's Beat The Odds in the hopes that she would. Sadly, she did not. She crashed twice on November 9th before I was able to get home from my job in Ohio. The second time she crashed, the vets couldn't revive her. Bea was only 15 weeks old... The autopsy report revealed that Bea died from a reverse PDA - a rare heart condition. Her littermates were evaluated by a cardiologist to ensure that they did not have any kind of heart problems.
Bea at 4 weeks
Bea at 8 weeks playing with her favorite ball
Bea with her littermate sister Sam (aka Samantha). The picture on the right shows how much bigger Sam was than Bea at 12 weeks.
Bea was a very sweet little girl. She loved life and tried to make sure that she enjoyed every moment thoroughly. She would come out of her crate and want to play with her littermates or her toys. Since she was so much smaller than her littermates, she really couldn't play with them too much because of the risk of them unintentionally hurting her. When she was done playing for a while, she would run over to you and rub up against your legs with a big happy grin on her face. She would lie on your lap for hours playing with one of her toys or napping.
One of the things that I do with my puppies is try to get them used to people reaching over their heads since not everyone that they encounter will realize that not all dogs appreciate that action. With Bea's litter, I tapped them lightly on the head with an empty cardboard paper towel roll and said the word, "Bop" (for no particular reason). Probably because of that, Bea got the additional nickname of Bop.
During the last few days of her life, it became more difficult to get her to eat. We tried many different things - ice cream, cottage cheese, Esbilac to get her to eat even just a little bit. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. The picture below was taken around 1:00 am on the day that she died. You can see the ice cream and the dog food on the plate. She is on her own personal little rug with her toys in front of her.
Bea enjoying some of her favorite things - playing with toys (like her little bee), playing tug with her brothers and cuddling up next to one of her littermates.
