Hart was born with a cleft palate defect. We took him to the vet. Dr Dave said that the defect was not bad. On a scale of 1 through 10, it was a 2. He said that if we could keep him eating, he could do surgery to correct it when Hart reached a weight of ten pounds. We were up day and night supplementing his feeding. He weighed 7 ounces at birth.
Hart just could not gain any weight for some reason. We were hand feeding him, and giving him lots of nutritional supplements, in addition to his formula. He constantly bounced between 6 and 7 ounces.
The mother tore his tail open from her vigorous licking and it got infected. Up to that point Hart was in with the litter, except for feeding times. After that, it was best to keep him separate, so we bought a big plastic container and fixed an "incubator" of sorts for him.
Hart was a fighter. He had a personality. He would crawl around and make his donkey "hee-haw". He liked to curl up with his plush toys. I would put his brother, Cowboy, in with him for supervised visits. They liked to curl up together. Hart's weight never dropped below 6 ounces, but he didn't gain, either.
One day I was taking a photo of him with a spoon beside him, to show how small he was. He picked up the spoon like a little weight lifter
We put a lot of time, effort, money and sleepless nights into little Hart, but he just didn't make it. He only lived 21 days. He took a big piece of our hearts with him. He was a sweet soul. We don't regret anything we did for him. He was loved and wanted every minute of his short life.
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