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07-01-2008, 07:42 PM | #1 |
YT 500 Club Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Caldwell Idaho
Posts: 956
| Questions about puppies... please answer Hi all, well as you know I have been trying to deal with all this stuff going on with my Bridget and her puppies. Today they were off of mom for quite a while due to her hypocalcimia. I tried to bottle feed, and that didnt go so well. I found a momma dog that has milk and the pups fed off of her. However they seem to be whining more than usual and yawning more, like a lot more, so I was worried that maybe they are having a hard time breathing. Is this normal, am I just seeing things I did not notice before? What are signs I should look for that my babies are in distress? Is there anything I can do for them to help them? I just never had a group so little, I am letting them with mom for a few minutes to see if this helps, just a few ( as in I have the timer set for 5) I just do not want to lose them... Please any advice would be great.
__________________ Marlee Bridget's Mommy Bridget 's Romeo |
Welcome Guest! | |
07-01-2008, 09:50 PM | #2 |
Dainty Dawgs Donating Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Reno
Posts: 784
| I can't give you any real advice I'm sorry, I just wanted to wish you the best of luck with your puppies and give this thread a push to see if there is anyone out there who can help you! |
07-01-2008, 09:58 PM | #3 |
Donating Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Mississippi
Posts: 2,564
| Sorry, but I've never dealt with something like this before. If the babies are warm, having daily weight gains and their gums are pink are the things I would look out for. Seems like they would be holding their mouths open if they had breathing trouble. Also, if the supplement was too rich, it could affect them or if they aspirated some of it. I know this isn't much help but if you feel they are in distress, you should call the vet now and discuss this with them at least. Hopefully there's an after hours vet near you. |
07-01-2008, 10:08 PM | #4 |
YT 3000 Club Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: HOT, HOT, HOT AZ
Posts: 3,150
| The milk from the new dog may not be compatible with the puppies tummies. Have they been pooing and peeing? Maybe they need burping. I have never used a surrigate mom, I have only tube fed litters. If they are crying alot, then something is usually wrong. |
07-01-2008, 10:18 PM | #5 | |
Donating YT 1000 Club Member | Quote:
and maybe use a fan in their room..they have to be warm to eat. but a heating pad can warm them.. just make sure their is air movement in the room...yawning is a sign of lack of oxygen.. try blowing into the nostrils gently.. i dont know.. but i hope they are ok...
__________________ Purchasing from backyard breeders, pet shops, and puppymills perpetuates the suffering of other dogs. | |
07-01-2008, 10:42 PM | #6 |
Donating YT 1000 Club Member | Usually, if a litter comes early, the mother's milk has not come down. It can take two to three days before full production occurs. And this is the period where you must be the most vigilant. Your biggest worry is dehydration. Ask your vet to teach you how to rehydrate by injecting your puppy subcutaneously over the shoulders. Ask your vet to provide three 5-cc syringes with size 22 needles, filled with lactated Ringer’s solution. Ask also for a fifty percent dextrose/water solution in a syringe. (This must be refrigerated.) In the best case, the preemie will be able to suckle. If it is not strong enough, you must tube feed your pup. I will discuss this process later.) Usually, the mother will have some milk -- and coloestrum. It is very important that the pup receives this early nursing, both to transfer immunities and to stimulate further production. If the bitch has had a C-section, she usually will not want to have puppies on her. I lay her down on her side (sometimes having to keep her down) and work with the puppies until each has had the initial nursing. With a preemie, you need to support the puppy and work the nipple into its mouth until it has created a vacuum and is attached. I weigh the puppy after each nursing and start a chart to keep track of gain and loss to the tenth of an ounce. I then put the pup down on the pad and give it a good going-over. If the mother has no interest in cleaning the puppy, I start mimicking the procedure, using a cotton ball dampened with warm water. Usually this will elicit peeing and a bowel movement. I keep the pup on the pad. A preemie needs to suckle frequently because its stomach is small, and it isn’t strong enough to stay attached for long period of time. Adding to supplies that you need from your vet, you must have six cans of Esplilac available and 10-cc syringes with no needles. Fill one of the syringes and have it on hand each time you try to suckle the pup. If the puppy is weak and will not suckle, put two drops of the dextrose solution on its tongue as you hold it, head elevated, in your hand. Put three drops of Espilac, one drop at a time, on the pup’s tongue. Wait for the pup to swallow after each drop. This will moisten the inside of its mouth and give it energy to nurse. Take a nipple and express a few drops of milk on the tip, supporting the puppy against the mother. If you cannot get the pup going and it seems tired, start to feed it the Esplilac very slowly, a drop at a time, until you are able to get two ccs down. This procedure needs to be repeated every two hours. You start the same way each time, always trying to get the pup to suckle first. After the feeding, whether hand feeding or a natural suckle, weigh your pup and keep a very accurate account of gain and loss. Most puppies lose a few tenths of an ounce the first few days. Although the mother has milk, the heavy supply doesn’t usually start for two or three days. Weight gain is different with each pup. A good rule of thumb is that a pup should double its birth weight at two weeks. Most preemies, however, don’t start to gain until four or five days after birth. Even then, the process is very slow, and you will find yourself getting up several times a night for a week to ten days to make sure that the puppy is nursing and helping it along if it is not. Dehydration Check the inside of your puppy’s mouth with your little finger. It should not be sticky. The tongue should be bright pink, and the pup should attempt to nurse on your finger. If the mouth does seem sticky, your pup is dehydrated. (Another indicator is if. when you pinch folds of skin, they remained formed briefly.) If you detect dehydration, take the lactated ringers solution and inject 2 1/2 ccs under the skin above the shoulder blades on the back. (It is easier to do with two people.) A large bubble of the solution will appear under the skin at the base of the neck. Keep the pup in your hands, away from a licking mother, until the bubble begins to absorb. If your puppy is very dehydrated, the bubble will be gone in short order. Otherwise, it should be absorbed in five to six minutes. You will sense a difference in the pup immediately. You can rehydrate two times a day. Check with your vet if you need to do the procedure more frequently. Preemie
__________________ Purchasing from backyard breeders, pet shops, and puppymills perpetuates the suffering of other dogs. |
07-01-2008, 10:44 PM | #7 |
Donating YT 1000 Club Member | Dehydration Check the inside of your puppy’s mouth with your little finger. It should not be sticky. The tongue should be bright pink, and the pup should attempt to nurse on your finger. If the mouth does seem sticky, your pup is dehydrated. (Another indicator is if. when you pinch folds of skin, they remained formed briefly.) If you detect dehydration, take the lactated ringers solution and inject 2 1/2 ccs under the skin above the shoulder blades on the back. (It is easier to do with two people.) A large bubble of the solution will appear under the skin at the base of the neck. Keep the pup in your hands, away from a licking mother, until the bubble begins to absorb. If your puppy is very dehydrated, the bubble will be gone in short order. Otherwise, it should be absorbed in five to six minutes. You will sense a difference in the pup immediately. You can rehydrate two times a day. Check with your vet if you need to do the procedure more frequently. Preemie Care If the mother seems disinterested in cleaning up after her pup, you must assume the role and, after each feeding, stimulate the pup with a moistened cotton ball. Check the anus and make sure that there is no buildup of fecal matter. If there is, dissolve it with warm water and the moistened cotton ball. If the area becomes red, put a small amount of Vaseline on the affected spot. Keep the nose and muzzle free of dried formula or milk. The more you work with your puppy, the more attuned you will become to picking up signs of trouble. Watch the coat; it should be shiny. Healthy puppies are round and firm. Crying indicates that a puppy is cold, hungry, or in pain. The puppy needs to become active and move about the whelping box. The umbilicus should be dried and separated from the puppy by the third or fourth day. The eyes should open between ten and fourteen days. The mother will clean the eyes, but watch for crusting and, if you find a buildup, dissolve it with a cotton ball saturated with warm water. If the puppy becomes chilled because of neglect, room temperature, or separation from its siblings, rewarm it gradually. Do not place the puppy on a heating pad. This causes dilation of blood vessels and will actually increase heat loss. Place the pup under your shirt, next to your skin. If its temperature is below 94 degrees F, warming can take as long as two or three hours. Never feed formula to a cold puppy or allow it to nurse. If a puppy is chilled, its stomach and intestines stop working, and feeding will cause it to bloat and vomit. A cold puppy can, however, accommodate a 5-10 percent solution of warmed glucose and water. Give 1/2 cc every hour and warm slowly. Tube Feeding If your puppy is too weak to suckle -- if it cannot form a sufficient vacuum on a nipple -- you will need to feed it by tube. I use tube feeding as a last resort because, once you start tubing, it is usually hard to persuade the pup to suckle, and you find yourself on call every three to four hours for an indefinite period of time. But tube feeding has several advantages. It takes a short period of time to feed your pup (vs. bottle feeding), and, since no air is swallowed, no burping is required. It also ensures that the proper amount of formula is administered to the pup. Tube feeding is not difficult to master. It requires a soft rubber catheter (size 8-10 French, available from your vet or in many of the animal catalogs -- e.g. Revival) and a 10- or 20-cc plastic or glass syringe. Have your scale available for monitoring the weight.
__________________ Purchasing from backyard breeders, pet shops, and puppymills perpetuates the suffering of other dogs. |
07-01-2008, 10:45 PM | #8 |
Donating YT 1000 Club Member | highwood norwich preemies Run your thumb and index finger down your pup’s sides. The stomach is located at the level of its last rib. Take the feeding end of the tube and measure from that rib to the corner of the mouth. Mark the measured distance. That is the amount of tubing that you will insert into the pup. Draw the warmed formula up the tube and into the syringe. You must then moisten the outside of the tube with formula. Open the pup’s mouth and start gently to insert the tube, following the roof of the mouth down into the throat. Keep the tube moving as the puppy swallows it. The tube should be too large to enter the windpipe, but move carefully and, if you meet too much resistance, start again. The puppy should swallow the tube to approximately your mark (squirming all the while). Slowly inject the formula into the puppy’s stomach. If you have to continue tubing past two weeks, the windpipe of many puppies will be large enough to accommodate the tube -- and aspiration of formula can lead to pneumonia. Change to a larger tube or introduce the bottle. The best outcome, of course, is to get the mother to accept the pup and to have it nurse. Minor Surgeries Wait to do tails and dew claws until the puppy has stabilized. It is not a good idea to do any surgery on a preemie no matter how much it has gained or how normal it seems to you. Any stress on a preemie can knock it back into a danger zone where it will not suckle. You should wait until it is old enough to be anaesthetized (five or six months) and have the surgery performed then. It is more traumatic for the puppy and the healing process takes longer, but the puppy is older and established
__________________ Purchasing from backyard breeders, pet shops, and puppymills perpetuates the suffering of other dogs. |
07-02-2008, 12:23 AM | #9 |
YT 500 Club Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Caldwell Idaho
Posts: 956
| I do not believe these guys were early, Tm was just seriously under developed. Mom had great supply of milk until the hypocalcimia. I am thinking perhaps they were to woarm. I had several blankets over a heating pad and then their boc, and then I covered the top with a towel to keep out the draft. I made her go pee, and then changed the placement of the box so only the smallest edge gets the heat from the pad. I also changed the towels so they had more air fow. Please keep the pryers comming I do not want to lose anyomre. I think I will go ahead and do the bottle feeding they are sucking good, and the otehr moms do not have much milk. Perhaps it was just to diffrent. Still would like to know, is there anyone close that had hand raised puppies beofre I live in Caldwell Idaho, can travel a bit to find help!!! thanks much
__________________ Marlee Bridget's Mommy Bridget 's Romeo |
07-02-2008, 07:31 AM | #10 |
YT 1000 Club Member Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Scott City, Missouri
Posts: 1,879
| If they are crying more and yawning there is a problem. A content puppy does not make any noise (except sometimes when they sleep). The yawning probably is lack of oxygen. I think you did the right thing by giving them a little more air flow.. you may have had it too hot. Hopefully they all haven't aspirated on the milk. You can do the "downward swing" to them to hopefully get the fluid out of their lungs. Just hold on tight to them. Wishing you all the best. Keep us posted on their progress.
__________________ Joanne Gurley's Yorkies |
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