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Originally Posted by yorkielady06  I just went through this with a pup!! He is now 21 weeks and doing well. I had to FORCE and I mean force feed this guy. I put the canned food in his mouth and held it closed with his head tipped up and with my other hand gently rubbed his neck. I fed him this way every 4 hours around the clock for 4 weeks, then every 6 hours for 3 weeks and finally to every 8 hours. It was a struggle and you actually feel awful for forcing them to eat but it has to be done. Unless of course the puppy is vomiting or otherwise sick.
How large is his head in comparison to his body?
My vet says that there is correlation with the smaller bodies and larger heads in percentile and them having crashing blood sugar wise. When their sugar is lower they do not want to eat. They get dehydrated and the vicious cycle begins and many lose these babies in the middle of the night/This evens out eventually if you can keep enough calories in them.
I mixed his AD with nutracal for the first 4 weeks. In the beginning he felt so crappy he just laid there. Within a week he started fighting me more and more. The next few weeks we fed just the AD forcefully still. He would back up and scream, pretend to swallow and spit it out. But he had spunk and was playing more and more. After that we then we tried wellness core canned (which he hated) I bought a can of every kind you could imagine just to get him to eat. He refused them all so eventually he ended eating the Instinct raw on his own with lots of encouragement. His body has finally caught up to his head size and he is eating the raw without any problems. I have never fed raw before but a breeder that has been breeding chihuahuas for over 20 years had me try that and she has had this problem quite a bit with her Chis.
When it all began I had a CMP done and liver panel and it showed high ALT and BUN and Creatine but he had not been eating well or drinking when I rushed him there that day. So after all these weeks I did have his bile acid test done before he just went to his new pet home and it came back within normal range. |
His head is normal size for the rest of his body.He is just small all over!! And he does scream when I feed him. He screams when we try and do just about anything. But not always. With the exception of giving him water. He likes water, sometimes, cold water. And cold milk. And you're right, it hurts to hear him scream. You want to just quit doing whatever it is that is making him scream!! Even tho you know its helping him, you still want to just hold him and love him. He has
not thrown up nor has he had diarehia. (Can't spell it). He seems to be best in the morning and throughout the day. The nightime is awful. But I think it's mainly because we keep waking him up to give him stuff!! He wants to SLEEP!!!! If I could find RAW food, I would. I just hate to feed him RAW people food. But if it would help him, heck I'd feed him anything.
Thank you for your imput and your suggesions. They mean a lot to me. All of you YTers!!!
Suz