My dog had her puppies

[Heathermommytobe]

Last Sunday night my dog had her puppies and they all seem to be very healthy except one little girl she is very small in figure but her belly is very bloated. I was wondering if anyone might know what this could be please any advice would be very helpful.

[Ghilly]

It would be a good idea right now to feed your momdog a very high quality food, since she's not just eating to feed herself, she's eating to produce enough milk to feed her entire litter.

I'm sorry about the puppy you lost.  It sounds to me like the intestine ended in a blind sac and didn't open out to the rectum like it normally would.  There would have been no saving this puppy without a LOT of very expensive surgery, so it's a blessing that it is no longer suffering.

Watch the puppies as they sleep.  If they are normal puppies, they will twitch and jerk as they sleep.  This is their central nervous systems "kicking in".  If they are quiet and still when they sleep, that's reason to keep a close eye on them.

Make sure you keep the room where they are very warm.  If a puppy gets cold, its digestive system starts to shut down, and feeding it could kill it at that point.  If a puppy gets pushed off away from the litter and you find it cold, DON'T attempt to feed it until you warn it up.  The best way to do this is to stick it down inside your shirt.  If you can't do this, take a heating pad and wrap it in half a towel.  Leave the other half of the towel without the heating pad in it, this way as the puppy starts to warm up, if he wants to move away from the heat, he can.  A heat lamp is also a good idea.

Let me back up a little for just a moment.  The ideal setup would be to have a whelping box with a rail around the inside of it made from 2 X 4s, nailed to the inside of the box about six inches off the floor of the box.  This is called a "pig rail" and its function is to give the mother a "bumper" so that she can't lay right up against the wall of the whelping box and accidentally crush a puppy between her and the box.  Some dogs are excellent mothers and always seem to know exactly where all their puppies are.  Others, especially first time mothers, are clumsy and lay on their puppies, step on them, you name it, and it's a miracle that any of their puppies survive sometimes.

Around the outside of the whelping box you should have a fence of some sort set up.  this enables the mother to get out of the box for short periods of time for a break from the puppies, but it will keep other pets and children out of the whelping box until the puppies are older and the mother is more comfortable with her position as a new mother.  The fence also doubles as an excellent place to clip a heat lamp so that the box can be kept warm enough for the puppies.  

Make sure the mother is giving equal time to all the puppies.  Sometimes, in large litters, the smaller puppies will get pushed out of the way by their larger littermates and this could be deadly for them.  Not only will they end up cold and unable to eat, they get bullied away from the nipples and often suffer malnutrition because even though it appears as though they are eating, they're not eating for a long enough period of time to get what they need.  If a puppy is unfortunate enough to get pushed away, warm it up, and before you attempt to feed it, give it a mixture of sugar water first.  Take 1 cup of water and bring it to a boil.  While it's boiling hot, stir in one cup of sugar.  Once the sugar has completely dissolved, cool it until it feels slightly warm on the inside of your wrist and give the puppy about 20 to 30 cc of it, depending on the size of the puppy.  This will stabilize the puppy's sugar and prevent hypoglycemia, which can lead to seizures in puppies.  After you have given it the sugar water it should pick up almost immediately, and at that point, as long as it is as warm as the other puppies, you can make sure it eats.  

It would be a good idea to ask your vet to show you how to tube feed the puppies.  It's VERY easy to do, and it makes feeding them by hand SO much easier than using a bottle.  With tube feeding, you can give them the exact amount you need and you know they got all of it, instead of losing a few ccs that inevitably get dribbled down the puppy's chin.  

Handle the puppies a LOT.  There is no such thing as too much socialization, and the more you handle the puppies, the friendlier and more people-oriented they will be, and, hence, easier to find homes for.  Above all, DON'T be in a hurry to send them out into the world.  Puppies are a horrible lot of work, and by the fourth week they will be starting to eat on their own and run around and you'll be busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest just trying to keep up with them.  But they still have things to learn from their mother and their littermates; things that make them MUCH better pets for having learned them.  One of the most important of these, if not THE most important thing, is bite inhibition.  A puppy who has not learned bite inhibition from its mother and littermates is a very mouthy puppy with its new owner, the new owner's kids, furniture, shoes, etc.  It's no fun being bitten constantly by those little needle teeth and, if the puppy is a dominant personality, it can be difficult to break them of it.  Often the biting gets so bad the puppy ends up being rehomed, and this is something that you don't want.  So be prepared to keep them a full eight weeks.  You can find them homes, find a way to mark who belongs to who (different color nail polish on one toenail works great!), but just don't let them go to those homes until the end of the eighth week.  Believe me, your new "dog-in-laws" will love you for it.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to either post them or PM me with them and I will do my best to answer them for you!  Have fun with the puppers!

Ghilly

[Jaybay]

Oh that poor puppy.  Something was seriously wrong and I'm glad she is no longer suffering.  If the other pups appear to be eating and elimating normally, they should be OK.  However, I have to recommend that you get a veterinarian's advice.  Both the mom and the pups should be examined post-partum anyway.  Don't forget to make certain the mom has a high quality food and vitamin supplements.  Nursing is very hard work (along with the births) and she's going to need a whole lot of calories and top notch nutrition.  Phone calls are free, and since you sound new to the puppy experience, it will be worth it to get some professional advice even if it's over the telephone.

[Heathermommytobe]

Thank you for your advice after i asked this question i seen that the puppy had not gone to the bathroom i guess since it was born she was the runt of the litter and when the mommy licked her to try and get her to potty when she did that something start showing out of her rear end it seemed to be the the thing you go poop out of it was very blood and she just cried when her mom tried to help her sorry this is so long well we lost her today. I believe the rest of the puppies are doing fine they don't cry like she did and they are eating and are not bloating up. Do you think that the rest will be ok as long as there are no signs as the other puppy.

[Jaybay]

I'm afraid your pup needs a vet - like NOW.  I see you live in KC (I grew up in Mission!) so make sure they are all nice and warm.  You'll want about 85 degrees or the pups can't digest their food.  There was a tragic case here last year where a woman lost an entire litter of pups one by one simply because they were not kept warm enough.  If I remember correctly, they all eventually exhibited the same signs as your sick pup.

Call your vet now and at least get some advice over the phone.  If your vet is closed, they should have an outgoing messing telling you who to call in an emergency, and I consider this to be an emergency.