Oh Yeah, You Blend

Every breeder has what they call “the litter from hell” at some point (hopefully only one….)…

Littlest puppy Popcorn was maintaining the weight she was at after her initial loss (150 grams), but not gaining anything (Zhora’s milk is good because all the other puppies are gaining well). So I decided to pull out all the stops. I am worried about her, I won’t lie, but she’s not going anywhere without a fight so…I am tube feeding her every 3-4 hours (she is nursing well, but I think she’s burning most of the calories she’s getting just by nursing), I am giving her warmed subcutaneous fluids any time I think she’s a little dehydrated (dehydration can kill a neonatal puppy fast), I am giving her Nutri Drops. I got up to feed her overnight too (I am getting pretty good at tube feeding, so that’s a plus). She’s up to 163 grams and hasn’t lost anything between her feeding overnight and this morning, I am calling that a small victory. She doesn’t like the tube feeding but it gets the formula where it needs to be without her having to expend any energy eating it. She is nice and warm (cold puppies can’t digest) and quite spunky and active.

In addition, poor Zhora was vomiting and had diarrhea. She doesn’t have a fever at least. I am used to a bit of diarrhea after whelping, but the vomiting was making me nervous. Spoke to the awesome Dr Gray again this morning and started Zofran (which is safe for nursing moms) for the nausea/vomiting and metronidazole, which is not normally recommended for nursing dogs but the diarrhea is bad. We will use as little as possible for as short a time as possible to get the diarrhea under control. I cooked her some chicken and rice, and she ate a bowl of it. I also got her some calcium citrate to give in addition to the other calcium, because it can be absorbed without food. It’s not impossible that she has retained a bit of placenta, but Dr Gray thinks it’s unlikely.

Sleep is for the weak.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 at 9:37 AM and is filed under breeding, C litter, dogs, puppies, vallhunds, Zhora. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.