HELP! WHAT DO I DO WITH A LITTER OF NEW BORN PUPPIES

Dear Jubilee,

We found a litter of puppies that someone abandoned in the rain at a landfill yesterday.  We have no idea how old they are: their eyes are not opened and they crawl and halfstand to get around. They huddle together and want to suck on everything. Can you tell us how old they are, when their eyes normally open, and what we need to do to help them survive?

Fed Up in New York.

Dear Fed Up,

Puppies normally open their eyes between 14 and 21 days (I think of it as around three weeks of age); that is also when their ears open. You will see some eyes start to open around 14 or 15 days, and gradually get more open until they are completely open around three weeks. Until then, they have a sense of smell, a sense of touch, and a sense of heat.  You have learned about their sense of heat from their huddling. As you progress with them, you will learn about their sense of smell: whenever you walk into the room, they will wake up and move to the part of the box they associate with you and with food.

What do you need to do to help them survive? Keep them warm, keep them fed, keep them hydrated, and help them relieve themselves. 

They still huddle together for warmth: newborn puppies have no internal thermostat, so to speak, and must be kept in a warm place (we keep ours in a whelping box with temperature of 93 degrees and the room is kept at about 85 degrees).

You can get puppy formula at places like Pet Smart (and even some supermarkets) and they can be bottle fed. You can use a baby bottle with a preemie nipple (but you need to make the nipple holes wider so the milk comes out easier). 

Puppies should gain weight every day. If any of the puppies have difficulty gaining weight, you can ask a vet to show you how to tube feed them (we had to do this with an entire litter once when the mother could not support them).

Puppies can become dehydrated quickly. Keep an eye on this: when you pull up a piece of skin, it should spring right back to its shape. If it stays pinched together a bit, they are dehydrated. Again, a vet can show you how to hydrate them with ringers fluid and a needle (we did this too: it is not as bad as it sounds).

Most importantly, these very young puppies depend on their mother to stimulate elimination. Pee is easy: just touch their opening with a Kleenex, and they should release their pee. Poop is a bit more difficult: we used baby wipes, and simulated the motion of a mother's tongue licking and licking and licking until puppy started to grunt and push.  Then we let the poop fall into the wipe and disposed of it.

As for bathing: I have bathed them at a day old. Remember that their mother is washing them all the time, licking them all over. After bathing, I put each puppy in a towel (so there are no drafts) and hold it against me (for warmth), and rub it gently until it is completely dry. They should dry quickly; their fur/hair should be soft and shiny and dry to your touch.

Try to keep them in a box with enough room to practice walking. I use a piece of indoor/outdoor carpet (Loew's and Home Depot sell it off a roll -- it is two feet wide and as long as you want it. This carpet washes quickly when hung over a fence and dries pretty quickly in the sun. I use three pieces: one in the box, one drying, and one ready to put in the box). The carpeting gives them better traction to get up on their legs. If you can get a wooden box, you can use a heating pad under one spot of the carpet (or use dog mats) so they have a warm spot to gravitate to if they feel cold. You can also use a light bulb to heat that spot from the top. A box ensures that there are no drafts at their level.

To help them get used to being handled by people: Put a "collar" of rick rack around each dog’s puppies neck (use the kind that stretches and replace it if it becomes too tight).  Then, when you want that puppy to come to you or move to a different place, gently tug on the rick rack, getting the puppy used to having a collar on and to responding to the collar. This will help a lot as it grows up and has to wear a collar and has to go out on a leash. When it is time to leash train them (we start at seven weeks), just add a longer string (or use a lightweight collar and lead) and follow the puppy wherever it goes. Since they love to be with you, you can start getting them to follow you without tugging them, and before you know it, they will be walking on a loose lead!

Tips on helping them get stronger now:
You might want to give them a probiotic. Wysong has one with a pump for puppies, called Pet Innoculant. It was developed to help puppies overcome the stress of birth.   These puppies have had additional stress and the probiotic might help strengthen their immune systems. To find out more about Wysong, go to www.wysong.net. They are very responsive if you call them and tell them what you need.

There is also a vet online, Dr Wendall Belfield, who sells a liquid vitamin C (Mega-C Drops) and a liquid B Complex (BetaPlex). Both of these are great to help young puppies get them off to a good start. His web site is http://www.belfield.com/products.html.

Weaning:
You can start weaning them to food when they are four weeks old. We feed a raw diet so we wean puppies to it. We start with plain yoghurt. Gradually, we add baby oatmeal or rice cereal. Then we add finely ground raw meat. By six weeks of age, they are eating what the adults eat. Keep supplementing with bottle feedings until they are eating good helpings of a complete food (soaked to soften) four times a day. Start tapering off the amount of formula as soon as they are eating the yoghurt and oatmeal.

Socializing:
From the time their eyes and ears open, puppies need to continually see and hear many different things. Keep them in a place in your home where there is a lot of activity of people coming in and out and lots of noises (we use our kitchen). Start taking them outdoors when they are about five weeks old, and let them play with balls, walk on many different surfaces, and more. We even use a toddler’s tunnel for them to chase each other through.

One more thing: please keep these puppies together as long as possible. They do not have a mother to teach them about being a dog, but they do have each other. Once they get teeth and are eating, they need to learn things from each other, things like teeth hurt, like being part of a pack (because even in a human family, they will be part of a pack), and more. Between four and seven weeks, they really need each other's company plus your loving care. At seven weeks, they will be ready to bond with someone else, and will be ready for a family.

Also, they can be neutered as early as eight weeks. Many shelters are doing this with young puppies to make sure that something like the tragedy that you have witnessed does not happen again. You might want to require that anyone who adopts one of these puppies neuter them immediately if possible.

Good luck. There is no greater feeling in the world than to look at a litter of six or eight week old puppies scurrying around your kitchen and knowing that you saved their lives!

Jubilee