I do not wait for the bitch to start whelping, I keep a close watch on
her temperature by putting my hand on the abdomen of the bitch, her
temperature is 101.6 F mine 98.6 F, her temperature will start to drop
until she is cooler than me, she will have the pups within 48 hours.
I watch for the pups to move back then drop, her motions instead of
being firm will soften considerably as she cleans out her bowels in
preparation for whelping, I then make an inspired guess when I think she
will start to whelp, the object being to have the caesarean
approximately 1/2 to 1 day early so that I do not have to get my Vet out
of bed in the middle of the night.
As my Vet operates, he extracts the pups and hands them to me in their
bag, I take then out of the bag, clamp, tie, and cut the umbilical cord,
shake the fluid out of the pup, roughly and vigorously dry it to get it
breathing, I then hand the pup to Anne who dries the pup more carefully,
makes sure that the pup is OK and puts it in a small cardboard box on
top of a hot water bottle.
When we arrive home, we lay the bitch on her side, she is still affected
by the anesthetic and put all of the pups on to her teats, more often
than not the bitch does not have much milk but it is essential to leave
them on for about 1/2 hour to help bring down the milk.
We have a heated humidity crib which is oxygen enriched in which we
place the pups, the next step is to tube feed the pups with 2 ml of ½
strength puppy milk into which acidophilus powder has been added, 2 hours
later we again put the pups on to the bitch, after we remove them we
then again tube feed them as before.
Acidophilus is live bacteria, do not put into Microwave or hot water,
introduce into the puppy milk at blood temperature.
If the puppies are starting cry as if they have a
stomach ache, it could be that
the bad bacteria in their gut is starting to proliferate and poison
them, feed them as above, if the bitch is on anti-biotics, it is
essential that the good flora in the puppies gut is replenished with
acidophilus.
We do not leave the pups with the mother until she willingly washes
them, even then we watch her closely as they have a habit of trying to
remove what is left of the umbilical cord.
Our whelping box is 30 inches square and has a trampoline on top of the
pig rail that deflects if the bitch should lie on a pup allowing the pup
to squeal for attention, it is vital that the pups do not get chilled,
puppies are usually at floor level which is the coldest part of a room.
