We have a litter of 4 labrador pups. Three of them have started walking this week but the fourth one thinks he has to swim the breaststroke - no sign of him trying to stand at 29 days. Any comments very welcome.

Sorry to hear about this. :(
Swimmer Journal Article
Swimmer Puppies provides some good information on this.
best wishes.

You need to take him to the vet. He's called a swimmer. You can do exercises with him which will strengthen the relevent structures, the sooner you start, the better.he'll probably be fine
Good luck
Jane

I had one in a litter. My vet gave me these exercises to do and he turned out fine. Sit on a chair, with legs together. Lay pup on his back on your legs, with pups head facing outward. Gentle pull pups legs over his head pulling GENTLY and keep extending the legs. Secondly, sit on chait again, open legs slightly and place pup, legs dangling down between thighs.Close thighs firmly to hold pup in place. Reach under your legs and pull front legs with your fingers, like milking a cow. Lastly, make a sling like structure, and cut four holes in for pups legs. Place a leg in each hole , hold top of sling, and "walk" pup across room with his legs JUST touching the ground. hth

Philippa. Thanks for your advice. You say "pull pup's legs over his head". Do you mean the front or rear legs?

I had a litter where the rest were walking at 4 weeks and one just walked with his front legs and he moved his back legs a bit trying to stand on them, just before he turned 5 weeks he was running around like the rest. I would get it checked out incase the pup is a swimmer. Hope everything is o.k.

Hi tingle, sorry that wasnt very clear was it, the front legs. Stretch them up above his head, like you would do if you were putting your arms up. It is a gentle pulling upwards motion. When you do a between the thighs exercise, exert a certain amount of pressure with your thighs. Not only does this keep the pup in place, but helps to push the rib cage into the right position. Is his sternum(breast bone) very flat?

Philippa, yes his sternum seems very flat. My wife took him to the vet this morning and he's put a bandage round his chest in a figure 8 to try and get his front legs in position and another bandage round the lower part of his rear legs so that he can't splay them wide apart. He says to keep the bandages on for a week. The problem now is that since he came back from the vet's he doesn't want to feed.
If he hasn't fed before bedtime, I'll take the bandage off. The immediate danger is that he will get dehydrated if he doesn't feed!

syringe some puppy porridge or something in-you need to get him up and going so id try to leave the bandages on as long as suggested, no good having a fatty that cant get around, ---id imagine keeping him a touch light at the minute wouldnt do him any harm, -good luck with him,

I have never had a swimmer but am fairly sure they need supplementing with liquid calcium. I have read it on this board, may have been Jo flatcoat who knows about it, but I definately remember swimmers being helped to regain normality with some easily obtained supplement.

Thanks to everybody for their advice. I'm afraid we couldn't get him to take in any liquids, not from mum, not bottle, not syringe. He was struggling, protesting, panting, obviously very stressed after being in the strait jacket all day. With the bandages on he could hardly move. Mum was also very upset at the strange noises her pup was making. We were very concerned that he was becoming dehydrated after taking in virtually nothing for 14 hours so we took the bandages off and put him back with his brothers and sister and mum. After 5 minutes he swam over to mum and started feeding. He's happy again, wags his tail and plays. The vet has ruled out any infection.
We try to lay him on his side when he's asleep, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. We've started the exercises you suggested. We'll try him with the bandages on again later.
We've never had a swimmer before - this is our second litter. From your experience is there any possibility this swimmer will eventually stand without putting him through the torture of the bandages?

Yes tingle, there is every chance IF you keep going with the exercises. I have never heard of bandages before, and the idea of binding the back legs together sounds awful, how is he supposed to crawl? If he were my pup I wouldnt use them, but thats jmho. The pup I had went on to walk normally and even had one or two wins at shows, so dont give up, keep massaging.

From what I read in a book they can be treated by fastening their hind legs together with bandages to bring the legs to right angles with thier body so puppy can support weight on them. Some may recover while some may not. Maybe just bandage the pup when the pup is not feeding. It also said not able to stand by 4 to six weeks, so maybe and hopefully by 6 weeks for sure your little one will be standing. I looked back in my notes my pup was almost 6 weeks before he was running around not 5 like I think I said before and I never put bandages on him or anything, I just placed his legs together alot through the day and helped him stand, don't know if that had any benefit or not. Hope your little one is soon running around. :)

any news? hows the pup doing?

jay

It's now 6 days since we started the exercises and getting him to sleep on his side with his legs parallel to his body.
With help he can push himself up and stand, supporting his weight. If you stop his legs sliding out sideways, he can do it or if he's in a corner he can push up with his back legs and stand if he's on a rough, rumpled jersey. He has progressed ... slowly, and as long as we see progression, we'll keep at it.
Anybody got any other ideas for exercises we can do? There's very little info in cyberspace about swimmers!

That's good news Tingle - lets hope the pup continues to make progress :)

Fiona
x x x

Tingle, dont give up with those exercises, he WILL get there if you keep going

Our vet's just suggested getting him to swim in the bath in warm water to build up his muscles. The immediate problem which occurs to me is drying him thoroughly afterwards!
Anybody got any experience with a 5-week-old puppy swimming in the bath? What kind of timescale are we looking at to see any benefit? Any drawbacks?

I was advised to do it with a pup of mine (Pug) who was not exactly a swimmer but had a flat chest due to lack of calcification of the ribcage (sternum). But I didn't dare as I was frightened she might catch a cold. I was doing the exercices and also gave her an homeopathic remedy called ostéocynesine which seemed to do the trick.
For swimmers, I know someone who had one (Pug breeder) and was advised to build a little "track" for the puppy out of wood. Just like a long corridor, whose width would be just so the pups' legs had to remain under himself. And long enough so that the pup could walk from onbe end to the other. It looks like a long wooden box, with no top and no ends, and you glue some carpet or so on the bottom for a good grip.
I hope it's clear ?

Thanks, silvieL; tomorrow we're off to the DIY shop to buy some boards. Sounds like a sensible suggestion because that's exactly what I do with my hands.

As nobody came back with any caveats, yesterday we put him in the bath with the water at 30ºC, first of all so that he could just stand on a rubber mat with the water taking most of his body weight, then run some more water in until he had to swim ... and he did!! Lots of praise and cuddles and that was enough for the first experience. Towel ... hair dryer ... another towel ... dryer ... until he fell asleep wrapped in the fourth towel.
Today we repeated and he was swimming happily for about a minute until he started protesting and we took him out.
He'll have a daily swim from now on until he's fit to enter the next canine Olympics!
I'll keep you posted on his progress.

Hi sorry to hear that you too, had/have litter problems. I was surfing and found that if you go to google.ca and then swimmer puppies there are quite a few sites that are referred. I read this one and it seems to tell us the cause, prevention and the cure.http://www.showdogsupersite.com/kenlclub/breedvet/swimmers.html

Hope this helps

Thanks, Bevs Labs, for the links. I've copied all the useful info into a Word doc for easy reference.
The swimmer is now up to 8 minutes continuous swimming in the bath. He can now walk although still unstable, but getting better. He tries to run but of course his brain is working quicker than his legs and he finishes up in an untidy heap with legs all over the place.
His chest is still flat. Will that fill out with time?