My puppies all developed diarrhea today and were not themselves at all.  Two trips to the vet, first with the one who had started to display the symptoms, then again with all five!  Where oh where did THIS come from?  I am sooo careful!  I only walk my adult dogs at the garden center where it is all paved and no other dogs go!  When we get home I carry them individually to the sink and wash their feet and tummies.  I leave my shoes outdoors.  I sterilise my hands all the time and wash them the minute I get home from somewhere.  I keep the puppy pen scrupulously clean, I leave no poops around on the lawn.  We do not have contact with other dogs.  But there you are...  The vet prescribed an antibiotic (a type of Flagyl), and already the first dose seems to have really helped.  Instead of all asleep and quiet, they are now making their usual commotion (thank heavens!).  Oh the fear....  "Why do I do this to myself...?"  The ONLY thing that counts right this minute is that they should be OK!!!  Always something to worry about!

In addition, I have discovered that these beautiful puppies have bites which are not looking too good.  This is the first litter from these two dogs of mine, and although they each have perfect bites (otherwise they would not have been qualified for breeding), it seems there may be some recessive genes lurking somewhere which are going to produce undershot bites.  Rats!

Oh no. Never had puppies but the stress of children sounds similar, I ask myself why I thought it was a good idea daily.

Might their bites improve later, with the next set of teeth? (in clueless, just wondering). That sort of thing isn't usually screened for, is it? Just bad luck if it happens to you.

Hope your pups continue to improve and you get a rest from the stress.

If it was enteritis that can be airborne.........so can parvo
.

How awful for you, on the good side puppies usually bounce back very quickly from tummy upsets, I did find with my last litter that had a lot of garden time they picked up the runs and we put it down to bird poo, we have quite a few woodpigeons around.  Do you think the bites will come right, they might in a few weeks, I hold my hands up to breeding from a bitch with an overshot mouth, lovely in every other way and health tested well, she never produced a bad bite. We felt that as an incorrect bite does not affect her life other than showing she was fully worth of breeding from and she had some stunning puppies, none were bred from so we never knew if it would have showed further down the generations.

Hoping puppies are getting better.

Oh no, don't blame yourself though Nimue - I think these things are just impossible to prevent sometimes, no matter the lengths we go to.

What AB did your vet prescribe?  Was it metronidazole?  I think you said mum did runny poops in the pen - it might be her that gave it to her puppies.  And sometimes the mum can harbour bugs which are usually no problem but during pregnancy when the bitch's immune system is slightly suppressed, they can come out. 

With the bites, I agree with the idea they might yet improve as the pups grow, right?  I mean, different parts of their bodies grow at different paces?  But you will know your breed better than us!

Never rule out the benefit of natural yogurt when it comes to uncomplicated tummy upsets/bugs and if they are on antibiotics, giving them the probiotic yogurt is, can only help - if you can source goats yogurt, so much the better.   "bird poo".   YES!    We had a 10 week buy in puppy years ago who went down with a shocking enteritis bug shortly after coming to us and he'd really only been out back (where there was bird pooh around) although we did have our first hound who was going out, and coming back in with ???    Actually had it not been around at the time, I'd have said he had Parvo.   He was too sick to leave with us all for Canada and had to go back to his breeder for 4 months before he was really strong enough to come out to us.    I would say that puppy had NOT been exposed to anything prior to coming to us (other than the possibility of the bird droppings) and I always wondered whether this meant his immune system was wide open to go down with anything around once exposed to the outside world.

As for bites, the lower jaw goes on growing for longer than the upper jaw, so if you see edge to edge in a young dog, there's always the chance the bite will go once mature.   Are ALL the puppies the same - that I suggest is, unusual.   Much as in general we had good bites in our line, I did risk using a dog out in Canada who was edge to edge (because he had other qualities I wanted), which is accepted over there.   Not so in the UK where my breed has to have a good scissor bite.  We had 9 puppies from that mating and boy was I checking bites.   Sods Law, having kept 2 bitches and a male (they were that good) the male was undershot by the time he came out of quarantine (this was pre Pet Passport) on coming to the UK when we returned.  Actually his jaw was 'right' - but they tended to feed soaked food, in stacked bowls as they went round the kennel block so it was pushed down to the point they had to 'graunch' the food to get it up (I noticed this on one visit and remonstrated with them) and the result, which may have been going to happen, or not, was the top row was slightly angled back.   They were still pups when they went into quarantine and still growing.    All you can do is try not to keep looking, and pray!!!

Many thanks for your comments and for thinking of us.  The puppies are much better today.  I am still stressing out over it all (as I told you once, Rabid!), because I cannot bear it if my puppies are not 100% healthy.  They were all sound asleep just now for what seemed like ages, and I was already climbing the walls!  But they woke up, and are being noisy, hungry and enjoying something new in the way of occuptions, this time a new, round thing to balance on, a wiggle thing (wooden platform on a ball).  The medication (yes, it WAS metro...something, here known as Flagyl) has definitely helped.  No, it wasn't that Mum was affected and passed it on to the pups.  Strangely my 7 adult dogs have been just fine!  Mum pooped in the pen during the night, true, but it wasn't diarrhea!

The Coton de Tuléar tends to have bite problems, but thankfully basically no other issues. Patella becomes ever more rare, since we have to check for it before we can get breeding accreditation.  I had a female who had 5 litters (lived to be over 16 and was a 6-time champion), and every litter (she never had less than 6 puppies per litter!  Average litter-size in the breed is 3 to 5.) had some pups in it with undershot bites, no matter what male she was bred to.  In the breed standard, a scissors bite and a reverse scissors bite are allowed as long as there is contact.  An edge to edge is also allowed.  But one of my present litter is going to have an undershot bite without contact, I can see that.  A beautiful female!

Mamabas, I'm on my way to the grocery store.  Shall look for goats yoghurt.

Take care not to chop and change their food and add too many things to it - might be best to stick to something they are all ok on usually until you know you've got the problem fixed.

Metronidazole/Flagyl (brand name) is effective against giardia but also against lots of other bacterial causes of runny bums.  It's what my oldie was just on, for her suspected giardia - we've now been 2 weeks (almost) since finishing high dose and 10 days of it, and all is still good - phew.  It is quite a strong med for tiny puppies though - it's not actually approved for use in dogs, and when vets use it, it's off-label, so I'm a bit surprised your vet used it as the first thing to try.  My old dog often gets mild pancreatitis coming off it, (yellow poops) and it also causes her to be incontinent (leaking at night) until she's been off it about a week.

What age will your puppies go to their new home and will that be affected now?  (Is it 8 weeks or do you keep longer?)

We are not allowed (breed club regulations) to give our puppies to their new homes until they are 10 weeks old (to the day).

Wishing them all a speedy recovery :)

Oh good, at least it hasn't interfered with that then, and hopefully they will all be ok by 10 weeks!

Perhaps your setup is too clean?  It's known now that children raised an an antiseptic, almost sterilised environment are far more susceptible to catching nasties than the ones who are allowed to play in the mud etc.  I know these are puppies, not children, but it could still be the case.

I once had to take a fish to the vet as our discus were fading and dying of some microbe or other. Very embarrassing turning up at the vet with a baggie with a fish in, but they needed metronidazole and the vet couldn't prescribe without seeing the patient. We took the illest one, which had already gone off its food (and thus couldn't be treated anyway) on the grounds that the vet trip would likely result in fatal shock (it did). But we got the mentronidazole and I ground it up into their beefheart (food) and we saved all the others.

Anyway I'm sure that was off-label use and the vet used exactly the same specialist discus-keeper websites to decide on the treatment as we had read before requesting it.

For that matter the only time I personally have ever given metacam it was to a budgie with a lung infection, also definitely off label. I thought at the time it must be quite fun being a vet from the pharmaceutical point of view!

>For that matter the only time I personally have ever given metacam it was to a budgie with a lung infection...

Why do you mention Metacam?  That is a pain medication, primarily for orthopedic pain.

>Perhaps your setup is too clean?

I doubt that! 
Today the puppies were outdoors (they are pretty much back to normal now), and because of all the rain, they came back in as 5 muddy, happy puppies.  Dirt everywhere!  No, I don't think we are too clean! 
I was delighted to observe a few perfectly normal poops today.  Whew....what a relief.

Metronidazole is actually sold as a fish antibiotic called Fish Zole:  http://www.fishmoxfishflex.com/index.php/fish-zole-metronidazole.html 

So not off label at all, for fish.

What exactly does the expression "off label" mean?

Because metacam is not licensed to treat budgies (or at least that's what the prescribing vet told me). It was given as an anti-inflammatory alongside an antibiotic.

Off label, as I understand it (which could well be incorrectly), means "for a purpose it isn't presently licensed for in this area by the manufacturer".

I know fishzole can theoretically be bought but mentronidazole apparently has to be prescribed in the UK. We tried to buy it first and the website forms said "sure, where's your prescription?". And we weren't given fishzole, we were given twenty 200mg tablets.

Also I wasn't trying to start a bun fight, I was just chatting idly on the topic of drugs prescribed by vets and effective, in ways not currently recommended by the manufacturer.

>Also I wasn't trying to start a bun fight

What's a bun fight? 
And thanks for explaining "off label"! 

My puppies, BTW, are happily getting into mischief this evening in the garden.  They've eaten.  Their poops are looking good.  Oh, I'm so glad....

Yes, metranidazole is prescription-only here.

It is where I live too (Switzerland)!

I think it is everywhere, but there is this very...interesting post on the subject of Fish Zole from an experienced beagle breeder in the US:
http://www.beaglesunlimited.com/health/giardiasis-diagnosis-treatment-and-prevention 

(Scroll down to 'How can infection be treated for less'.) 

Not advising anyone to do that, of course...

What's a bun fight? 

A slang expression, a petty squabble or argument  usually used to refer to something not important or serious

I like the phrase "Handbags at dawn"