I am a longtime lurker on this forum and would like to seek advice from this knowledgeable group. We have been breeding quality, champion dogs for over 20 years and currently have our first singleton pup. He was whelped naturally to a first-time dam, a lovely mild-mannered girl who has been around pups all her life, but right from the start she has taken several ‘nicks’ out of him with over-zealous cleaning and worrying his various body parts. This morning I noticed blood at the tip of his penis so she has obviously nibbled him there as well. We are almost at the end of the post-whelp anxiety phase, which I hope will go a long way to resolving the issue, but I wonder if anyone has seen this before. I am with her 24/7 to keep watch and remind her to be gentle, but it is so upsetting.

That's not something I'd allow to continue.   I think you may be looking at removing him (with extra heating if he's just born) other than when he's on her to feed.   I'd not want to see any 'blood'.   Unfortunately she's focusing on just the one puppy as with a normal sized litter, she'd have more to do!

Supplement with calcium.  Any anxious or strange post-whelping behaviours = supplement with calcium.

Besides that, yes, he is probably getting the attention of 10 puppies on just him... you might want to find a few stuffed toys and put them around her and see if you can help her feel like she has others to bestow her attention on(!).  This will also help the singleton have things similar to other puppies to scramble over as he grows...

Just another thought - try to make sure the singleton puppy is rotating round all the teats.    We had one and had to make sure she was draining all of them, to avoid mastitis.

Thank you for the replies. Yes, was giving calcium every 3-4 hours, alternating oral cal plus with homemade goat milk/goat yogurt formula (excellent milk replacer recipe - pup didn’t need supplementing so used it for mom). Thankfully as the anxiety bouts have become less frequent in the last 48 hours she is much more gentle with him and turning into the wonderful dam we thought she would be. Totally agree this would not have been an issue if she had more pups - the poor little guy was the sole focus of her attention. Now hopefully I can move forward and focus on learning how best to raise a singleton pup! He seems to be rotating around the teats himself, clever fellow, so this has not been a concern so far but will continue to watch.

Be careful with the calcium supplementation.   It's easy to over supplement as well as under supplement.   I didn't need to do this (ever actually) with my singleton puppy's dam.  If she's coping better with him, I'd suggest she doesn't need extra calcium?