Hi everyone,

We have 8 day old puppies and they are very rarely quiet, maybe for half an hour after a feed, we are watching them all 24 hours and making sure they all are fed and have full tummies, they have all doubled in weight, they are warm and the vet has checked them over, even when they are snuggled up together with mum they seem to groan a lot, make little Whiney noises and we have had a couple of tiny barks, from what I have read they should be farely quiet at this age? We are getting very little sleep between myself and my husband and just want to know if this can be normal?

Thanks

Sounds perfectly normal, litters vary.  Have had some quite voacl and others much more quiet, even with same bitch.

Just a thought could they be a bit too warm.  After feeding are their mucous membranes very red?

Thankyou, they all seem fairly healthy and can move around really well, I will check their memebrains after they feed again.

Thanks for the reassurance

Are they going around like seals on theri belly's?  Often when theya re really full, and ahve a bit of wind they crawl around like thsi to bring it up?

If they are warm they will spread out at this age, and if cool huddle up, but if too hot they will vocalise and move around more and have very red mouths.

Sounds pretty normal to me.

Is mum helping them to eliminate?   I had one who'd deal with the urine, but refused to pooh them.  Totally beneath madam.  As a result that litter, her one and only I might add, spent most of their early days bunged up despite my best efforts.   And they were noisy.

Just a thought because for the most part, our puppies were usually quiet apart from when feeding when they'd get impatient when a teat dried up!!

Excessive heat could cause this .... it should be around 75 - 80F in the base of the box.   Mine usually crawled to the extremities of the box (under the pig rail) when it was a bit too hot.

Thanks for the replies to my previous post and sorry I didn’t respond but we had to take one to the vet, she was very floppy and not feeding. The vet said it was septic shock, very high glucose, she’s had Antibiotics and fluids at the vets and they have asked us to fetch her so she can try and feed again because they can’t get her to feed, she still has Diarrhea though so I don’t know if the same is going to happen again. They said it’s likely down to under development of the digestive system and a defect to go with it. Is it likely she will recover? Has anyone seen this before? The vet said most people would put her down so am I being cruel even trying?

This is a very difficult question to answer.  She may well make a full recovery and lead a full and happy life, but it could quite easily go the other way!  In your position, I think I would give her a chance now, and if the treatment doesn't appear to be working, let her go.

I have had experience of encouraging a puppy to live and she developed other problems after a year and had to be given sleep.  On the other hand I had another pup who had EU - was told by many others to let her go but I couldn't.  She had surgery at 4 months and recently celebrated her 12th birthday!

Take each day at a time and try to put the pup's long term interest as a priority.  Thinking of you xxx

Thankyou, she is feeding at the minute but not a very strong suck, the vet said that could be down to the antibiotics and lack of milk and if she was going to improve it would be by tonight so will just keep an eye on her.

Thanks for all your advice, I feel completely out of my depth here 2 of the puppies have only put on 33g (3.9%) and 27g (3.7%) on this morning so is this a cause for concern too? The rest of the litter is between 7-9 % and they all look healthy and strong. I’m going to make sure the 2 that have put the least on feed on the back teets today but one of them falls to sleep after a few minutes so she’s not getting as much as the others.

Any advice would be greatfully received.

As long as the pups are generally gaining weight, I wouldn't worry about how fast they are gaining it and if there is the odd day where their weight remains even the same. 

What you don't want is several days in a row where they fail to gain any weight or for them to start to lose weight....

The pup that went to the vet - sometimes you just have to accept that there is something wrong with a pup which means they are not going to survive.  It might be something internal which you don't even know about.  Take reasonable measures to help any sick pups but don't focus on them to the point that you are not looking at the litter as a whole - and know that it is not a disaster in the scheme of things if you lose a pup.  Statistically, and across all breeders, there is a loss of about 20% of pups born.

Thankyou! That makes sense, there’s so much contradicting information out there, forums like this are a great help.