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Hello

I was amazed reading your posting. My husband and I raise English Bulldog Puppies, and on 3/1 our 2 year old Bitch delivered 10 beautiful, and very healthy puppies. On day 3 we lost our 1st puppy, we thought thought that it was just something that happened, but contacted our vet, where he did an autopsy, and said that the puppy had blood in his chest cavity. He put all of the puppies on very strong antiboitics, we managed to save 6 for another week, but then on Sunday they started dying again. Now we are down to 2 puppies, who are 2 weeks old, and seem to be small, but very vigorous, we put them on 3 hour tube feedings, and are giving them pedialyte with their formula. They seem to be better already. I just hope that we caught the cause, and can save these remaining babies. I have never had an experience with this, but I will be well informed on our next litters to prevent any other such problems.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks so much for this posting, it helped me to see that this is something I did not cause, but I should have been more aware of.

April

I have PMed you.

Steph

PMed me? I am not familular with that. Please explain.

Thanks

Hi April, I'm hand rearing a litter and they began to fade last Tuesday. Through Anne-Marie my vet got in contact with the Swanbridge practice and the pups were given transfusions. The smallest died while the plasma was being prepared, but I still can't quite believe the difference it made to the others. Quite literally within hours they were different puppies. I've been sending Anne-Marie their weight graphs and there is no arguing with the sudden upturn in weight gain after the tranfusions. Even before the pups 'went off' and the weights fell sharply, they'd been gaining very slowly. Since the transfusions they have been putting on weight in exactly the way I'd expect from a healthy litter reared by mum. I dew claw pups at ~48 hours and the sites normally heal in a day or less, but these pups still had sloughy pits a week later. The morning after the transfusions (done at 5.30pm) they were all healed perfectly. If I was not seeing this with my own eyes, I would not believe it but I know that these pups (and I!) owe a big'Thank You' to the Swanbridge vets & to Anne-Marie.

Our two babies as of this evening appear to be doing well and thriving. I am still cautious, because the others went downhill so fast. I appreciate any advice, or other signs to be on the look out for. I just hope we are over the hump now, and these babies, can make it.

In retrospect the first thing I noticed with mine was that most didn't gain any weight and a couple lost a tiny bit in the 24 hour period before the trouble began. The small one had never been a vigorous feeder but she began to take fewer sucks before resting. Within a couple of feeds she was obviously in bad trouble with hardly any suck reflex at all and although her temperature & the colour of her mucous membranes were OK, the inside of her mouth felt cool. By then 3 of the others were also sucking less strongly to varying degrees. At that point I rang Anne-Marie and ran for the vet's surgery. I was lucky in a way in that 4 failed more or less together (and going by the weights I suspect that the other 3 might not have been far behind them). Otherwise I probably not have felt I had little to lose and decided to go for the the transfusion for the whole lot there and then. In truth, and with apologies to Anne-Marie & Swanbridge, I didn't really expect it to do much. My vet was sceptical too, but both of us were amazed by just how well it did work.

I've also sent you a private message re contacting Anne-Marie, as I understand she can't reply on the forum at present.

Best of luck with your little ones.

Click on messages at the top of the page and you should get your PM :)

Hello April
I am sorry to hear what has happened to your puppies.
If it is Fading Puppy Syndrome the chances are the whole litter will be affected though I really hope not in your case.
If you click on my name "staffie" on the top of this post you will see my "homepage" click on that and it will bring up the article I wrote on my experience with FPS and "plasma transfusions"
Thankfully this procedure has now been carried out on a good number of puppies and with great success.
If you would like any further information please feel free to contact me on the number shown in the article.
Good luck with your babies and please let me know how they get on.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to me. I appreciate it. The remaining two puppies "seem" to be doing well. They are small, but very strong, great nursers(I am hand raising them). I nurse them every 3-4 hours. The only thing that I noticed out of the ordinary was a little swelling of their paw pads. A few days ago I noticed they were dehydrated so we supplemented them some with formaula/pedialyte. They bounced right back, but then the swelling started. They are urinating normally though so I am  not worried about the kidneys. I just figured it was because they were so dehydrated. Any advice there would be appreciated. We lost 8 out of a litter of 10 so I suspect all of the sudden deaths were related. All of the syptoms I have read about these puppies had, the crying, the lack of weight gain, weak, cold, limp, abdominal swelling, loose bowels, blood coming from nose/mouth before passing. I am worried about these two babies, but my vet says either they are going to live or not. He said beside extra care, and antibiotics there is nothing else we can do. I am on the look out though and a 24 hour vidual. I have another Bitch due in 8 days. I am glad that I found your artical, so that I can hopefully prevent any other litters from passing so tradically.

Thanks to everyone for the advice.