The floor of the area where the puppies are is of great importance. Ifit is of concrete or rough wood, it should he covered with severalthicknesses of burlap or cloth before the bedding is put down. If therough surface is not covered, the pups will wear away their navels,infection will creep under the skin, and the puppies will die unlesstreated promptly. Indeed thousands of puppies die each year from in-fected navels.
Treatment for this consists of cleaning away the infected parts andinjecting an antiobiotic. An antiseptic powder or ointment should be applied and worked under the skin, which should then be covered witha gauze pad bound in place by adhesive tape. It is best to keep thepuppy under treatment isolated and carry it to the mother for nursingfive or six times a day. The puppy should be treated until the skin hasgrown across and healed. Another method is to dissect the infectedarea away and suture the skin together. Healing may require five daysOr more.
As soon as puppies begin to crawl about, a pen must be made forthem. They can use sand runs. Grass and concrete are the devil's owndevices for spreading worm infestation. The best plan for small kenneldogs one that has everything to recommend it and few drawbacks is to provide a wire-bottom pen. The wire for the bottom of the pen, one-inch square mesh, should be 9-or i-gauge, preferably welded. Lighter netting soon breaks, unless thepuppies are a light breed. Smallish bitches can be kept in this kind ofpen and allowed to whelp in the hutch.
When the puppies crawl out on the wire and defecate, there is nochance for contamination. If the droppings arc removed under thepens every day, even flies cannot transmit infestations of embryonatedworm eggs. The only serious objection to the use of these pens is thatpuppies raised in them often cannot successfully be introduced intohouses with hot-air floor registers unless these registers are screenedfrom the pups. Having trained themselves to defecate over the wireflooring in the pen, the puppies search tirelessly for a similar surface touse for the same purpose in the house. When a pup finds the furnaceregister, the owner often feels that the idea of a wire-bottom pen wasall a mistake.
Raising puppies in cool or even cold weather is generally more suc-cessful than when it is too hot. When they arc cold they will pile up tokeep warns, and their mother is less likely to lie on them than she is ifthey have spread out to keep cool. The best temperature is that whichwill induce the puppies to remain huddled together to keep warm.If a little pup gets drilled by falling out of its box, for example but is still alive when found, heat may revive it. Never give up. As itbecomes more animated, let it suck some warm formula and watch thequick change.
Hiccoughing in healthy puppies is common enough to call normalbut why they hiccough nobody know. A puppy settling into sleep aswell as a wide-awake playing puppy may hiccough for a few minutes.
As little puppies grow, they occasionally. twitch. You may see thisjerking in one after another and think it means that they have fleas orare sick. It doesn't; instead it means that they are healthy and doingwell. If they fail to twitch, they are unthrifty, possibly underfed, oranemic. It has been suggested the sleep a puppy experiences whiletwitching is similar to the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep of hu-mans.
How early may little puppies be dewormed? Since they may be bornwith intestinal parasites, it pays to have fecal examinations made start-ing at three weeks of age. If they are infested, they can safely bedewormed at any age.
Consult your veterinarian for a fecal analysis and the proper medica-tion for the type of worm present. Capsules of Piperazine may beobtained where dog medicines are sold, and are safe and efficacious for roundworms when used as directed. However, hookworm and whip-worm infestations should be treated with the advice of a veterinarian,who has the most effective safe products available.
In the case of hookworms, owners are occasionally advised to buildthe puppies up before having them dewormed. Actually it is almostimpossible to build puppies up in competition with a heavy worst infes-tation. It is also well to realize that, even if this building up could bedone eventually, there usually is not time - hookworms cannot be elim-inated too soon because of the anemia they cause.
Puppies open their eyes on the tenth day after birth. The cornersnext to the nose open first. If the puppy's eye bulges before it openstake it to a veterinarian promptly. You will probably save the eye by sodoing. It may be opaque when it opens, but it will usually clear.Always clip the sharp nails of puppies when they are a few weeks old,and keep them clipped. This may be done safely with a human nailclipper if you have no special dog nail clippers. If the nails are allowedto remain long, injury to the eyes of one or more puppies may result.Hundreds of puppies have scars or, worse, are blinded every year byfailure of the owners to take this simple precaution.
The training must take into account the personality of the dog tobe trained. A sensitive Toy Poodle may be trained more easily withrewards than the overexuberant Boxer, which may respond better totraining with force. The discipline necessary for a Poodle may be aharsh word, something often completely disregarded by a Boxer.
The age of the dog is another important consideration since it iseasier to train one with some maturity than a devil-may-care puppy.However, the objective of the training is an important matter and mayhave little to do with age, as in the case of housebreaking.
Many professional trainers recognize German Shepherds or Alsatiansas being more easily trainable than other breeds and will accept them atsix months of age in their training programs. Most other breeds mustbe ten or twelve months of age for professionals to accept them fortraining.
Some breeds inherit aptitudes to perform functions by developingand training themselves. Just give them the opportunity and with virtu-ally no training by the handler/owner they do what their breed issupposed to do. The Beagle is a good example of self-training. All thatis necessary is to take one into a field that has rabbits and, if theinherited genes are there, its trailing and barking develop naturally.The sight hounds, such as the racing Greyhound, are other good exam-ples. The bird dogs, including retrievers, also inherit their aptitudes but usually require some training by handlers to perform their functionsproperly.
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