Puppies: week 3

puppies

21 Feb

When you have puppies you are never really off duty. Sure, there will be times of relative quiet when all seem settled and every one is content. And time never stands still and there will always the challenges lurking round the corner…

Into the third week, the puppies continue to grow and get a bit bolder with their exploring. Still nothing majorly adventurous, the really wild stuff is yet to come. Zinny, similarly, is starting to get happier leaving them alone at times. All seemed to be ticking over well. Then Zinny had an off day.

To this point she had been doing really well with her appetite and her digestion. Eating plenty of good quality, well balanced food. Digesting it nicely without any problems and then producing lots of lovely milk to help the puppies grow big and strong. All as it should be.

The off day started with her not wanting her breakfast. She was still content or feed the puppies, but not wanting to feed herself. Her energy was a bit down as well. A bit later in the day it became clearer why. First she vomited and then a short while later she developed diarrhoea. Zinny had a tummy upset.

This can be a worrying enough thing for any dog owner. Many tummy upsets can be quite simple. Other ones can be very serious often then needing veterinary attention. With Zinny there was the added responsibility of her needing to look after her pups.

Time for some holistic triage:

Red Level: Zinny’s owners had been used to the occasional tummy upsets with her. On the scale of things, this one was no too bad. A quick phone call to their local vet helped them feel reassured for the time being.

Red Flags: None the less they very sensibly left some Red Flags in place. In particular should:

She get worse in herself
The symptoms drag on
She not be able to feed the puppies
The puppies start to show problems

Then they would need to re-connect for potential veterinary attention.

Green Level - A little bit of fasting is usually ok and often useful for the majority of tummy upsets. Zinny was doing this herself and in the short term, that was ok. Next was to support her with simple, light, easy digested food, given little and often. Plenty of fluids were obviously an important support. They also elected to give some probiotic kaolin paste.

Amber Level - Now it was time to consider extra support from natural medicines. In this case a couple of well indicated homeopathic remedies were chosen, Arsenincum album and China. They were put into the drinking water so that Zinny would dose herself each time she drank.

With all that in place the next step was to lay out the Time Line for the planned on going Holistic Intergrated support. The first step was to plot the interval between check ups. With serious problems, this needs to be quite frequent. As a problem starts to get less serious or shows signs of resolution then the frequency of checking in can be reduced until everything settles to the normal state of balance.

For the first day, the owners check every few hours. Each time the checked Zinny, they also gave an extra dose of remedy. The following day Zinny was much brighter, had regained her interest in food, had no more vomiting and had stools that were becoming firmer. All good. They continued with the various levels of support.

Then there was a worrying development… one of the puppies was showing signs of diarrhoea. Again the owners used the Holistic Triage approach. The puppy was still drinking well and looking bright. Puppies, just like children, can go down hill very quickly, so added diligence was needed.

It is well known that puppies can resonate with the energy levels of the mother. They will pick up on the message of the remedies that Zinny was having. Over the next 24 hours all the puppies were observed extra carefully. As well as receiving there remedy via the milk from their mum, they were also give a few doses of the remedy direct by mouth.

After a few days, while several puppies showed slightly loose faeces, they all bounced back and none of them ever went off colour or off their milk. Their vital forces and immune systems will now all be better educated and stronger as they move toward their fourth week.