Puppies: week 4

puppies

28 Feb

The puppies have moved into their fourth week and have now well and truly got into a new type of behaviour - the puppies were starting to play!

Play is such an essential part of the development process. As well as the very basic idea that it is good to have fun in life, play is important for puppies to develop the skills for life. Mock fights, games of chase, rough and tumble are all part of the picture. This is where the characters of the individual puppies start to come through.

This week it was decided to do some routine worming. Worm are a fact of life. Dogs are susceptible to a variety of common worms. When a bitch is pregnant her immune system is suppressed to allow the puppies to develop well. As this happens, the pesky parasites are able to take advantage. This means that when puppies are born they can come pre-loaded with the worm larvae. Further, they can pick up larval stages when they are suckling.

From the pups point of view it is smart to have a strategy, to ensure good health. Further, there is a potential risk to people from the worms, so it is smart to maintain.

There are many potential strategies for worm control. Certainly, natural medicine approaches can be used. If this is to be done, then it is important to back up the management with periodic faecal testing to check progress.

If you want to know more about natural approaches to worm management for dogs generally, then check out this post from Dogs Naturally.

While Zinny was in good health and had regular parasite treatment in the past, she did live on a farm, mixing with other dogs and met lots of children.

For these puppies, regular conventional worming was elected for. Each pup was weighed to see the dose they needed. Then they were given the appropriate dose by mouth. This will be followed up in a few weeks with the next dose.

Over the next couple of days the pups were monitored to see how they went. They were absolutely fine and carried on as normal. No worms were passed in the faeces, which can sometimes happen if there are a lot of worms.