Part 4 of 6
Learn singleton puppy care in a single puppy litter with Dr. Andrea Hesser’s 6 Part Breeding Masterclass—covering feeding, health concerns, and early development.
Transcript
0:00
First off, I just want to say I'm sorry the date is wrong on here, if you can believe it.
0:03
In my sleep deprivation with all of this, I really thought this class was happening last week.
0:09
So, and I think some of it in my mind was that week 3 technically for her started last week.
0:16
So she technically was three weeks last Tuesday.
0:19
She's technically 4 weeks today.
0:21
Just given the original kind of due range since she was born -2 from her due date, that was, you know, potentially we're still in week 3 on her original timeline.
0:33
So we just as a kind of projection of where we're going.
0:39
So originally we were going to talk today mostly about third week milestones, weaning, those sorts of things.
0:45
I've got a lot more material that's not related to that that I'm going to share with you guys.
0:50
So we're going to kind of adjust things a little bit so might have figured out what's going on with these puppies and why I had some losses and some things going on with this puppy.
1:00
So we are going to talk about kind of her progress through the second and third weeks up to now, as well as cover a little bit of information on a disease called neosporosis.
1:10
This is not something that has been documented yet to be the cause of why her litter mates passed and had some issues and why she's got some struggles of her own.
1:23
But I just wanted to let you know we'll probably adjust these upcoming weeks, assuming everything's going OK with her and that she's progressing.
1:31
We're going to talk about Singleton strategies.
1:33
I might be able to have some exposure with her with some other litters in my area.
1:38
And just wanted to talk about some of the measures I've taken personally and kind of efforts at home that have helped with things.
1:47
And then the 8th week, we're going kind of do veterinary evaluation at like an 8 week old puppy.
1:52
Outdoor socialization is another thing.
1:54
I just thought would be fun to kind of see her out in an outdoor pen again, assuming everything's going OK.
2:01
So where we left off, I know we kind of had an intro from Nicole on this, but so we are currently managing a Singleton here.
2:08
We were going through some lactation support measures so common with singletons for mom to not have enough stimulus to lactate at a rate that she should or start to dry up inappropriately.
2:21
They also can have the opposite issue sometimes where they are just nursing a party of one when they could have been nursing many more that could be handled with completely different kind of strategies per se.
2:34
Like some puppies just gorge themselves and become swimmers and become gigantic puppies.
2:40
But in my case, I was kind of dealing with the first potential there.
2:45
So she had been started on metaclopramide, which is a medication that can help to support lactation.
2:52
Just as a precaution.
2:53
Puppy was also not vigorously nursing effectively.
2:57
So she was vigorously nursing.
2:58
She's just not, she would, you could hear her latch, but she'd constantly knock herself off, constantly knock herself off and couldn't really get a good suction.
3:06
I think some of it was the volume of milk that's being produced was not enough to satisfy her.
3:10
So she'd get frustrated.
3:12
And some of it, I can show you some of the little measures that I took to try to kind of help stabilize her, to keep her from throwing herself off with some little rice bags.
3:22
And then we were pending necropsy results for the littermates based on their gross pathology or when they have their actual necropsy part versus the histopathology part, or like the sections we look at on the slides later.
3:37
She had evidence of what looked like loss from either an unknown cause at that point or some lesions that could support sepsis.
3:45
So having some free blood and some cavities in the abdomen, thorax, having some blood in the bladder, some blood in the subcue just some unusual stuff that we wouldn't see in a normal puppy necropsy.
4:01
So, and I guess I kind of summarized that here.
4:03
So had some blood in multiple cavities on multiple puppies.
4:08
There was on the histopath.
4:10
So we did get the report back for both puppies.
4:13
They appreciated a good amount.
4:16
They called them mild to moderate autolysis.
4:18
Autolysis is when the tissue basically starts to decompose or starts to have changes that would lead to decomposition.
4:27
It's basically normal process, right, for things to start changing.
4:31
We try to halt that with refrigeration.
4:34
Given the timeline and the fact that these puppies had to be shipped overnight to go, the two puppies that I submitted, I put in a like kind of a similar box that you'd ship semen in to ship to them on ice overnight to Texas A&M.
4:51
And that's to be expected.
4:54
It's also, I would say puppies are in a super warm environment.
4:59
They were not immediate.
5:02
So a couple of these puppies in the process of me losing some amidst the others, they did not go immediately into the refrigerator like they should have.
5:11
So I think some of that could have been just in the process of things that, you know, things didn't go perfectly.
5:17
They appreciated some minor changes, but basically there was no obvious suggestion of septic changes like in the liver or kidneys or like any of the organs we would typically see those with, which was a little bit curious.
5:31
I was hoping that that would be present so that we would have a little bit more closure.
5:35
Also no evidence of herpes virus like I had mentioned before, we usually can diagnose that based on their gross or their like kind of the samples that we look at physically.
5:48
So looking at the kidneys physically rather than looking at slides of tissue from the kidneys.
5:54
But no support to show that that was the case.
5:58
The pathologist when I spoke to him said he didn't have a cause of death.
6:02
They suspected one of these puppies did not totally inflate its lungs.
6:06
There was one that was particularly weak amongst them, even though, you know, it lived for maybe 12 hours that puppy.
6:13
So it is curious that that was their report because the puppy was breathing for 12 hours.
6:19
So unusual.
6:21
So just a note so that you guys are aware, so sometimes when you submit these puppies, it's really good practice to do it because if you find something you can save the litter mates from a really bad fate if it was something fixable.
6:36
But just know that there is a, it is difficult to get a diagnosis on a lot of these guys.
6:42
The projection, I think the literature that I remember is something around 50% of these types of samples have poor conclusions or don't have a cause of death that they can locate either with placental samples or neonatal samples.
6:58
Alright.
6:58
So 7 to 14 days.
7:00
So that second week of life, her weight gain was trending well.
7:04
So I was supporting her a little bit with formula and I was supporting her with esbilac initially, which I diluted a little bit from standard just to decrease her kind of colicky stuff that was going on.
7:18
She was not gaining really appropriately.
7:21
So I opted to use something that's a little bit, it's not as similar to mother's milk, but it's a little bit heavier in calories just for kind of a temporary use.
7:30
It's a formula that was designed by somebody that has written a lot on neonates.
7:36
It's not necessarily something that I recommend as like a base formula for scenarios, but it seemed to work for her.
7:45
I was kind of grasping at what I could find to support her for weight.
7:49
And so that's what I opted for.
7:51
It's the most concentrated thing out there, but concentrated isn't necessarily the best depending on your circumstance.
7:58
So she was gaining appropriately.
8:00
She was behind a little bit.
8:02
So her, she didn't double within a week, but she had lost 4 ounces in the first two or three days.
8:07
She basically was still not gaining at that point.
8:10
And so I think, you know, given the circumstances, she did have pretty appropriate gains for what she could do with the next, you know, kind of phase of things.
8:19
I also was giving her some Propectalin.
8:21
So that's just a probiotic with pectin in it that is available in a pace.
8:25
It's real easy to give to puppies.
8:27
It tends to help prevent things like getting colicky or getting diarrhea.
8:32
Her stools were really good overall.
8:34
She was still nursing on Cabana.
8:37
I was sleeping on the ground with her in the whelping box because Cabana is big enough to squish her.
8:42
And so until I felt comfortable, we did not have any unsupervised kind of time.
8:49
She still wasn't super effective, but that was still, I think mother's milk is still very important for development if it's available and it can be given even in small amounts and I'm supporting her around it.
8:59
I think it's still good to have some.
9:03
So just to show you some of the kind of support measures.
9:05
So initially I was kind of using these.
9:07
She had some little stuffies that I have in the box.
9:09
So you can see that little Kong one that's next to her and I kind of like stick those next to her, but t they weren't substantial enough to hold her once she was bigger, weren't substantial enough to keep her from kind of falling off when she got latched.
9:24
So the rice sacks on the right were I felt a lot more effective and I hadn't done that initially.
9:32
That was probably, I implemented it in about two weeks.
9:34
But she just got big enough that like there was nothing you basically had to physically help hold her on.
9:41
Even though she was vigorous.
9:42
She would just, you know, thrash around and get frantic when she was latched.
9:49
So something else weird that happened that I just wanted to let you know.
9:51
And actually these pictures are kind of reverse in timeline.
9:54
So she had a skin issue that showed up so this little heart-shaped lesion on her left hip showed up at about 10 days old and I wasn't totally sure what it was.
10:04
I kind of peeled back at it and it was pretty firmly adhered.
10:09
I didn't want to bother her.
10:10
She was still and you can see the difference in like her body contour on the right.
10:15
She was still pretty thin and like still gaining to be a plump puppy on the right.
10:20
So after a couple of days, I started to get a little bit more concerned because it wasn't going away.
10:26
I convinced myself that I thought it was just like some Karo syrup that was stuck to her coat right there because it just seemed like it was growing in a different pattern.
10:34
Well, a couple days went by.
10:35
I realized, you know, it was something under it that was causing that.
10:38
So once I kind of got the hair kind of teased back in that area.
10:42
You can see the wound on the left that initially I wasn't sure if it was again, like from like getting some Karo syrup on her mom is not cleaning her at all.
10:54
So I just had convinced myself that maybe she had trapped some infection under there and it had gotten out of hand.
11:00
Puppies are pretty remarkable healers.
11:02
So this did heal up in a couple of days.
11:04
I put her on some Clavamox just because it seemed like it was a really deep pyoderma.
11:08
It wasn't like a really superficial something.
11:12
I also used topical mupirocin and that was just, you know, for a few days just basically until that skin completely healed over and stayed moist on its own.
11:24
The other thought behind this was could this be trauma?
11:28
I think with the way it looked so trauma being like if mom had stepped on her with a toenail or something like that, the pattern on the skin, like on the coat, you can see it's just strange.
11:39
It doesn't look like it was a wound to start with.
11:41
There was no discharge.
11:43
It's just very strange.
11:44
So it's very focal for a heating pad burn, but she does have heating pads in her environment.
11:50
My thought was maybe she peed and it kind of leaked around on the side a little bit in just a certain area.
11:57
That was the best that I had.
11:59
So the mystery wound was healing.
12:03
She started to toddle, so she started to get up on her legs.
12:06
She seemed super stiff on one of her back legs, and so I got a little bit concerned.
12:11
She basically had no range of motion to her knee.
12:15
I know you guys are going to talk a lot about knees today.
12:16
So that actually works really well for your topic, but you'll see some diagrams and things with Doctor Smith here soon.
12:23
Basically, when their knee isn't able to flex, they kind of walk around like a peg leg.
12:29
It's kind of hard to tell what she was doing because she was so she's uncoordinated, right?
12:33
She just got up on her legs.
12:34
So I thought, OK, maybe it's just going to self resolve with the weight of her being up on it.
12:40
Like maybe something, you know, this maybe it's related to the skin and since it's kind of on the same leg, even though it wasn't near her knee, but I started to worry about other things.
12:50
Certainly she could get a septic joint.
12:52
She maybe had litter mates that had some issues with sepsis.
12:55
So that was a concern.
12:58
A few people that watched videos of her said that they thought she had what's called a mechanical issue of the knee, meaning that she had her.
13:08
They call it patellar lock in some species, but basically it makes it so that the leg can't flex appropriately and they can fix it in things like babies cattle.
13:20
They tend to just let them, I hate to say let them deal with it, but they just, you know, they let them walk around and they can manage well enough and most of the time those are in production facilities.
13:31
So they'll end up becoming beef in time.
13:35
The other thing that could have happened, was a fracture.
13:39
So if something broke in her leg and I didn't realize it, I mean, puppies are resilient little things and they heal super fast.
13:44
So maybe she was injured by her mom and I didn't realize it even though I'm there with her all the time.
13:49
Same thing as far as could she have been born with something that I didn't realize was there and I never noticed until she got up on her legs.
13:57
I looked back at a lot of video of her because I, you know, I've been trying to document this for you guys.
14:02
So I had a lot of video of her at 10 days, 14 days.
14:06
She had full range of motion in that leg.
14:08
I have videos of her scratching like you know, you scratch a dog's ear and it kicks its leg forward.
14:14
I've got those kind of videos.
14:16
I've got videos of me like moving her rear around a little bit.
14:20
So I know that it wasn't something she was born with.
14:23
She's non painful and still happy and active.
14:25
So overall, you know, everything's going OK, just kind of odd.
14:32
So I start opening, she starts to hear she's progressing totally normally, gaining weight.
14:38
She's almost, she's 5 lbs now.
14:40
She's a chunk now, but she's still got that mystery limb issue.
14:45
Her skin's completely healed from that spot.
14:48
I did some X-rays.
14:49
X-rays are normal.
14:51
She's a little too young to be able to do a joint tap.
14:53
You've got to be able to sedate them to do that.
14:56
So it's not that you can't do it.
14:57
I think it's still appropriate if it's being suggested to you, but she really doesn't have any other support of having a septic joint.
15:04
That's really what you're hunting for if you're doing a tap.
15:09
She also started having some armadillo behavior.
15:11
That's the best way I can explain it.
15:13
So I am calling them focal seizures.
15:16
But basically when she's nursing sometimes or when she's eating solid food, what she would do is she would kind of curl up in a ball and tuck her head down kind of toward her front legs just for a few seconds.
15:28
But it was weird and it was hard to catch on video because it doesn't happen consistently.
15:33
I convinced myself, you know, maybe this is something neurologic.
15:38
So I started reaching out to people and doing some research and some of these other things.
15:43
So the skin and the stiff limb and some of these other things happen to be very consistent with a disease called Neospora.
15:52
So Neospora is a disease associated with raw feeding.
15:57
So this is one of the reasons why we say don't feed your pregnant dog raw, even an adult dog.
16:02
So she could have gotten this if Cabana has this, she could have gotten this from eating raw at any point in her life.
16:09
I'm not aware of when that would be because I don't feed it.
16:12
There's no history of her being on cattle ranches.
16:14
So they can ingest material from infected cows.
16:18
So feces or like aborted fluid, cattle that have a stillborn calf, say, and they lick up the placental fluids that could be a source.
16:34
I live in Texas, but I am in the city, so we don't have any exposure to that sort of thing.
16:41
Adults don't generally they, they will be the ones that that get the disease often times, but they don't necessarily show it.
16:49
So they're not going to necessarily have clinical signs.
16:52
They're going to just go on with their daily lives.
16:55
But when the dams get pregnant, they will pass it on to their offspring and often cause a lot of these types of problems.
17:02
So fetal death puppies with neurologic issue.
17:07
So I went ahead and sent off testing for this.
17:10
We're still waiting on it.
17:11
I'm actually, I was hoping I'd have it by this point, but they've had it since Friday.
17:15
But it takes one to four days for them to be able to process it.
17:18
So I'm sure I'll have it by the next time I talk to you guys.
17:21
That is an IFA test, which is an antibody test to Cornell.
17:26
I've tested both Cabana and the puppy.
17:29
I also did a fecal on the puppy, which was negative for the eggs that they can shed, the parasite, if they're positive, they're positive for life.
17:38
So that means that Cabana or this puppy in theory can never be bred again, most likely.
17:43
So for what we currently understand, I hope that that's not the case, but I think that that looks to be the most likely scenario at this point.
17:53
So I just wanted to mention too, we did some upgrades that this is backwards in time too.
17:57
I was trying to show you guys on the right side.
18:00
I was trying to show you guys that was kind of her first graduation into the pen.
18:04
So I had a, I've got a little heating blanket and some like little stuffies.
18:09
I've also added, she started to be very clean and potties in specific areas.
18:14
So I started to add potty pads in those areas and she's been very good.
18:18
I have like a certain spot for feeding, certain spot for pottying, and then on the left side you can see I put some PVC over the top and just like use some zip ties to hang some stimulus Just for her to have things to bump into and things that make noise and just things that'll help kind of develop her neurologically as if she was around littermates.
18:39
I would do this with regular puppies.
18:41
The concept is called an adventure box, but this is kind of a makeshift.
18:45
I just wanted to add it to this pen since she was spending a lot of time in there.
18:50
All right, so just to wrap up here.
18:52
So next week, the prognosis is grave if she's positive.
18:57
So grave, meaning she will likely die from this if she really is positive.
19:01
There's basically no literature of puppies surviving this, but I hope that she's the exception.
19:06
We're going to do everything that we can, but as long as she's having good quality life and everything's going well, we'll keep going.
19:14
Even if something happens to her, though, just know I will.
19:16
We're going to talk about Singleton management strategies.
19:19
We're going to talk about, you know, this litter going forward.
19:21
If she's still around, but I think there's still going to be good material for the next couple of sessions regardless of kind of how things go.
19:30
So I guess if you want to go ahead and open for any questions, I'm going to let me see if I can get off of my, I'm going to stop sharing that one.
19:43
And I've got if you guys want to see, I've got her in here.
19:48
She's upside down sleeping, but we're going wake her up and then we can answer questions if there's any questions and I've got I've got an ambassador here trying to help.
19:58
Thank you so much, Doctor Hesser.
19:59
We're all hoping that we have the best outcome possible for her.
20:03
She's so cute.
20:04
She's very cute.
20:07
She looks so excited.
20:08
We do have one question that came in if we have time to answer that someone was wondering if there was a culture done on the wound and any X-rays for the knee issues.
20:18
Good question.
20:19
So yes to X-rays.
20:20
I did not culture the wound and that was probably a mistake on my part.
20:24
I think you know, it seemed superficial and so I just treated it topically and it healed really quickly.
20:30
So I wasn't super concerned, but obviously now, now that I'm reading all this about this particular disease, I probably could have diagnosed it had from that issue.
20:44
I was just going to show you how her how this leg will not flex at all.
20:51
So this is the wound's completely healed here.
20:53
It's just a scar now and she can move her hip totally fine.
20:58
So she swings that leg kind of like a little post, but she can't bend her stifle or her hock now on the other side so you can see.
21:10
Yeah completely difference.
21:12
Yeah, we'll go back to that side again.
21:14
I'll show you again.
21:15
So she cannot she can't now, but she can stand and walk on it.
21:21
She actually does better on it.
21:22
I really thought when she first started doing this, I'm like, I don't think this is going be good like for her to be able to interact, but she actually, I know she's going to just stand now she's walking around on it just fine and able to get up and down and it's just, you know, she's going to be 100 LB dog.
21:42
So there's part of me that says like, do you know, do I want her to have compromise with that?
21:48
And can she handle that?
21:49
It's a good quality of life and I don't know the answer to that yet.
21:52
So we'll see how it goes.
21:55
We definitely will.
21:56
We're keeping her in our thoughts and we're hoping for the best.
