Your Litter A to Z|

Nov. 18, 2021

Your Litter A to Z, Module 14 - Your Litter's Sixth Week

Days 36 through 42, the pups’ Sensitive Period continues and wariness likely appears this week

Module 14 Documents

Required Reading

Read Your Litter's Sixth Week

What’s In This Module

Week 6 Basics

This is a phenomenal week, when your pups are becoming little dogs with quick brains and bodies. They’ll keep you busy and make you laugh. They will also show signs of wariness, which is normal but must be handled correctly if the pups are to develop a confident approach to life.

Pups this week are learning machines. Although not yet perfect, they can connect the dots to learn that A causes B so are beginning to grasp that their actions (or the actions of others) have consequences. This is because their nervous systems are finishing myelination but are still undergoing synaptic development and pruning, the foundation of learning.

Pups are learning canine communication and are primed for social relationships. Play becomes increasingly important but you are also likely to see agonistic or aggressive behavior from pups more now. Towards the end of the week, you might also see sexual behaviors like humping.

Natural wariness grows this week, causing pups to more carefully assess the safety of the world around them.Location sensitivity begins this week, making pups hyperaware of and comfortable in their own home and less comfortable elsewhere. This does not serve our pups well later in their lives when they move through the world, so it is essential that we take them off our property this week, ensuring that they are comfortable somewhere else. More places are better but commit to at least one field trip.

Enjoy your pups! This is another fun week!

Read this week’s required reading:

Know where your pups are in their development this week. Review the Canine Development and About Sensitive Period Puppies videos, if needed.

Review Canine Development video

Review About Sensitive Period Puppies video

Gather The Supplies You Will Need For This Week

  • Sixth Week Shopping List
  • If you live in an area with a lot of fleas and ticks and your pups are outside, treat them for these parasites. Flea bites increase the risk of tapeworms in your puppies and ticks bring the risk of many horrifying diseases. You may not love the idea of putting chemicals on your pups but if you use safe ones, you are actually protecting their immune systems rather than harming them. The treatments on this list, Approved Flea and Tick Medications for Puppies are FDA approved for young puppies. Ages of safe use are noted on the sheet. In addition, some are under investigation for causing seizures. These are also noted on the sheet.

Vaccinations

Schedule your pups’ vaccinations based on your dam’s and/or the pups’ nomographs

Hopefully you did a vaccine nomograph on your bitch through the CAVIDs lab at University of Wisconsin. If so, set up your pups’ vaccination schedule from now until their final titer based on those results. If you did not do a nomograph, you can still do one now.

The nomograph form will tell you:

  • Dr Laurie’s recommended vaccination schedule for this litter
  • When the pups are likely to enter their At-Risk period. Look at the table with numbers for distemper and parvo. Look across the top row for each disease. Find when those number drop to or below 20. Run your finger down that column to find the weeks and days. That is when your pups first at risk for that disease, meaning the pup will get distemper or parvo if it comes in contact with it.
  • When the pups should be titered by you or owners to confirm they developed immunity in response to the vaccines
  • What your dam’s titers are and if she needs to be vaccinated along with the pups

Without a nomograph, you should give distemper-parvovirus vaccinations (alone or in conjunction with adenovirus and/or parainfluenza) every 3-4 weeks with the last being given when your pups are 16 weeks.

In all cases, with a nomograph or not, do a titer on all pups through CAVIDS two weeks after their final distemper-parvo vaccination in puppyhood.

Watch the Sensitive Puppy Challenges — Disease video:

Handling Exercises

Start Preparing Your Puppies For Their Vet and Groomer Visit(s)

Daily, intentional handling of your pups along with regular grooming will prepare them for future vet visits and grooming, whether professional or at-home. Dogs that are properly prepared for these experiences will enjoy the experiences more, have lower stress, and exhibit more appropriate behaviors for care-providers. They are also more likely to recover from illness more quickly and tolerate important but difficult medical care longer. Even if your dogs don’t require professional grooming, these exercises will benefit them in the future.

  • The Required Reading discusses handling exercises to do this week.
  • Trim or dremel toenails every 3 days. Trim genital hair once this week.
  • Stack your puppies on a grooming table or counter covered with a non-slip surface to prepare them for upcoming photographs, grooming, and vet visits.

Feeding and Nutrition

Nutrition for dams and pups this week

Your pups should still be getting some of their nutrition from their dam and some from solid food this week.
For many pups, food is one of their most important motivators, second only to mom.

Puppy nutrition Puppies vary in how excited they are about solid food this week. Some eat every scrap, others are disinterested. Don’t forget that your pups need access to water 24/7 now.

  • If you have enthusiastic eaters, use meals to teach and develop their recalls (come when called) and problem-solving skills. However, take steps to reduce the risk of food guarding by giving the pups plenty of space to eat their meals in peace. See this week’s Required Reading for more on preventing this issue.
  • However, if your pups aren’t excited about their meals:
    - Don’t worry too much but monitor their weights daily to ensure they are getting enough calories from either mom, supplemental formula, and solid food.
    - Be sure to warm their food to about 100F to bring out the most odor and taste.
    - Use warmed, low-sodium chicken or beef broth rather than water to soften their food.
    - you may need to hold off on these developmental activities for another week.
  • Feeding raw? Download Raw Feeding Calculator For Litters to determine the MAXIMUM to feed each date. Many litters eat less but their weights will tell you if they need more.

Bitch nutrition doesn’t change much this week. Even if your pups drain her quickly, she is still putting a lot of energy into milk production so don’t cut back on quantity until the pups are fully weaned or you see her getting pudgy. Review this chart Bitch Nutrition for Lactation Week 6 to Weaning for specifics.

  • If your bitch doesn’t want to go into the pen to nurse the pups, see if she is more enthusiastic out of the pen, elsewhere in the house, or even outside.
  • Continue to monitor her for mastitis.
  • Your bitch may regurgitate for her pups this week. This is a normal maternal behavior while pups are being weaned.
    It is not gross, although it can be inconvenient.
    - It is NOT vomiting, it is simply the bitch bringing food back up to give to her pups.
    - It is not dangerous for the pups, and honestly, most pups love it!
    - If your bitch regurgitates often and/or is losing weight, have her nurse the pups before you feed her and then keep her away from the pups for several hours. This won’t always work but it will reduce how much she regurgitates.
    - If your bitch needs to gain weight, feed her again after she regurgitates.

Read the Required Reading, which includes:

  • Feeding your dam
  • Regurgitation
  • Teaching puppies to come when called
  • Training treats
  • The common error breeders make when teaching puppies to come
  • Specifics on feeding puppies
  • Avoiding resource guarding
  • Water

Review Dams’ Roles During the Sensitive Period: Nutrition and Weaning video below. It includes:

  • Mom’s roles during weaning
  • Mom’s Diet During Sensitive Period
  • Let Mom Interact OUTSIDE the Pen
  • How and When to Wean
  • Weaning Food and Supplements
  • How to Wean (Reduce Aggression, Teach Bravery)
  • Using Meals to Teach Pups Problem-Solving

Develop Your Pups To Be As Confident As Possible

This week is important to raising confident pups. The pups are ready for a big expansion in their living space this week, if potty training is going well. (However, continue to focus on potty training by making the pen smaller if their success rate goes down and closing the pen down every night.)

This week’s Required Reading, pp 2-12 has many suggestions on what to do this week. New objects, sights, sounds, locations and activities are the name of the game from this point on.

The puppy room should be pretty noisy much of the day, with audio recordings, vacuuming around the puppies’ pen, playing the TV or music. Bring the pups out to hear the dishwasher or washing machine. However, be sure they can also comfortably tolerate quiet without filling it with their own little voices :-).

Add new equipment to the puppy areas. Move the items every day and rotate gear in and out of the pen so their living space looks new to the pups everyday.

They are ready to go on car rides and field trips, have visitors, and do Adventure Walks. Take them at least one place new to play this week.

  • This week’s Required Reading, pp 2-12 has many suggestions on developing your puppies.

Start Adventure Walks With Your Puppies

Adventure Walks are an excellent way to teach your pups to follow people, develop their bodies, and improve scenting and problem solving. These walks are a great way to create healthy, brave puppies. You have several resources to help you with your litter’s Adventure Walks.

Your Pups May Backslide Some With Potty Training This Week

Stay The Course! They Will Get It, We Promise!

Review Potty Training Litters video:

Review How to build a potty box plans, if you need to build a box:

Start Crate Training Your Pups

Puppies are not born loving their crates. To transition from potty training to house training, it will be easiest if you also teach them to tolerate being in the crate. Each puppy will react differently to the crate. Your goal is to teach each puppy that a quiet puppy gets to see out of the crate and treats fall into the crate from the sky. Noisy puppies cannot see and their crates sometimes move.

Five to six weeks is the best age to begin crate training the puppies. This is a very busy time but we do recommend doing this sooner rather than later! You can work with multiple puppies at the same time if you have enough crates.

Step-by-step crate training is covered in this week’s Required Reading.

Continue Car Rides With Your Pups

Think Low, Cold And Covered!

Watch the Car Ride video below

Watch Your Bitch and Pups For Problems

Watch Your Bitch For Signs Of Low Calcium, Eclampsia And Mastitis

The risk of problems with your bitch goes way down this week but you still want to monitor her for infections, low calcium, hypocalcemia or eclampsia, and mastitis. Here are resources to do this.

As with earlier weeks, sub-clinical low calcium may continue to be a problem. Many bitches need to be supplemented with oral calcium until the pups are fully weaned. If you are seeing aggression or other unusual behaviors in your bitch, supplement her:

Monitor Your Pups’ Health

Your pups are also at risk for fewer problems this week as they have become more robust. However, they are at risk from infections, low blood sugar, diarrhea, and congenital conditions like liver shunts or heart problems that may become symptomatic now.

If you have an ill puppy, the first thing you should do it take its temperature. Next, check for dehydration and, if you have a small breed, for low blood sugar.

Review Monitoring Dams and Pups, timestamp 11:59

Prepare Your Owners By Deciding Which Minor Health Issues You Are Not Concerned About

Accomplish These To-Dos This Week

  • Continue to focus on potty training, closing the pen down every night
  • Add new equipment to the pen
  • Rotate the location of visual and aural stimuli
  • Trim toenails every 3 days!
  • Use vacuum around the puppies’ pen
  • Stack puppies on the table
  • Take the pups to a new location for free play
  • Watch for resource guarding
  • Continue crate training
  • Watch your bitch for regurgitation. If she regurgitates, have her nurse before eating.
  • Enjoy the pups! This is another fun week!

Your Litter A to Z Table of Contents

Section 1: Pre-Breeding

Section 2: Pregnancy & Whelping

Section 3: Litter Management: Month 1

Section 4: Litter Management: Month 2

Past Coaching Call Recordings