Episode 69: Breeder to Breeder: Resuscitating and Saving Puppies

In this installment of the Breeder to Breeder series, Laura, Susan, and Gayle talk about what breeders can do to resuscitate puppies that seem to be fading.

The first thing you need to know is how to identify when a recently-born puppy may be in trouble. Healthy, naturally-born puppies should be rigid (not soft), and should weigh more than they look. Puppies that aren’t moving or making any sounds should be concerning - while there are variations between breeds, most newborns will be making noises and moving to find their mother. If you’re concerned about a puppy, it’s important to act immediately - in fact, it’s always best to take action rather than to wait when it comes to newborn puppies. 

When whelping, breeders are with their puppies 24/7. Susan and Gayle list some of the essential items they have with them during the entire process - from white towels to blow dryers. They also list some accessible alternatives that are great options for breeders without a lot of existing equipment.

If you’re dealing with a puppy that is still a bit limp, or a puppy that hasn’t fully cleared its lungs yet, you can gently compress and uncompress the puppy’s body with your hands (almost like puppy yoga) while angling the puppy downward. This can get the remaining fluid out of the lungs.

When assessing your puppies, checking their heartbeat is key. Puppies that don’t have a heartbeat after 15 minutes often will not make it, so it’s important to constantly monitor puppies that you’re concerned about. 

Listen to the episode for more tips on resuscitating puppies.

Transcript

Laura Reeves [1:14] Welcome to the Good Dog Pod! I am your host, Laura Reeves, and we are back with our Breeder to Breeder series here on the podcast. I’m joined again by my dear friends, Dr. Gayle Watkins and Susan Patterson, who are the breeder experts here at Good Dog. We are walking you through some of the really tough and important things to know about whelping and raising your litter during this whole series that we have coming up. We talked last week about stillborn puppies and some of the reasons and some of the ways, maybe, to help avoid that. This week, we’re going to talk about “Okay, I’ve got that puppy out. It’s alive, sort of. How do I make it live?” and resuscitating puppies. We’re going to talk about natural whelping and C-sections and all of the things that we have in our toolkits as breeders to make those puppies live and thrive. 

Gayle Watkins [2:11] Sounds great! Hi, Laura. Hi, Susan. So, let’s start with “How do we know a puppy might be in trouble?” Not a C-section puppy. Naturally born puppy—how do we know it might be in trouble? There’s a couple of things that I look for. The first is that blue cast, where the tongue is bluish, the nose is bluish, the pads of the feet. They aren’t going to be blue, but they are going to have a bluish cast, and you’re thinking low oxygen. That’s always my number one thing. I don’t like quiet puppies. I don’t like puppies that are born and have not made a sound the entire time. 

LR [2:55] I make my puppies squeak. Intentionally. I pinch their tails. I want them to take that big breath of air that helps clear their lungs, if there’s any fluid. In my breed, Wirehaired Pointers, if they’re not trying to get away from me and run to their mother, they’re not doing well. Now, I understand that that doesn’t apply to everybody else’s breeds, but I want it active. I want to feel tension in their body. I do not want them to feel like a limp dishcloth. That tells me my puppy’s got a problem. 

GW [3:33] Agreed. We want a vigorous puppy, not a flacid puppy. It shouldn’t feel soft. I always describe it that a healthy puppy, when you pick it up, it should weigh more than it looks—even if it’s a Chihuahua. You should think oh, this puppy is going to be like a feather—maybe not a feather for your German Wirehairs—but you pick it up, and you’re like, “Whoa! This puppy is dense and solid,” as you’re saying. So I want crying when I annoy them. I want them making noise, and I want them moving. I want them active. Puppies that aren’t moving are concerning, very, very concerning. 

LR [4:14] From minute 1 through week 6!

Susan Patterson [4:18] Lethargic puppies are concerning, exactly. 

GW [4:22] I always tell people: act now. Don’t wait! If you’re looking at a puppy, and you’re thinking, “Gosh, do you think that’s a little blue?” or “Do you think he’s okay because he’s kind of nosing at a nipple?” ACT! Because you aren’t going to hurt him by doing the things we’re going to describe, but if you let him just sit there and begin to go downhill, puppies can go downhill so rapidly. It’s stunning how fast you can lose them. 

LR [4:51] Susan?

SP [4:52] I was going to actually ask Gayle: You know puppies are going to be coming 24 hours. What do you pull together to get ready? I’ll give you my brief list. I have my snuggle discs. I also have a pad with a rheostat on it, so I can use a sterilite box. I can control the warmth environment. I tend to have mothers who either take a long time to have puppies or I need a baseball mitt to catch them because they’re coming out so darn fast. So I’m going to need a place to put the puppies. I want something warm because a chilled puppy is dangerous. I also have oxygen on the side. I don’t use it unless I need it, but I have it on the side. What do you prepare ahead? Things like on your shelf that you can just pull off?

GW [5:41] Absolutely a warming box. I have a very, very old heating pad that does not have an automatic off switch. I treasure it. I take such good care of that thing. And my snuggle discs. Delee catheter. If you’re a breeder, you must invest in Delee catheters. So much better than bulb syringes! So we used to only have bulb syringes. They just don’t fit in most puppies. You don’t know whether they’re actually getting anything out of them. So Delee catheters are not expensive, and they are a fabulous, fabulous investment. This is a catheter. Catheter sounds like a very strong word. But it’s like two hoses, one that you just use to clear out the puppy’s nostrils. You don’t put it in very far. And then one has a mouthpiece, so it’s two different hoses and they go into like a test tube. You’re not actually sucking anything into your mouth. There’s nothing coming into you, but you’re putting just that little bit of vacuum suction on it to clear. You can clear your puppy’s nose. They happen to have gotten fluid in it, and you can clear their nostrils. I can’t imagine whelping without a Delee catheter. And then I go and buy those automotive towels, those little rough towels. They’re inexpensive. You can get 50 for not much money. Mine are white. I use those for two reasons. One: they’re rough. I am going to scrub that puppy to stimulate that puppy. I want to scrub its back. I want to scrub its belly. Most of what I do is the back and sides, but I also want to stroke genitals and abdomen. And I scrub. But I want white because I want to see what fluids are either on that puppy or coming out of that puppy. No patterns. No colors. Sometimes the pictures are not pretty. The fluids are not pretty, but I want to know: what are the fluids around that puppy? Those two added to yours, I think, can get you a long way. 

SP [7:58] I have white bar towels that have the ribs on it for the exact same reason. I think those are so important. The nice part is I’ve got the bag as I’m whelping right next to me, and I have a pile. I must have 100 of them. I just throw them in the bag, and then they go down in the bleach, and they’re all washed, which is great! Ready for the next time!

GW [8:21] I do the same thing because puppies are wet! The whole birthing process is wet, and you don’t want to be using a damp towel on your puppies.

LR [8:30] Dry towels! 

GW [8:32] Dry towels! And if you have a towel warmer or you can put your towels in your warming box to warm them, so you’re not using a cold towel and you’re not using a damp towel on your puppies. That just helps contribute. They can’t control their body temperature. We need to assist them with that, but we also need them in our hands while we scrub them. So a way to keep them from getting chilled—I also put them on my lap when I scrub, so I’ll sit them on my lap while I scrub them so they’re getting warmth from me and, really, I scrub them. 

SP [9:07] You can also scrub them, and if you have a blow dryer in a stand, using the warmth of the blowdryer can make a big difference in puppies because it’s immediate warmth, you’re scrubbing, and some puppies just seem to need that little bit of extra. It’s a trick that someone taught me, and I pass it along to everybody. Who would’ve thought my blow dryer would come in handy there?

GW [9:30] I have to say one of my students introduced me to that idea. She just uses a regular blow dryer but only when her hands are on it, so she knows how much heat. She’s never burning the puppies. I hadn’t thought about that, but I think that’s a great idea because I have some really obsessive mothers who will do everything in their power to never let that puppy dry. Because it just isn’t clean enough if it’s dry. Figuring out how to dry it quickly—a blow dryer is a great idea. But you do have to watch the heat. We don’t want chilled puppies. We don’t want overheated puppies. 

SP [10:09] Definitely. The other thing that I think is our best tool is our hands, because as you said, you can feel and then you can take that puppy and after you’re rubbing, you can take your fingers (very gently but firmly) and pinch all the way down the spine. There is a nerve column there that really makes a difference. I want to hear those puppies protesting. I want to hear squeaks, and I want to hear all kinds of noises. Nothing makes me happier than whelping a puppy and having it cry immediately. 

GW [10:42] Holler! And if you think about it, if you watch any TV show, particularly old TV shows, where women were giving birth in the old Wild West, what was the thing that made everybody smile and cheer and be so relieved? The baby’s cry. It’s the same thing with our puppies. We really, I think, need to make them cry. As difficult as it is, it’s a moment where (as Laura said) you feel like they have cleared their lungs. I always say you just have to piss them off. Because now they’re like, “I’m going to live! Just because you really annoyed me!” 

LR [11:20] “You pinched my tail!” Okay, alright, so this is all good! We’ve gotten the puppy out. We’ve scrubbed it and rubbed it. We’ve gotten it dry. We’ve kept it warm. And it’s just not coming along. And it’s still droopy and maybe it gasped. Maybe it made that fish guppy thing, and we did our Delee catheter and we did all the stuff, and we pinched its tail, and it didn’t really… Now, we’re up against it. Now what? Gayle, I’ll start with you.

GW [11:53] Let me say that one thing I don’t do anymore is swing or sling puppies. It makes me kind of sad to think of the puppies I did swing. 

LR [12:05] You live, you learn. I am the same way. How many litters of C-section Clumber Spaniels we swung, I can’t count that high. 

SP [12:13] There actually is a study on this. The science of swinging is the same as babies. You do not swing. You may hold this puppy at a 45 or a 60 degree angle down, so the fluids drain out, but use your accordion, where you’re putting your back and forth with your head—

GW [12:35] Oh, yeah, describe that more, Susan! You taught that to me. 

LR [12:38] Right, so Susan, we’re saying we know now but we didn’t use to know. 

SP [12:44] No, we didn’t used to. Like Gayle, I will raise my hand and say that I did my absolute best to support every puppy that was swung, but you can’t support the brain inside the skull. That’s the problem. It’s not the neck. It is the internal brain that’s sloshing around, going oh my god! That’s the problem. 

GW [13:05] Shaken baby syndrome. 

LR [13:07] I think it’s amazing that our dogs have all survived as well as they have, truly. So, we’re not doing that. Good call-out, Gayle. Susan? 

GW [13:17] Go with the accordion because it’s a really good method. 

SP [13:20] It’s basically, especially large breeds, very easy to do—where you have a puppy that you’re just very gently… I say pull but I don’t mean pull. Stretching it. Think of it as yoga for the puppy. You’re stretching it out a little bit, and then you’re compressing it back together. When you do that, you’re opening the lungs, you’re compressing the lungs, you’re helping it breathe. It will make a difference. It will get them breathing. It will get the water out. It does make a difference. You may have to do it three or four times. But it is really good. Or I will do it where the puppy’s head is—I know nobody can see me—but I have my hands holding a head right here, and my other hand holding the butt up on top, so I’m doing it so that gravity helps get the fluids out.

LR [14:15] Turning the puppy upside-down so its mouth is literally aimed at the ground.

SP [14:19] Supporting but holding. 

LR [14:21] Supporting the puppy the whole time. And you’re using the gravity piece that we were talking about before. 

GW [14:28] So much of the time it’s fluids that are our enemy in this and the puppy’s enemy in this and how we get that fluid out of their lungs. With the Delee catheter, we can clear out the nostrils. We can clean out the mouth. But we can’t do the lungs. We’re trying to clear their lungs and get them breathing. Everything with head-down, trying to use gravity while we rub, while we scrub, while we Delee, while we do the accordion—I don’t know about you guys, but I always feel like I’m in a cycle. I’m scrubbing, I’m Deleeing, I’m accordion, I’m scrubbing. I might be giving a little glucose solution. I’m scrubbing some more. I mean, I just don’t put the puppy down. I’ll do it for an hour. I’ll just keep going. If the puppy is showing signs of life, I just keep going. 

LR [15:27] This is a really great call-out right here. Gayle, I want to interject and say—again, folks that listened last week know that I have this fellow who has one of my dogs that I am mentoring through his very first litter of whelping all by himself. I didn’t even drive up there like a crazy grandma or nothing! It was amazing. He had the four stillborn puppies. He was talking to me: “How do I know? How do I know that it’s really gone? Its tongue is yellow,” or “It’s limp.” So let’s give people some really identifiable things that they can latch onto to say, “Do I keep trying? Do I try CPR? Do I give it little puffs of air?” Talk to us about what we’re doing at that point. 

SP [16:10] My veterinarian has said if you can’t get a heartbeat after 15 minutes, then you aren’t going to get one. So my stethoscope comes in super handy. But if I’ve got a heartbeat, I don’t stop till either that puppy comes to or I lose the puppy, because it’s all about the heartbeat. 

LR [16:32] Perfect.

GW [16:33] I use the Doppler for the same reason. The thing we always have to remember is the puppy is going to be warm when it comes out. A lot of times people will say, “Oh, but it was warm!” Well, because it was just in a 100-degree mother. So it still has the body heat from its mother. A lot of times puppies will come out pink. We talked about stillborn puppies last time, and stillborn puppies can come out looking perfect. They look like they’re asleep. They are not blue. They weren’t struggling. They’re these beautiful little warm things that we can’t get a heartbeat on. So I use my Doppler. The heartbeat for me is key. Like Susan, I have fought a long time for a puppy that hasn’t given up the ghost yet and is trying. I will do mouth-to-nose resuscitation. Honestly, I’ll do anything. I’ll do little chest compressions. But mouth-to-nose, we have to remember these are really little things. So we’re doing little puffs. You always want to make sure you have your hand on the puppy’s abdomen and chest to feel if any of the air is going in. Puppies should be breathing between 10 and 18 breaths a minute. So you’re not going pff-pff-pff-pff. It’s sort of a gentle, relaxed breathing in a few times, checking to see if the puppy is able to do it on its own.

SP [18:06] What about needle resuscitation? I have used it, fortunately not very frequently, but enough. And it has been a godsend because of the connection of all the nerves. I take one of my 25 gauge needles off of one of my 3 cc syringes, and you place it (of course nobody can see me) right under my nose. Just where the flues split. 

LR [18:34] Right, the lips split. 

SP [18:46] Right. The lips split, so you want it right under the nose. You can actually feel it go in. You can feel it hit the right spot. If it works, it’s like magic.

LR [18:47] It is magic.

SP [18:49] And the nerves help the puppy to go, “Oh my god! I guess I’d better be alive.” 

GW [18:54] Take a breath. For those of you who think we might be nuts, this is actually an acupressure point. It is a real thing that can stimulate breathing. It’s on my list. I’ll do it all. 

LR [19:08] Right. I have used the needle, but I am given to understand (and speak to me, your knowledge on this) that you can use it as an acupressure point. You don’t have to actually use a needle. 

SP [19:19] You can. I don’t have fingernails, so for me, when I’m whelping, I am one of the few people who does not use gloves. I want to feel everything with my hands. I come out of whelping kind of looking like I might have been tie-dyeing something green, black, and blue, and bloody. That’s just how it goes. For me, acupressure is a great suggestion, but I don’t have the fingernail to do it. My puppies are small enough that it’s easier for me, personally, to do the needle.

GW [19:59] One of the other things—I’m going to go back to the raspy puppies—before I breed, my vet and I work together. I’m fortunate to have a cadre of veterinarians that I work with. I’ve stopped using dopram, but I have given (because of trust) a 1cc of dexamethasone. If I have a raspy puppy, which we talked about earlier, the directions are 1—and we’re talking drops—1 or 2 drops on the tongue. Basically, that helps the lungs surfactant, which helps breathing. And then when the puppy is nursing, that’s usually all it takes, but a raspy puppy—I always worry about aspiration pneumonia, etc. I’ve also used afrin, which is a decongestant. So these are anecdotal things that my veterinarian and I have worked with to talk about using. It’s under the “you do the best to get the puppies the first 24 hours,” and raspy puppies are very concerning to me. 

LR [21:07] Alright, guys! Don’t forget that all Good Dog Breeder Members can use the email breederofficehours@gooddog.com to ask specific questions or discuss a sensitive topic. Send your email by Monday and get your response in Susan Patterson’s “Straight From the Whelping Box” column by Thursday. Awesome! And Avidog’s “Your Litter A–Z” course is available to all Good Dog Breeder Members. Just log into your Good Dog account and then go to the Good Breeder Center, where you’ll find A–Z, as well as “Savvy Socialization” courses created by Gayle Watkins just for you. 

LR [22:00] So there’s a couple of things I want to touch on before we move on to our next topic, because I think they’re super important. Not everybody that’s listening has a doppler or a stethoscope or a veterinarian that trusts them. So let’s really, really look at what the person who doesn’t have all the resources can do, like my guy who doesn’t have any of those things. How does he know that puppy isn’t going to make it? I tried to help him find a pulse, all of those things. Let’s talk a little bit to folks that don’t have the resources that some of us are blessed with. 

SP [22:30] Most people can get oxygen. That’s a big plus. You can get it at a welding supply place. You can buy the—they’re for old people—what are they? Oxygen concentrators. No offense to old people, because I’m there! You can buy them online. You can buy them on Ebay. They are a real bonus, especially when every breath counts for a puppy. You can make a nose cone out of a Dixie cup and fish tubing. There are ways, if you don’t have, like you said, the resources. I think that’s a big thing. 

LR [23:12] Gayle?

GW [23:12] The things we started with are how I’m looking at puppies to say “Should I keep going or should I not?” So, it’s going to be things like an increasing blue cast. The puppy came out pink, but now you’re beginning to see a blue tongue, blue pads. Often the tongue will begin to come out of the mouth. It’s not moving. It’s just coming out of the mouth. It is a puppy that is becoming more flacid, more droopy. Soft. Puppies are not soft, usually. A puppy that, despite being on a warming pad, is cooling. If you’ve got it, say, on a heating pad, but you’re touching its back—a puppy can still maintain its temperature at 97-98 degrees. It needs environmental heat, but it is not a lizard. It’s not completely at the whim of its environment. Once they’re out and they’re alive, puppies will maintain a 97-98 degree body temperature if they have a warm environment. So if you’ve got him on a heating pad, and you’re feeling his back, and it’s getting colder and colder, and it’s approaching room temperature, and you’re not seeing any breathing.. I mean, we don’t like to see abdominal breathing; we don’t like to see open mouth breathing; but the puppy is breathing! That’s when we use Susan’s oxygen concentrator. We’ve got some breath. But if we have a puppy where we are seeing this progression of negative indicators without any positive, I probably have never given up on a puppy in less than 20 minutes. But if over those 20 minutes, it’s getting colder, it’s getting more flacid, it’s getting bluer, there’s no breath (all the breaths are coming from me, accordioning or giving puffs), then that’s usually my indication. 

SP [25:24] One of the other tricks that I learned from the NICU nurses is 2 drops of super strong coffee on the tongue. Again, when I have a fading puppy, I’m of the belief that you can’t kill a dead puppy. I pull out all the stops, like Gayle. I will work. This is where a whelper helper is great. You’ve got someone else in there whelping if you have to concentrate on this puppy. I keep those Starbucks biopacks of espresso, where you just mix it up with hot water very quickly—2 drops on the tongue, and a little bit of glucose, which is karo syrup, on my finger. Because if I can get them started with that tiny bit of caffeine and that glucose into the system, sometimes that’s all it takes. It’s going through your toolbox. If one doesn’t work, then I move to another. I just kind of methodically work my way through all the tools that I have. Sometimes we can’t save. They just are not destined to take more than the first two breaths. But I will pull out all the stops.

GW [26:30] I am with Susan. I want to emphasize one thing that she said that not everyone may know. When we say 1 or 2 drops on the tongue, there’s a very specific reason for that. Puppies cannot gag. If we squirt things into the back of their mouths or we use a syringe to put things into their mouths, they are going to choke. They are going to aspirate. And we will have contributed to aspiration pneumonia. What we’re doing is putting 1 drop on the top of the tongue, right in the middle of the tongue—not the back of the mouth, not the cheek like you would with an older dog. And then if the puppy is alive, somewhat, it will smack. It will drink that. Ideally, you do 1 at a time. You do a drop, and the puppy swallows it, and then you put another drop. If the puppy can’t swallow (it’s just so lethargic and weak that it can’t), you can do 1 and then do the other, and then it’s going to slide down the side of the tongue. I do caffeine. I do coffee as well. Caffeine can kill dogs. Caffeine is a toxin. We always want to remember that. I think Susan’s comment is really important. We can’t kill a dead puppy. So if that puppy is dying, and the choice is I’m going to give it 2 drops of coffee or I’m going to bury it, I’m going to give it 2 drops of coffee. I am not going to give it 10 drops of coffee—

LR [28:10] And I am not going to feed coffee to its mother!

GW [28:15] Exactly. We call these starts—these things that can jolt a puppy into living. I make glucose solution out of karo syrup and Pedialyte and use that. I have—I won’t say overstimulated puppies—but I’ve dealt with puppies that are having sugar highs because they were dying and I gave them a few drops of this mixture, and for the next 3 hours, they cruise around the whelping box because they’re on a sugar high. But they’re alive!

LR [28:47] I’ve never used the coffee because that’s 2 drops that I didn’t get… I’m just saying! I think karo syrup and Pedialyte I really strongly encourage. Absolute worst-case crisis mode, everybody’s got honey in the cupboard. 

GW [29:02] Maple syrup!

LR [29:02] You might not have Pedialyte. You might not have karo syrup. Maple syrup, honey. 

SP [29:09] Table sugar and warm water. 

GW [29:11] It does have to be liquid. 

SP [29:15] It must be a liquid. It cannot be a powder. Going back to the caffeine, there are a lot of drugs that we all use and we all take, and this is why there’s dose and dose recommendations—because too much of any good thing is not really good. Even for adults. 

GW [29:31] Wine might be the exception to that…

SP [29:34] That doesn’t count. 

LR [29:35] There’s a dosage to that? I didn’t know there was a dosage. 

SP [29:40] But it’s really, I think, important that people understand, like you said, Gayle. I have children’s vitamin droppers, the glass tube ones. That is my drop dose. I’m not dropping from a spoon or from anything else. It is a drop. I want to say it’s one tenth of a tenth of a cc. It’s very small. That’s really important to understand. A little bit of something is a lifesaver. A lot of something will kill you. 

GW [30:11] That is another tool I use, Susan. Those glass eye droppers. The glass eye droppers that you can get at CVS or a pharmacy or from Amazon. You’re looking for a medicinal eyedropper. It does have a fixed amount. If you put a liquid in it, and you do 1 drop, that is a set amount. We’re not doing it out of a syringe. We’re not doing it from a spoon, as Susan said. We are doing it from a glass eyedropper because that is calibrated. That’s another tool that I have sitting, actually, everywhere because they are so helpful in dealing with puppies. 

SP [30:54] One of the other things that I wanted to touch on that you and I both are pretty adamant about is when we get these puppies going, the first thing we want to have them do is nurse. There is a window for nursing for colostrum, and the gut is going to close. Therefore, we do not want to tube-feed that puppy. We want that puppy to nurse off mom. 

GW [31:17] Ding ding ding! Winner! Winner! 

SP [31:22] Even if we have to allow stronger puppies to nurse right next to the other puppy which creates the letdown so the puppy can get milk or take a large 40-60 cc syringe, depending on the size of your dog. Cut off the top, flip it around, and you can make a breast pump to pull out the colostrum. That you can tube-feed. But whatever we put in—

LR [31:48] Wait, wait, wait! Stop it! Stop it. I need you to go back and do that again, because that is genius. Tell us how to do that. 

SP [31:55] Basically, you get one of the larger—again, I have large dogs, so I’m talking a 40 or 60 cc syringe like they use for cattle. It’s got this big tube on the front. I cut that off. 

GW [32:10] Separate the two pieces.

LR [32:11] The small pointy piece. 

SP [32:14] The pointy piece, off. Get a little saw. I just go to town. Then I take the syringe out from the end with the flanges, and I put it in the other end. So the flanges go up against mom, not the cut thing. You can get 10-15cc’s out at a time if you’ve got two active puppies nursing. You’re gentle. You’re not pulling it like you’re trying to start a gas mower. You’re trying to be gentle. I didn’t mean to make Gayle collapse with laughter. You can do this. You can do it with the smaller syringes. If you have a Chihuahua, you can use a 10cc. Same thing. Turn it around, cut it, take it off. But what you don’t want to do for a minimum of the first 4 hours up to 12—you want to make sure that that puppy has every opportunity to get the colostrum from the mother. 

GW [33:13] It doesn’t need to eat. At that point in time, a baby puppy comes with about 24 hours of energy, even a thin one. We can give the karo syrup. We can give the maple syrup, the honey, to give a little energy. But it doesn’t need food yet. It needs colostrum. It needs those antibodies. Really. 

SP [33:37] If you feed, what happens is you change the gut biome. It will no longer be able to be open and absorb the colostrum appropriately. 

LR [33:50] Gayle, Susan, thank you so much! This is amazing. We’ve had some really good ideas for people that have struggling puppies. Next week, we’re going to have more information on more topics on Breeder to Breeder. So, stop back by! Thanks, you guys!