Neonate Puppy Care with Myra Savant-Harris

Watch Myra Savant-Harris have a conversation with Good Dog’s Head of Education, Dr. Gayle Watkins, about neonate puppy care, including reasons for sick puppies, how to treat hypoglycemia and constipation, and warming boxes.

Further Reading

• Reproductive behavior of free-ranging rural dogs in West Bengal, India
• How to Avoid Heat Stress in Your Puppies
• Body Temperature of bitches in the first week after parturition measure by ingestible loggers
• Hypoglycemia in dogs: Causes, management and diagnosis
• Antiviral Drugs for Veterinary Use 
• Investigation of the antiviral effect of acyclovir on canine parvovirus infection
• Pregnancy Loss and Abortion in Dogs
• Fluid Therapy
• Subcutaneous Fluid Therapy Administration in Dogs
• Factors contributing to the decision to perform a cesarean section in Labrador retrievers Cesarean Section in the Dog

Transcript

Cat Matloub I just want to kick things off with an enormous thank you all for joining us here this evening. And thank you so, so much, Myra Savant-Harris, who needs no introduction (but Gayle will give one anyway), and Gayle Watkins, Good Dog’s Head of Education. For those of you who are already Good Dog members, members of our Good Breeder community, it’s just awesome to see you back here. For those who aren’t yet, please check us out. We’re a community built to educate the public and built to support and recognize dog breeders. If you’re a dog breeder and you like education, money back on health testing, all kinds of awesome benefits—check us out! With that, I turn it over for the main event. Gayle, please take it away. 

Dr. Gayle Watkins Thanks, Cat! Hi, everybody. I’m so glad to see folks from all over joining us today. As Cat said, I am the new Head of Education at Good Dog. I’ve been breeding Golden Retrievers for about 40 years, after I retired from the army. I did an army career, and after that, I started Avidog. You may be familiar with the courses in dog breeding and puppy rearing. I’m still actively breeding and involved with Goldens. Today, I have the incredible honor to introduce Myra Savant-Harris. Myra is a retired labor and delivery nurse and a NICU (or neonatal intensive care unit) nurse. She was a breeder of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. And, perhaps more importantly, the mom of 10 children, the grandmother of 30, and I think the great-grandmother of 18? If that’s what I just heard. You may know Myra through her seminars (that’s where I first met her, at the Hudson Valley Golden Retriever Club Seminar), her Facebook group, or you may have one or all of her books, including Puppy Intensive Care: A Breeder’s Guide to the Care of Newborn Puppies, which is an incredible book to have in your library. Today Myra and I will be having a conversation about the care of neonate puppies, from birth to around 3 weeks of age. Myra, thank you so much for joining us today. I can’t wait to get into the conversation. I’m going to turn it over to you. 

Myra Savant-Harris It’s a real pleasure to be here. And it’s a pleasure to always be in contact with dog breeders. It’s been a joy for me to do over the last 20 years. Most of the things I have learned, I’ve learned from dog breeders. They share with me their little tricks of the trade, the little things they’ve been doing with their dogs, and almost everything that I teach is something I’ve learned from other dog breeders. 

[3:11] Radiant Heat for Newborns

GW Myra, can we just stop for a second? Tell me: how do you keep your puppies at 95?

MSH I do have a very specific thing that I always instruct them with and that is that mom’s body—you have to keep in mind, if she’s at 104, as she’s producing milk, the last thing in the world she needs is to be hit with heat. She can’t take the heat! Her body temp is already growing. Use something, what the term is is a radiant heat. Use something that the puppies lay on but it does not get to mom! Mom can lay off to the side and breast feed and care for her puppies. Right away, the sun lamp is out. That heats mom, which interferes with mothering and interferes with milk production. What I recommend is some product that the puppy lays on. Scott’s Whelping Nest—that’s what it used to be called. What I recommend is a Seedling Mat. It’s a gardening tool. The gardening Seeding Mat comes in different sizes. It comes in a 15x9, which is a warming box size. It comes in a 20x20, which is for a toy breed. A toy breed could use that. And it comes in a 48x20, which is, you know, nice and wide. It’s a nice long piece of equipment. You can buy it on Amazon. You can buy it in most gardening stores. It’s just a Seedling Mat. It’s thin plastic. It comes with a thermostat. It does take some tinkering, because it comes with a sensor so you’ve got to fiddle around and figure out how to get that sensor under the puppies so they can sense the body temp. But once you get it all organized and you’re used to using it, you can set it at 95 degrees. The puppies lay on it. You can easily put a puppy pad or something thin over the top so that they get a little bit more footing and a little more traction. Then you don’t have to worry! And you never change the temp on it. 

GW I was just going to clarify. You don’t keep your room at 95 degrees. 

MSH I don’t touch any room or anything that touches mother. Mine have all laid on radiant heat. From the beginning, that’s all. You don’t want to heat the room. You don’t want to have a sun light. You don’t want to heat the mom. Just think: I don’t want any source of heat that the mom is subject to. Because she’s already running a body temp because of milk production. That’s the main thing you’re thinking. 95 will protect his testicles, and 95 will protect mom from being overheated and allow her to manufacture milk and happily nurse her babies. That’s A. 

[6:28] Reasons for Sick Puppies

MSH Now, let’s move onto once you got your puppies at the right temperature degree. Let’s move ahead. Say they’re 10 days old, and one of them starts going downhill. We’re not going to be talking about the things that can infect a whole litter, because we just don’t have time. But how about one puppy who is distinctly acting different? Here are the things you’re going to notice. You’re going to notice that the puppy will not be in with the other puppies. He will not be nursing. And, most importantly of all, when you pick him up, he’s limp. He’s a little cold to the touch. He’s a little bit cooler. He doesn’t have muscle tone. If you pull one of his little legs straight, it won’t bounce back up like it’s supposed to. When you pull a back leg straight like that, when you let go, it should bounce right back into place. They don’t. They lose muscle tone. They lose that feeling of warm, healthy puppy. They have one of three things going on. It’s just one of three different things that can make your puppy—there’s probably more things going on, but broken into big general terms, your puppy either has a birth defect that you can’t see (it can be any type of a birth defect inside: cardiac or pulmonary or kidney, anything) or the puppy has gotten dehydrated with low blood sugar. Because those things are always going to go hand-in-hand. If a puppy is dehydrated, the puppy is also hypoglycemic. The reason for that? He’s dehydrated because he’s gotten sick or he’s ill, and he’s no longer nursing. Milk is very high in sugar. You’re going to be looking for that third reason. The third reason is a virus or a bacteria. We’ve got an entity (like an organism, a virus, or a bacteria) that can have infected this puppy. He can have fallen off the nipple or been bumped off the  nipple by a stronger puppy. It doesn’t take that much time. Think of the little amount of time that it takes for a puppy to dehydrate. They nurse sometimes 18 or 20 hours a day. If a big puppy comes and bumps him off a nipple once when he’s hungry, he may settle down and just go back to sleep. But if the next big puppy bumps him off the nipple a second time he tries to nurse, by then, 4 or 5 hours have passed, and he may have pooped by then and peed a couple of times. Now he’s really dehydrated with hypoglycemia. 

[9:41] Treating a Sick Puppy

GW Myra, I think that’s a really important point that we all need to support each other with. You talked about working with a puppy that is struggling. What do you do to work with them?

MSH Well, the first thing you do is determine that little things like trying to latch him onto mom (normal things you think) or if he’s been off the heat source, he’ll chill—those are just obvious things. You touch the body, it’s cold. You know you’re going to save that puppy by warming him up. 

[10:17] Treating Hypoglycemia 

MSH The next thing you have to assume is whether it’s caused by a virus, a birth defect, or just falling off the nipple, he’s dehydrated and he’s hypoglycemic. The question I ask at every seminar is: What do you think kills him first? Hypoglycemia or dehydration? Because one thing will kill him faster than anything. Hypoglycemia. Ask any diabetic. Hypoglycemia is going to be the first thing to kill him, but it’s also the easiest thing to fix. So easy! In your cupboard, you will have maple syrup, karo syrup. You will have molasses. Anything that’s kind of a consistency that you can wipe on the tongue. I always recommend, in our little puppy kits, those little tubes of frosting. You know the ones that come in the box about that big? It’s got four tubes of different colored frosting? That’s one of the best tools we have out there. Because it coincides with nursing. We use color in tooth feedings for even adults, humans. Say you sense that he’s not doing well. Crap. He’s all limp. I can’t work on a virus at this point. I can’t work on a birth defect. But I can fix the hypoglycemia before it kills him! The reason it kills him first is because the brain (your brain and the puppy’s brain) only consumes glucose. We may talk about protein and carbohydrates and fats, but the brain is the one that’s only eating sugar. That’s why diabetics go into comas. The brain only eats sugars, and if their blood sugars drop low enough, the brain is yelling, “Feed me!” That’s first. That’ll kill the puppy faster than anything. It’s so easy. Open your cupboard or take your little frosting (preferably a colored frosting), wipe it on the tongue. Wait a couple of seconds. See how he does. Sometimes they’ll start smacking or react to it. If not, do it again. Same color. The benefit to that is that now, mark your chart. Say: I put blue frosting on his tongue at 1:00pm. Then keep watching. Now you’re going to hydrate him. Give the glucose time. It’ll be absorbed through the mucous membranes, both through the tongue and under the tongue. The mouth and the rectum are both very receptive. They will catch on quickly to liquids. Most of all, they’ll catch sugar. Anything that’ll get into the bloodstream through the mucous membrane of the mouth. Start with that. 

[13:17] SubQ Fluid Therapy and Using Colored Frosting to Assess Diarrhea

MSH Next thing is: be prepared ahead of time to SubQ hydrate. Pull a syringe. Pull a needle. Inject it into your IV fluid that you got (get all of these things on-hand before you ever even breed a litter). Then you do a little SubQ hydration at the back of the neck. Warm it up. You can either go like this, hold it under a warm faucet long enough. Anything that will heat it. If I had a puppy that I was working with, I would fill two or three syringes and put it in my bra. Eventually, I would hurry hurry to warm up the first one, but these other syringes are reaching my body temp. I sell IV fluids all the time. They’re expensive to ship because they’re a liter. It’s like a quart of fluid. I would recommend lactated ringers because there’s electrolytes in it. The size needle I recommend is a 25 gauge or a 26 gauge, but it’s best to look for a short needle, a ¾ inch needle with a plastic hub. So, a 25 or 26 gauge, almost like an insulin needle. It’ll force you to go very slowly, but it will also keep from overwhelming the puppy. You just need to have any hypodermic needle with a short hub. Longer needles are harder to control. You want a short needle. You want to fill up the syringe, make sure you’ve got it warmed up. Nice and warm lactated ringers. Don’t warm the entire container of lactate, because it just leads to it getting older faster. Lactated ringers have sugar in it, too. You’ll use a little needle, a little fine needle. Hold up the little tent at the back of the neck. And then just slip it into that little tent that you made—not on the muscle, not into the muscle, but into the skin. SubQ. Subcutaneous. Now you’ve treated the blood sugar, you’ve treated the warmth of the puppy (you’ve gotten him warm, just a plastic bag and some warm water), you treated the blood sugar with the frosting, and you’ve identified if he pooped that blue fluid out in 30 minutes to an hour, he’s been pooping all night long and he’s gotten dehydrated. Well, then at that point, you switch the colors of your frosting. Switch over to a red or a green. You switch the colors, and then you just continue to watch the puppy. The dosage on that SubQ (but you can repeat it; this isn’t intended to be a one-time dose), be thinking that it is healthy to give 1 cc of SQ fluid for every 1 ounce of puppy weight. It doesn’t matter—if your puppy is 15 ounces, then 15 ccs may sound like a lot. It’s not really that much. Temp of the SubQ fluid, if you can get it to 95 or 96, you’re in business! You are just in business with 95 degrees. And remember: put it in a bra! Most of the dog breeders I deal with are women. Stick some syringes filled with fluid, just walk around all day long with it stuck in your bra. When you get it out, it’s going to be about 95 degrees. And then you can hit the puppy with it. 

[17:17] Warming Box

MSH I’ve been teaching the concept of building a warming box, ever since when I first wrote Puppy Intensive Care, and I think that was 2002. So since 2002. There’s a video of me building it on Youtube. (I’ll come back to that ratio again, don’t worry.) I got it everywhere. It’s on the video on the back of my Puppy Intensive Care book. I show you how to put together a warming box. Now they make a bumpered crate pad. Put together a box that’s heated. It can be just a sterilized box. I know that a lot of breeders have gone to incubators and things like that. If you can afford those tools, that’s fine. That’s fine—but your puppy needs to be with his mom. If I get another photo that somebody sends to me of their poor little Yorkie bitch in an incubator with 4 little Yorkie puppies (because one of them was sick), I’m going to be screaming mad! The concept that works best is how you can keep the baby with the mother. A warming box is going to keep her close. You can keep her close to the baby. Only keep them in there until they start coming around. With IV fluids and sugar, so many of them do. 

[18:59] Treating Constipation 

MSH You’re not going to tube him. This is not a time to feed him. But once he warms up and his body is warmer and you’ve done the blood sugar and you’ve done the glucose again (I mean, you’ve got his blood sugar up using the frosting and you’ve switched colors now, a different color of frosting), how about—if it’s been 3 hours and he has not pooped at all—remember when you used the blue and then maybe you went back and used the blue again? And you’re waiting and you’ve got him in your warming box, which is like a little intensive care unit for your puppy. You can control oxygen in it and all kinds of heat. How about if he hasn’t pooped and it’s been 3 hours? Then you would be pretty surprised because that’s diagnostic, too. That means that the puppy has gotten constipated. Constipation is a little less common for a puppy than diarrhea, but altogether possible, and it happens a lot. The treatment for constipation is really, really easy. 

If you’ve used a different color frosting and time has passed, you’re still on blue until he poops.

Constipation is easy to treat, too. It’s a little more dangerous for the puppy because now he loses his appetite primarily because his bowel is full, but it’s so easy to fix, and it’s cheap, and you can find it in every drugstore in town. Don’t do enemas! Don’t be using a water enema! The problem with water enema—there’s two of them. One is the danger of rupturing the rectal area and the colon. I know of a puppy whose mom gave it an enema. The last time, she ruptured the interior of the intestine and the puppy died of sepsis, and when they did the necropsy, they found the tear. I never recommend those things. Besides that, water on its own—there’s got to be a reason why when we hang an IV, it’s never pure water, right? In hospitals, you’ve had IVs in different settings. It’s never been just H2O. It’s always been either normal saline, half normal saline, lactated ringers. We’ve always got sugar going there some way. You want to avoid. Remember when I said this (the mouth) and the rectum both absorb liquid? True fact. If you’re giving water enemas, the baby can absorb the water with nothing to offset it like the saline or the electrolytes. Use milk and magnesia. 

For the diarrhea, your vet has stuff that works pretty well, too. There’s one called Endosorb. But what I recommend using is either The Pink Stuff, which currently isn’t getting manufactured (they lost too many workers to the Covid situation) or slippery elm. I sell slippery elm but you can also buy it. You can find it. Powder and in capsule form is really good. Not Milk of Magnesia, in an enemea, but Milk of Magnesia by mouth. A wipe on the tongue! 

GW About how much? Just a wipe? 

MSH A wipe on the tongue, and then 3 hours later, a wipe on the tongue until the puppy poops. The side effect of Milk of Magnesia is diarrhea. Big whoopie. That’s kind of what we’re after there for the beginning. For the long-run, the diarrhea will clear. 

[22:56] Resorptions of Fetuses

MSH I have a question about why puppies are reabsorbed during pregnancy. Here’s what I know. I know that in livestock in general, farmers have known for decades that certain animals have more young implants than are delivered. It’s just been common knowledge. With the advent of vets doing ultrasounds, it sounds like a brand-new issue. It’s not a brand-new issue. What I want to remind you of is we ovulate 1 egg, and 1 egg gets fertilized and implants. We’re only a 1-egg mammal for the most part. But guess what! One in 5 pregnancies that implant in the human are miscarried, which is not absorbed because we have a different center of gravity. I know they use the term reabsorb but it makes it sound like it was absorbed once and then back. Remind yourself that 20% of all human pregnancies end in a misscarriage. If your bitch has absorbed/reabsorbed some of the puppies that initially implanted, it’s not that uncommon a thing. We didn’t even start talking about it until ultrasounds came along. Because we know pigs do it. We know rabbits do it. It’s less common with horses and cattle, but again, we’re talking a 1-egg entity. These are mammals who ovulate 1 egg at a time. 

[24:38] Green Discharge During Whelping

MSH I think the topic of green discharge is worth some talking! 

GW Go for it. 

MSH And I’m going to go for it, if you’re okay with it. I’m going to get my little visual aid. I have it right behind me. I’m going to bring it back. I handmade this little thing, based on a picture of a puppy in its placenta. This is what it looks like. 

GW Hold it up a little higher.

MSH A little higher? Better? There you go! What this shows—and I’m telling you, don’t ask me to make one for you because it’s hand-stitched, except for the placenta. All of this was hand-stitched! It took me forever and a day to identify how to put it together, but this is a little stuffed puppy. He actually has his little nose right there. It shows the two amniotic sacs. This is the outer sac. And then there’s the inner sac. There’s two amniotic sacs on every puppy. It’s a routine thing. Here’s the picture of the placenta. You can see it. 

GW Up a little higher. 

MSH That murky green, and then it has the red there in the middle. This is what they look like, and this is the position they’re in in the uterus. They’re either head-down or back-feet-and-the-tail-down. This is all velcroed. The outside of the placenta is velcroed to the uterine horn. You know what makes it green? Really look at this and tell me how is this defined as fetal distress? That’s a human thing. It has nothing to do with the canine. This is the canine placenta. It has green zones on either side. The green is caused by the filtration from mom and baby. Her blood is going into the baby to keep it alive. And then the puppy’s blood is coming back through a vein into the mom’s body so she can clean out the urine and the waste and the blood from the puppy. This is where the dead red blood cells end up, in these little green bands. Dead red blood cells—a really important concept. This is where it’s done in the puppy. But in a human, it’s done in the liver and the gallbladder. Think back a minute. Think back to the time when you had dry heaves, and you went into the bathroom and you threw up until you were just throwing up bile. Remember its color? Greeny yellow? That’s because when the liver cleans out the dead blood cells from your blood, it stores the leftover liquid (which is that icky, murky green-looking stuff) in your gallbladder. If you’re retching and throwing up, it comes out of the gallbladder and it is discharged through your mouth. It causes that green look. Here’s the other time you see green. You see green all the time. If you have a big bruise—a big, ugly bruise!—and then at first it’s kind of red and purple, then come back and look at it three days later. It’s yellow-green. Remember back to when you’ve had bruises. They change color. In 2-3 days, it’s no longer purple and red. Those red blood cells that were released from capillary damage when the bruise happened have now died, and they’re green-y/red, murky-looking crap.