Puppies!

Harriett stopped by the Champaign County Humane Society this afternoon and picked up a litter of seven, 7-week old puppies. The person who brought them in said they were found by the side of the road. All of the pups were all together so they couldn’t have been out for very long.

The puppies are being treated for coccidia and will be with us for about two weeks.

Britney	Christina
Miley	Jessica
Fergie	Taylor
Katy

The Little Rascals

After more than 20 years and almost 1400 foster animals you’d think we would have seen everything. Yet here we are with a completely new situation on our hands.

The Little Rascals are two foster litters, born to full sisters, themselves from the same litter. The moms, Tiny and Chocolate, only ten months old, gave birth just three days apart. Tiny had four pups and her sister Chocolate had six puppies three days later. The whole group was relinquished to the Champaign County Humane Society when Tiny’s pups were just ten days old. It should come as no surprise that their pre- and post natal care was inadequate.

female

female

male

male

Foster homes are in very short supply so we took everyone into foster care here. Sadly, Tiny didn’t make it, leaving us with four orphans. The puppies are a bit big given the size of their moms. Harriett had a hunch that Chocolate, who had been with Tiny since they were born, would be comfortable with the orphans. The problem was that she’s too small to to support all ten puppies. The compromise was to transition the smallest of Tiny’s litter to Chocolate’s care and bottle feed the remaining three. Harriett’s hunch proved to be correct and Chocolate accepted the addition to her litter, feeding and cleaning him as her own.

The incubation time of many diseases in in the two week range and we’re beginning to see some signs of illness in the pups. We’re going to have our hands full while we try to stabilize the situation and do what we can to be sure all ten survive. I’ll post an update in a few days.

Chocolate

female	male	female
male	female	male

Coco’s Litter

Yesterday afternoon Harriett stopped by the Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS) to pick up five 6-week old puppies. They were relinquished to the shelter with their mother, Coco, and two other dogs. Coco and the other two dogs are at CCHS and we’ll keep the puppies for two weeks.

I met Coco today to get a picture for this blog. She’s a nice looking dog and really tiny, maybe 20 pounds. When Harriett met her on Wednesday Coco approached and licked Harriett’s hand, but it took a bit of coxing for Shelter Manager Michelle to get her close enough to me to get this picture. The shelter was told she gets scared “if a man yells at her.” What’s that all about?

The pups are going to look a lot like their mom. They’re shy, but will be fine after they’ve been with us for two weeks. We don’t have names yet, but will pick some in a few days. Here’s the litter. The numbers next to the pictures are the CCHS ID numbers.

A066796 (M)
A066797 (M)
A066799 (F)
A066794 (F)
A066798 (M)

Twenty Years of Fostering

Twenty years ago today, Harriett and I began what would turn out to be one of the most rewarding projects we would ever undertake. That’s the day our first foster dog, Millie, a beautiful 4-year old Yellow Labrador, and her six puppies came to live with us.

Harriett became a volunteer adoption counselor at the Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS) in 1984. She came home one Saturday with a story about a pregnant 4-year old female Labrador who had been found running loose at Allerton Park with her mate. They were picked up by a park ranger who kept the male and took the female to CCHS where she gave birth to nine puppies. Probably due to lack of good prenatal care, three of the pups died at CCHS. Back then there was no foster program, no staff veterinarian, and medical care was limited to the basics. Knowing our love for Labradors, Sarah Hurley, the shelter vet tech, asked Harriett if we would be willing to take Millie and the six surviving puppies into our home until they were all old enough and healthy enough to be adopted at the shelter. We accepted the challenge.

Millie’s pups grew up here before returning to the Shelter. Harriett had been carrying a stack of puppy pictures around everywhere she went for weeks, and even without today’s internet-based social media, hundreds of people knew about the litter of Yellow Labs. They were all adopted within a couple of hours. Like most foster families, we adopted our first foster animal and Millie became part of our family and what would become known as our Base Pack.

We didn’t give fostering another thought until almost a year later. Peaches, an Akita/Shepherd mix, was rescued with her 11 newborn puppies from under a porch in a snow storm. The Shelter Manager thought it would be better for the pups to grow up in a home, and once again we took them in. About four months after Peaches and her litter left we took in Buttons, a little terrier mix with three pups. Little did we know that the floodgates were about to open. From that point on, for the next several years, we were never without puppies in our house for more than three weeks in a row.

It wasn’t only puppies that came our way. We had Leona the pig, L.K. the miniature horse, Lyvenia the pot bellied pig, Petula the pigmy goat, Mort the duck, and an assortment of cats and kittens. But mostly we had dogs and puppies.

We’ve had almost every breed of dog that’s common in this area: Labradors, Shepherds, Terriers, Beagles, Schnauzers, Coonhounds, Pit Bulls, Pomeranians, Dobermans, Rottweilers, Collies, Shelties, Bassets, Fox Terriers, Malamutes, Greyhounds, Airedales, Mastiffs, Retrievers, Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Border Collies, Boxers, Cattle Dogs, Spaniels, Dachshunds, Chows, Akitas, Chihuahuas, Huskies, and every mixture thereof. You name it, we’ve had it, usually with a litter.

Overall we’ve had at least 1,139 foster animals at our house: 96 dogs, 842 puppies, 39 cats, 157 kittens, and 5 other species. Of those, 982 were adopted, 152 died, 3 were adopted by us, and 1 was transferred to a petting zoo. Most of them were from the Champaign County Humane Society, but we have also taken foster animals for Douglas County Animal Control and two local veterinarians.

Our experience with Millie and her pups was the start of what would become the CCHS Foster Program. There are now about 39 licensed foster parents working with CCHS. Thousands of dogs and cats have been helped by the program.

Our mentor, Dr. LeRoy Neitzel, once told us that if we kept taking foster animals we would see many diseases. Little did we know we would see an alphabet’s worth. On Tuesday I’ll post about the types of things we’ve encountered over the last 20 years.

Panda’s Pups at Five

Panda’s puppies are five weeks old and growing. The weaning process started early last week with gruel made from puppy food kibble soaked in water until soft, then beat into a paste with a blender. They’ve already graduated to partially dry food and within another week or so they’ll be eating dry kibble.

The puppies have also had visitors and are doing well with their socialization. Puppies Jill and Bosley have been adopted. Each of the adopters has been out twice to see their pup and they’ve had a few other visitors as well. We’re happy to see that they may have inherited Panda’s personality. The pups are friendly and outgoing and not very mouthy for their age.

Panda, Charley, Kelly and Sabrina are available for adoption. If you’re interested in one of these dogs contact the Champaign County Humane Society for more information and an application.

Bosley (m)
Charley (m)
Jill (f)
Kelly (f)
Sabrina (f)

Chihuahua Pup Update

Bottle feeding orphans is a tricky business. You have to get the right amount of formula into them so they have enough liquids and nutrition, but at the same time you have to be very careful not to overfeed the pups or let them eat too fast. After we got the pups yesterday, we noticed that a couple of them were badly dehydrated. When the pups are dehydrated they don’t feel well. When they don’t feel well they don’t eat properly. When they don’t eat properly they get more dehydrated. It can be a vicious, fatal cycle.

To combat the dehydration we inject fluid under their skin. We wound up giving fluids to four of the five pups at first. After a few hours only two puppies still needed fluid support. They each got two more subcutaneous injections last night. I’m happy to report that by this morning everyone is stable and we haven’t had to give any fluids today. Four pups have maintained or gained weight. Unfortunately, puppy #5 has lost about 10 grams since yesterday so we’re having to keep a very close watch on him.

The amount of milk replacement formula the puppies need is calculated based on their weight. These puppies weigh about 4 ounces each and need 30 – 35 ml of formula per day. The feedings are scheduled to evenly distribute that amount over a 24-hour period. We’ve settled on 3 hours between feedings during the day and 4 hours at night. That means we only have to get up once at night to feed the pups. There are a total of 7 feedings times each day so each pup needs to drink 5 ml of formula at each feeding. To convert that into measurements that may be more familiar, each pup gets one teaspoon of formula at each feeding and a little over 2 tablespoons per day.

We track progress by weighing the puppies twice a day. We consider them making progress if they gain some weight each day. If the weight stays the same they go on the watch list. A decrease in weight means a serious problem may be developing and we have to give that pup special attention. In another day or two I will begin posting the weight chart at the top of the left column of this blog so you can track their weights with us.

Tracking Progress

For the next few weeks Gertie will be taking care of the puppies’ nutritional and hygiene needs. Our job is to monitor their progress so we can catch problems before they get out of hand. The main indicator we use is the puppies’ weights.

For the next two weeks each puppy will be weighed twice each day. The weights are recorded on a log sheet and will be shown on the graph at the top of the left hand column of this blog. The log sheet is shown above. At the left-hand side of the page we have information that identifies each puppy. Included are the gender (‘F’ or ‘M’ at the far left) and a short description of color and unique markings. The times right under the ID numbers are the birth times.

We use a gram scale while the puppies are very small so the changes are more obvious. I convert from grams to pound for the graph we show on this blog. Gertie’s weight, in the last row, is in pounds.

You will notice that there’s a box drawn around the weights for Puppy #4. That box indicates that her weight has not increased and is a warning to us to keep an eye on her. No change or a minor decrease in weight for one or two weightings is not necessarily a problem because we may have weighed the puppy just before or after it has eaten. No gain or worse, a loss, over a 24-hour period means we may have to take action. We’ll be sure Puppy #4 gets time with Gertie in case she’s being pushed out by the other pups. Harriett will also give her some supplemental feeding to help her get going.

Meet the Family

Here’s Gertie’s new family.

Teslin (Puppy #1) male
Puppy #2 female
Gus (Puppy #3) male
Puppy #4 female
Puppy #5 female

More names will be announced soon.

Gertie and the Pups

Here’s the first picture of Gertie with her new family. The pups were only a couple of hours old when I took this photo shortly after midnight on Thursday morning.

Gertie’s Puppies Are Born

It’s been a long night.

Gertie had been showing signs of going into labor for the last few days. On Wednesday she started nesting, a sign that birth is imminent.

It wasn’t too far into our PuppyCam broadcast on Wednesday evening that Harriett, who had been sitting with Gertie by the whelping box, let me know that Gertie was having contractions. I excused myself from the online chat and went downstairs. I arrived to find the first puppy had been born. It was obvious she had been through this before.

We thought we saw six puppies on the x-rays, but by 1:00am it was obvious that Gertie was finished. There had been no contractions for about 2 and a half hours and she curled up to go to sleep. I consulted with the veterinarian (sorry, Rebecca!) and we decided that since she was clearly not in distress we would wait and see what happened.

The simplest explanation is that we misinterpreted the x-ray. When I look very closely this morning I can clearly make out five spines, but the sixth is “iffy.” I think we misread the films. This morning we’ll check in with the vet again and decide what to do.

Gertie and the pups are doing great this morning. All five are very active. We will have better pictures to post later today.

Puppy #1 born 7:15 pm male, 205 grams
Puppy #2 born 8:15 pm female, 230 grams
Puppy #3 born 8:28 pm male, 220 grams
Puppy #4 born 9:59 pm female, 220 grams
Puppy #5 born 10:06 pm female, 225 grams