Day 6 A.M. & P.M.

Mary-Ann Sontag June 1, 2020

All is well, although Sage seems to be whining quite a bit this morning. He is eating well and moving about — he just seems discontent.

Puppies need stimulation for both urination and defecation — mother dogs do this by licking. To ensure Sage does not have uncomfortable toileting issues, I held him as Daisy performed duties all human moms are glad to say are not part of THEIR job description.

There is no obvious issue with Sage and since puppies can get stomach aches — and he gained 1.5 ounces overnight — I will try to quell my anxiety while keeping a close eye on him. (Update: Sage seems slightly more content).

I wonder how people who do not camp out at the whelping box would even know low-level whining is unusual and signals discontent of some kind? Although, they do say ignorance is bliss.

As usual, Dear Husband did a great job with the overnight shift. Puppies continue to gain well and evenly, in part because we do nursing prime times based on the previous 12-hour weight gains.

For example, I weighed each puppy this morning. After their weigh-in, they went to the little nest as I weighed the rest.

Once everyone is weighed and out of the whelping box, I clean and change it and then Daisy nurses the least-gain group plus an extra or two to help with milk letdown…

…while the other group continues to sleep.

Once the least-gain group has had their fill, everyone is back together; puppies need to be with their moms, and not just during feeding.

I continue to read up to inform and enhance my awareness of what newborn puppies need — and do not need.

They absolutely need continued and appropriate maternal behavior and contact. Anything that interferes with maternal behavior is Bad News for puppies.

I am struck with how often initial reaction to hearing that “optimal” may not match typical practice is for people to point to positive outcomes — “my puppies turn out just fine” or “I got spanked (drank from a hose, ate Lucky Charms, walked six miles to school — uphill in both directions) and I turned out just fine.”

People smoke for 60 years and die from being run over by a bus — that doesn’t mean smoking doesn’t have negative health impacts.

Children are abused by parents and go on to be successful — that doesn’t mean the abuse did not impact them.

As we understand more and more about the brain, stress, and trauma, it becomes so clear that we need to care about what constitutes an adverse experience for a newborn, and do everything we can to avoid those things.

Sometimes we cannot avoid a Bad Thing and then we need to mitigate in informed ways to reduce the damaging impact of the Bad Thing on a puppy or infant.

All of that involves an openness to learning, and an appreciation for knowledge. Most of all, we need a certain humility to embrace the reality we don’t have all the answers and continually need to learn new things.

I LOVE learning and do not feel diminished when I find out I need to adjust course — but I know that is not how everyone handles new and different information.

New puppies do not need to be intentionally and externally stressed. Period. No evidence supports this practice and there is plenty of solid research to suggest it is a bad idea — and it is unnecessary.

Newborn puppies regularly have periods of challenge they resolve in developmentally appropriate ways that typically end with the maternal attention that seems key to creating positive hard wiring in puppies.

For example, Larkspur was frustrated because Daisy’s foot was not producing milk (!)…

I watched as he whined in frustration and tried to figure things out. This went on for some minutes. He moved in the wrong direction multiple times. He searched different parts of Daisy’s feet for a nipple. Finally, Larkspur was successful in orienting himself to the milk bar…

…and was therefore reinforced for his persistence, problem-solving, and scenting work with a meal.

I could have helped him but that kind of event is the real-life and developmentally appropriate learning experience we want for a new puppy. Larkspur was never away from his mother, could smell her at all times, was secure enough to keep working, and received reinforcement for his sustained efforts/success.

This happens all day long — I know because I am here to watch and observe.

The puppies do not need me to provide additional stressful events. Their newborn life — blind, deaf, unable to move well or regulate body temperature or even poop on their own — provides all the challenges a newborn puppy needs.

EVENING: Photos from the Day

I am pleased to report Sage settled down and has been perfectly fine all day — whew!

Sage probably wishes his sisters would give him some personal space!

Mariposa and Larkspur spent some time circling each other trying to decide who would get the top bunk.

I am not sure it ever got decided.

This photo of Mallow just makes me laugh — he was twisting his way through Daisy’s legs.

Good Night!

Day 5 A.M. & P.M.

Mary-Ann Sontag May 31, 2020

The whelping box does not render me impervious to current events. As I said on Facebook, voting in November will be an act of heroic and necessary bystander intervention.

The cruelty, the incivility, the corruption, the pandemic, the deaths. This is exhausting.

We need to remember it is okay to take breaks from the outrage — that is, in fact, the only way we can sustain it long enough to be part of the necessary changes.

Therefore, I give you puppies — and a break.

All is well here. The puppies are — knock on wood — thriving.

Sage, Paintbrush from the rear, Lupine, and Larkspur - with Mallow in drape mode.

Weight gain is one of our best indicator of how things are going. The smallest puppy — for now — is Mallow; he weighs 17.15 ounces, but is up 41% from his birth weight. Sage is the biggest — for now — at 23.95 ounces but Lupine is nipping his heels at 23.35 ounces.

You will note the noses are blackening up at different rates — they are like fingerprints right now. I did not know this was Larkspur until I checked the distinctive nose pattern.

Daisy continues to be a thoughtful, careful, and attentive mother.

This is Clover the Adventurer on one of her frequent walkabouts — or maybe I should say, dragabouts.

I find their configurations endlessly fascinating — I bet you can tell.

This is Clarkia and as you can tell, she will be darkly marked on that left side.

Markings are tricky. I get that people have preferences — AND it hurts to hear a puppy who was so thoughtfully and carefully bred is somehow less worthy or desired because of something so superficial as markings.

In a “show” puppy, the markings are a bigger deal. In a puppy who will do performance events and/or have an interesting life as a companion, markings are so much less important than all of the other things — like temperament, for example.

This is how I see it: If love for a puppy is conditional on something so superficial as markings — well, my puppies deserve better than that.

When humans are perfect, they can demand the same of a dog.

Photos from the Day…

Day Four A.M. & P.M.

Mary-Ann Sontag May 30, 2020

Holy Rabbit Hole — or should I say Rat Hole?

First, all is well here at Puppy Central.

Daisy continues to be an excellent mother. Puppies are kept clean and shiny, and all are gaining weight well.

We feed Daisy as much as she wants to eat, including during the night shift, because making all that milk requires a lot of calories.

Yesterday I posed the question about whether newborn puppies experience pain — that is the source of my Rat Hole comment above.

There is not a lot of research on newborn puppies — and after reading what they do to baby rats, I say THANK HEAVENS for that — but there is a surprising amount of research on newborn rats. This is, in part, because the rat baby research has implications for the care of preterm human infants.

Who knew?!

Rat pups are born in a similar state to canine puppies and so rat research is relevant to dogs. Further, if baby rat research informs knowledge/care of preterm infants, it is not a big leap to suggest what we know about preterm infants may also have some application to newborn puppies.

I do not need to rely on Google for my research — thanks heavens — but I like to know what people are reading when they search terms and questions. As I checked things out yesterday, I was reminded the internet may not be helping our critical thinking skills (Aysha says, “you think?!).

The heading in one post read, “Studies Reveal That Day-Old Puppies Do Feel Pain.” To support this assertion, the author proceeded to mention ONE article by a veterinarian with no citation. I spent some time trying to track down the mentioned article — turns out it was 26-years-old!

Both the way-too-old-to-mean-anything article and the post that mentioned it had a definite bias, and this is another thing to watch for when trying to find answers. Even if you share the bias, it doesn’t help one get accurate answers — and shouldn’t accuracy be what we want?

Yes, I know facts get in the way of what we believe and/or want to be true, but they do seem rather important when one wants to make a good decision.

But I digress. Sort of.

Back to the rats and preterm babies.

Newborn rats respond in physiological ways to painful events and stress — and not good ways.

For example, Dührsen et al. (2012) studied the impact of painful events on newborn rats, and they concluded, “severe inflammatory pain and pain caused by repetitive injections in neonatal rats may cause major changes in the developing brain during the first week of life” (p. 35).

In humans, “exposure to repeated neonatal pain-related stress is associated with altered brain development, function, and neurodevelopmental outcome in children born preterm” (Vinall & Grunau, 2014, p. 586).

You can find ample literature supporting those conclusions. Basically, painful and/or stressful events in preterm babies and rat pups are a Bad Thing and can have long-lasting implications for neurological and physical development.

What about more gentle events — like early handling?

In one study of pretty benign (from my perspective) handling of rat pups, there were positive benefits seen in later tests of some skills BUT the researchers concluded this was: “…likely because of consequent boosts in maternal care which is certainly involved in the modulation of hippocampal function and HPA axis response, responsible for individual differences in stress reactivity and in cognitive performance…” (Plescia et al., 2014, p. 15).

In other words, they suspect it was the maternal behavior upon the return of the rat pup and not the brief separation (which was quite kind — nothing added to make it more aversive) that caused the benefits.

Huh.

Let’s talk dewclaws — those are typically removed in the first week of a puppy’s life and absolutely represent an aversive event.

ACK.

Front dewclaws are functional and there should be no question about those — they stay on my puppies.

But what about rears? The Breed Standard says they are to be removed.

Five of the Wildflowers had no rear dewclaws, two had just one rear dewclaw, and two puppies had both rear dewclaws. These were removed by our veterinarian with local anesthesia (buffered lidocaine — the buffering helps it not to sting so much) followed by quick access to Daisy for nursing.

Based on my research over the past day or so, I will explore a topical anesthesia and also add some kind of puppy pacifier during the procedure — sucking during painful procedures helps preterm babies and would be easy to do with puppies.

My take-aways…

Newborn puppies should NOT be intentionally stressed or subjected to painful or aversive events; these have the potential to essentially change the hard-wiring of a puppy and not in beneficial ways.
When newborn puppies are handled (in gentle ways — for example, weighing and cuddling), return to the mom in such a way to stimulate positive maternal behavior.

Why do some continue to insist newborn puppies are not impacted by pain? Perhaps for the same reason Carpenter (2020) suggested many continued to posit human baby boys did not feel pain during circumcision — because “…it was convenient” (p. 56).

Knowledge — so darn inconvenient.

Can Sage make his way to the milk bar? Watch THIS to find out.

Work Cited (and a few of the additional things I read to inform my thoughts)

Carpenter, L. (2020). If You Prick Us: Masculinity and Circumcision Pain in the United States and Canada, 1960–2000. Gender & History, 32(1), 54-69.

Dührsen, L., Simons, S., Dzietko, M., Genz, K., Bendix, I., Boos, V., . . . Felderhoff-Mueser, U. (2012). Effects of Repetitive Exposure to Pain and Morphine Treatment on the Neonatal Rat Brain. Neonatology, 103(1), 35-43.

Plescia, F., Marino, R., Navarra, M., Gambino, G., Brancato, A., Sardo, P., & Cannizzaro, C. (2014). Early handling effect on female rat spatial and non-spatial learning and memory. Behavioural Processes, 103, 9-16.

Roofthooft, D., Simons, S., Anand, K., Tibboel, D., & Van Dijk, M. (2014). Eight Years Later, Are We Still Hurting Newborn Infants? Neonatology, 105(3), 218-226.

Victoria, N., Karom, M., Eichenbaum, H., & Murphy, A. (2014). Neonatal injury rapidly alters markers of pain and stress in rat pups. Developmental Neurobiology, 74(1), 42-51.

Vinall, J. & Grunau, R,. (2014). Impact of repeated procedural pain-related stress in infants born very preterm. Pediatric Research, 75(5), 584-587.

Xu, W., Cong, X., Mcgrath, J., & Henderson, W. (2017). The Impact of Cumulative Pain/Stress on Neurodevelopment of Preterm Infants in the NICU. Nursing Research, 66(2), E26-E27.

The Blog

Reflections and Reports about Life, with Dogs

Day 6 A.M. & P.M.

Day 5 A.M. & P.M.

Day Four A.M. & P.M.

Search Posts