It's Puppy Time: Are they healthy?
- Amber Higgins
- Jul 4, 2016
- 7 min read
Summer Newsletter
Here's an article I wrote a few years ago that has appeared online at ehow.com and Triond
I thought this post might be helpful if you are ever wondering if your puppy is healthy or looking for a new puppy or your dog is having puppies. Also, these indicators of a healthy puppy work as well for adult and older dogs. It's always best to make sure your dog is feeling great before starting a training session. Our dogs, like us, work and learn better when they are feeling the best.
Best of all, healthy puppies are a sight to behold, they run, tumble, growl, and grunt, chase tails and chew on ears. Healthy puppies climb the puppy pile; they snuggle down deep together and wake up quick to come running over your feet heading out the door to the next adventure.
If you are planning to get a new puppy or start training a new dog it is important to make sure the puppy or dog is healthy to prevent the spread of illness and to ensure the dog is ready for the experience.
When puppies are present, one of the most important precautions we can take to assure that they are healthy is to observe the puppies in their own environment.
If a puppy will be joining your family it is best to make sure that the puppy is healthy before
coming into your home and that the puppy is the right age to be in a new environment. It's a good idea to ask the person you are getting the puppy from if you can look at where the dogs live and play, also where the puppies asleep.
If at all possible spend 5 to 10 minutes watching the litter of pups while they are sleeping. Do not disturb the puppies right away, instead you should do a visual assessment by "looking them over" from a short distance away. This can be very helpful when determining the state of health of puppies from newborn and up to adulthood.
Healthy puppies will be laying around comfortable, breathing even, little paws kicking in dreams. They will have shinning coats with pink pads if real young, and pink tongues. In sleep, the healthy puppy will pacify the nursing instinct by making suckling motions like nursing on nothing but sometimes on brother’s foot or sister’s ear.
During the visual assessment, look at the puppy’s bed and make sure it is clean and bug free, and that the puppies have access to a clean potty area. Take a deep breath and does the air near the puppies smell clean ? or have a bad odor ? Make sure the water bowl is clean and easy to reach.
Puppies that need attention or medical care have a tendency to lay alone while sleeping or with others who do not feel good either. They get tired easier. They will appear to just be laying there moving very little, mouthing and kicking less until woke up and they will take longer to wake up and run compared to a robust pup. The poor puppy’s fur will look course, drier, dirty, or oily feel or look, and there will be an sick odor when puppies are not well.
There will not be an odor to notice with healthy puppies. Puppy potty will smell but once cleaned up properly the odor goes away until the next potty time. However, if a foul bad smell lingers in the air long after the potty is gone then the is possibly germs in the air or a sick puppy making the odor.
Sick pup smell is very hard to clean up and there is a difference if we are observant. Every illness has an odor of its own and if a puppy does not smell good then it will not be feeling well soon. I was taught by veterinarians to do this type of visual assessment with every animal encountered and I do it simply from habit after so many years.
Doing regular visual and hands-on assessments can save valuable time when we are living with animals and helps you to notice when the animal is in need of help.
After watching the pups snooze and checking them out, wake the puppies up without food being available or given and watch them play, run and do their thing.
The differences of healthy and unhealthy puppies can be seen when puppies are wormy and sometimes sick by other diseases, such as in how they react by being slower to wake up and not looking for food or way more hungry then usual and searching for food with big pot bellies or without bellies and very thin appearance. Each difference depends upon the cause of the illness.
The sick pups may also start crying immediately or whimpering when woke up while satisfied puppies who are non- wormy and in excellent shape will go potty, get a drink of water and play, if called they may grab another puppy by the ear on the way to greet you or after they see you, if you are not offering them food.
Healthy puppies are soon hungry, in five or ten minutes, they will be crying for food if without a mother dog or all over the mother dog if they are with her. Healthy puppies are happy to play around waiting for their food while not so healthy puppies cry for attention because they are not happy.
By watching them, you can get a fairly good idea if they are as healthy as they should be and which puppy is in excellent shape and which is in poor shape.
The next step in determining if they are healthy is to do an individual puppy assessment by examining one in the litter. Any pup will do from the group or the one you favor the most, if you are picking one out to join your family then it is a good idea to do this with that pup too, before you take it home.
Do Not touch any puppies that are not yours and show signs of illness if you have any dogs at home. The sickness can very easily be carried either on your clothing, shoes or hands back to your dogs at home. This is so easily done that walking from a wormy puppy area takes worms via your shoe sole to the next place you walk and some dog viruses, like distemper are in the air of dogs who are ill and these living viruses and germs can take a ride on you to the next dog.
To check a puppy: pick up the puppy of your choice but never pick them up by the scruff of the neck as this can dislocate the shoulder blades and cause damage to the shoulders. Always support the puppy’s whole body with your hands.
Smell the puppy. Healthy puppies smell good; clean like fresh air early in the mornings. Some people say they have a sweet smell. Sick or wormy puppies do not smell good, they smell bad and each illness has its own odor but all smell bad. Smell the inside of the pups ears and see if they look clean. Smell the face of the pup when you snuggle up to it and if it has bad breath that is a bad sign.
The puppy should not have a big fat belly, even after eating the stomach should be as wide as the puppy is overall. I have often heard people say when looking at young puppies, "oh that puppy looks so nice and fat, it's so healthy". When the pups have stomachs that look like a balloon or way over sized in comparison with the size of the pup. If a puppy has a potbelly, ask when it was last wormed or seek medical advice to check for worms. Worms aren't as common in some areas of the country as they use to be due to monthly preventive medicine given to dogs for fleas and heartworms.
Next, the fur is soft to the touch on healthy puppies. The skin is flexible, you can pick the skin up between between your fingertips and when released the skin will pop back into place and the skin moves easily when you rub the puppy showing signs of a well hydrated pup.
Sick puppy’s skin will dry out and lose its flexibility, if pulled up and released it will stand up or go slowly back in place because of less body fluids and the slower it goes back to place the more dehydrated the puppy is. Always keep ill puppies away from other puppies to avoid the spread of illness.
These basic clues and assessments can be done in only a couples of minutes. I hope this will help you to know when a puppy or a dog is healthy, sick or on the verge of becoming sick.
Healthy puppies to all !
Amber Higgins
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