Episode 27 - How “Hands On” Should You Be With Neonate Puppies? Finding the Line Between Supporting and Interfering.

11/12/2024

This week’s question is about whether you’re supporting or interfering when you help mom with her neonate puppies:

“…I've noticed that you lay in the box with Velvet and provide significant assistance to her. Among many groups of breeders, there is a faction who strongly advise to essentially let Mom alone in the first days as she has instincts and knows what to do, and that the presence, participation, and assistance of humans may be bothersome to her.

So, I'm wondering if this is breed dependent? Or an individual preference?”

In this episode we talk about:

The variability of maternal behavior
How much assistance you should give your dam with caring for her puppies
Supporting your dam without interfering with her instincts

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

TRanscript - Episode 27

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist. And this is a Puppy Culture potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

This week's question is about how involved should the breeder be with caring for the puppies? And here's the question.

We're expecting a litter next week, and I'm going to the Newborn to New Home course for the first time. I've watched the Puppy Culture film multiple times with our other litters, but this is my first time through this course. I'm really appreciating all of the detail.

My question is that I've noticed that you lay in the box with velvet and provide significant assistance to her. Among many groups of breeders there's a faction who strongly advise to essentially let mom alone in the first days, as she has instincts and knows what to do, and that the presence, participation and assistance of humans may be bothersome to her.

So I'm wondering, is this breed dependent or an individual preference? Our girl is a golden retriever. She's had two other litters, and I've been fairly hands on. She allows me to be in the box with her, but prefers other members of the family to keep a distance. She's had large litters, one of ten and one of 11, and it's a lot for her to keep up with.

She's not had a C-section, though we did experience this with our other retired mom when she had a singleton. And I love the Joy of Singleton's course, which was a lifesaver. I'm just pondering about the divergent thoughts on the amount of human participation.

Okay, this is me again. I can answer this in one sentence. Shortest podcast ever. The customer is always right and your dam is the customer.

There is tremendous variability in maternal behavior in dogs. Some is breed dependent, but a lot is just individual. The most important thing that you can do is read your bitch and give her what she's asking for, because they're not all asking for the same thing.

Just a for instance, my girls, not only don't they want a dog in the room with them when they have puppies in the nursery? They don't want a dog within eight feet of the door to the nursery. So we have to gate off the hallway, going to the nursery so no dog can come anywhere near that door.

In contrast, I have a friend that breeds Rhodesian ridge backs and her whelping box is in the middle of her open floor plan house and her dams are not comfortable unless all the other household dogs are lying around the outside of that whelping box. So neither one of these dams is better than the other. Neither one of these pictures is more correct than the other. One dam perceives any dog as a threat to her puppies, and the other one doesn't feel safe unless she has her pack around her.

You can’t argue with them. Give them what they want. Interestingly, footnote those ridge back dams that had to have all the household dogs around the whelping box, there was a qualification to that because those dams only wanted the other ridge backs around the whelping box. There was one German shorthaired pointer in that house, and they would not tolerate that dog around the well-being box.

So listen, they've got their own logic. Don't try and figure it out or impose your own will on them. Just go with the flow. And the same is true for human company. All of my dams want me and Mark near to them. Most of them are okay with our extended family, but I have definitely had dams who would not tolerate anyone except me and Mark. Again, it's really up to her. Whatever she's telling you is correct.

Now, the only other thing I would add is that yes, if your dam is extremely competent and she is protective of her puppies, you should just get out of the way and let her do her job. But that having been said, you still should be aware of how she's reacting to your presence or absence.

She may not want or need you to handle puppies and put them on her, or help her clean them, but she may like you to be in the room or sitting nearby supporting her. So even if your dam is competent, and even if your dam perhaps doesn't want you to handle puppies or help her in that way, you still want to be in tune with her needs, because there's a lot of ways that you can be supportive without literally being hands on. And she may appreciate that.

You know, I do think there's a thought out there amongst some breeders that you really shouldn't have to help a dam, and that helping a dam in some way might kind of spoil her. I'm not going to put too fine a point on this. It is dangerous and irresponsible to tell someone that they should just expect a dam to do a good job on her own, and tell you to just leave her to it.

You need to watch and see what's going on and read the dashboard of circumstances. Changing dashboard. Dam in trouble. Eclampsia. Mastitis. Puppy struggling. Adjusting dams, food. If you if you're not watching constantly, even if you're not hands on. If you're not involved intimately in what's going on in that whelping box, you're going to be playing catch up when there's a problem.

And we see it all the time on the boards in, not the Puppy Culture board, but some of the big open boards. The more public boards - breeders with bitches with really way down into a big problem with either puppies or bitches, because they just left the bitch to her own devices with the puppies. So if you always 100% unequivocally need to be involved.

The question is, is the involvement observation or is it actual hands on involvement?

So there were some good comments on this. Let's see. Here's one.

I have Havanese, so little dogs, there's no fear of them overlaying a puppy. They're all great about that. And I think their size makes it less likely anyway. But how much help they need in the beginning has really varied.

I can't actually get in the whelping box. A box that I could lie in would just be way too big for my breed. But the box is right beside the bed in my guest bedroom, and I stay there for at least a couple of weeks. The amount of care has varied from one litter where mom was fabulous, caring for her pups and gathered them to her like little chicks the moment they strayed away, to my last mom, dot dot dot, I would hear a baby squeaking away and wake to find that it had rolled away from her. I would get up and she would be laying there staring at me as if to say, would you go take care of that for me? She never once retrieved a straying pup. I couldn't leave her at all until the pups were able to get back to her on their own.

Fortunately, that is still well within the two week window, so I could get back to my own bed. So I agree with Jane. The mom gets to choose.

Yeah, I mean, a couple points here. Definitely there's a direct proportion between the size of the dam and the amount of really active monitoring that you're probably going to have to do at least when it comes to dams lying on puppies.

Just as the size of the dam goes up, the likelihood of her smothering a puppy goes up. It's individual. Some dams are careful more than others. But generally speaking, it's not as much of a concern with the little ones. However, with the little ones, their body temperature is so, I should say, hangs in such a delicate balance that just straying away from the mother for a short period of time could be life threatening.

Whereas with a bigger puppy, maybe that isn't as big a threat and not an immediate threat. So yeah, you always have to be monitoring different reasons, different considerations, but you always have to be monitoring. Here's another comment.

I have to say, I watched you in the box with velvet and thought, oh, I won't need to do that. Perhaps that's a bull terrier thing, dot dot dot, then our bitch whelped and didn't want anything to do with the puppies to start with. And I literally had a camp bed on the floor next to them all for the first week. She didn't know what to do with them and needed help feeding and cleaning. I guess you just don't know how they'll be until they are there.

Well, ain't that the truth. So in sum, in my opinion, I would never leave a litter of puppies with the dam alone completely unmonitored, for the first two weeks. I monitor the dam and the puppies very closely, even if she's very competent. I sleep right next to the whelping box. I've never had a dam that wouldn't tolerate that.

If I did, I wouldn't force myself on her. But if there is any way that you can sleep right next to that well-being box, I highly recommend that you do. Because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, especially when you're dealing with things like a mastitis that can go from not even detectable to life threatening in a matter of hours, or a puppy that can go from thriving to fading and dying with just a few degrees of temperature difference.

You don't want a toy with this. I mean, it's up to you and your tolerance for risk and how invested you are in nature taking its course. For me, my emotional and financial investment in these puppies and their dam is huge. I'm staying in that room with them.

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Thanks for listening. Bye bye.