How to Care for Week-Old Newborn Puppies

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Dr. Greg McDonald. I'm a Veterinarian in Santa Barbara, California. I work in McDonald Animal Hospital. I want to talk a little bit about newborn puppies. When puppies are first born, oftentimes people don't exactly know how to care for them and the reality is that the puppy, the mother will take care of them almost exclusively; but there are a few things that we should be doing as owners to try and ensure that the puppies are doing well. One of the first things that we need to know about with newborn puppies is that they should be gaining weight everyday. So in literally, it's kind of nice to be able to identify which puppies are which so that you can tell if they're gaining weight everyday. That way you can take them out of the, the litter box and go ahead and weigh each one of them; be sure that they're actually gaining weight everyday. If a puppy doesn't gain or starts to lose early on, that's a very serious sign and you should contact your Veterinarian. Another thing that you should do with newborn puppies is kind of check and be sure all of of body parts are there and they're working properly. You look through their ears and be sure that they're healthy and they don't have an infections. You can look down inside the ears like this. I don't recommend that we actually put anything down in the ear where you can't see; a little Q tip around the top parts here is fine. The navel is right down here and it should be closed off in a new puppy and there shouldn't be any little holes in it like that. If you can put your finger in it; it is sometimes, the skin is held over but they have an actual hole that goes into the abdomen and your Veterinarian would be need to be notified if that didn't close off properly during the birth thing. You can look at their mouth; you look up here on the upper palette like this, she actually has a retained deciduous tooth over here. You can see this little puppy tooth is still here; but this is an older dog; we're talking about newborn, newborn dogs. The other thing that's very very important in puppies that oftentimes people don't understand is that they need to be handled. We want puppies to be domesticated and the more people that handle a puppy when they're young, the more used to it is, they are as an adult and they go through that humanization process and they make much much better pets when they're handled a lot and handled frequently. Now we also have to worry because some other dog and very, various breeds are different in this regard and they can be very protective of the puppies especially when they're first born. So we don't want just all of the neighborhood kids running in and, and are having a free range with the puppies. It should be adult-supervised and oftentimes it's safer if you know your dog could be aggressive just to control them other a little bit while you go and check the puppies. That means putting a leash on or maybe holding away or even going and taking her for a little walk while you're working with the puppies. So just to review, it's very important that you check the weights on them everyday. Be sure that they're gaining weight and also to look and check all the body parts. Be sure that the, they, their navel is close properly and that they're, they don't have any soft palette or anything like that. So good luck with your new puppies and they're always lots of fun."