licking bottoms 2

The Colic Story

Around about Wednesday night or Thursday morning of last week I was thinking everything with Taika & the puppies was going great. Everyone was sucking well and growing well. Even 2Toes, who had suffered a little setback, was catching up. Taika was learning the ropes of being a good mum and had finally twigged to the necessary cleanup job.

Then on Friday the puppies were starting to get a bit noisy. Jay & I were making fun of them, and wondering to each other, "Were the previous litters this noisy?" Of course, no two litters will be the same in their personality and development, so I try not to read too much into differences. However, they were definitely causing a noticeable amount of noise with their squeaking, squawking and whining, and at least 2 of them weren't settling but kept waking up to do circuits of the box. That should have been my second clue, really, but who knew?

By bedtime, 2Toes and Dino were constantly crying and nothing I did could comfort them. Taika wasn't bothered, but I didn't know if that meant there wasn't a problem or that she just didn't really care if there was a problem or not. I thought perhaps they were constipated from possibly not getting enough bottom attention from Taika, so I spent 2 hours trying everything I could think of and everything likely I could find online. I spent a lot of time 'licking' their bottoms with warm, damp cotton wool with only limited success. I rubbed their bellies, I massaged tiny amounts of olive oil into the tiny anus of 2Toes, who was by far the worst affected. In the meantime, Grey Wolf had started to cry as well.

Nothing was helping and the cries were getting worse and worse until by midnight I truly feared that they were going to die.

Into the hot water box went the 3 crying puppies and off we went to the emergency vet who only that morning had seen Taika to check her wound was healing as it should. Two hours later we were on our way back home. The vet could find no clear evidence of a problem, so we hoped it was colic and she gave the worst 2 an injection of anti-spasmodic pain medication. Can you imagine my relief when it started to take effect? By 3am they were settled and snuggled back in with mum and the following morning all was well once again.

What causes the colic? Don't know. It's possible Taika doesn't have as much milk as we would like and so the puppies suck a lot of air when they're nursing. Similarly, it's possible they are getting air from drinking too much, too fast (hear that, Dino & 2Toes?) So I'm just hoping it's the latter problem and that Taika's milk will last until I get the babies weaned, which should start in a week or so.

The puppies are now on occasional gripe water & belly massages plus a bit of extra Lactol here and there in addition to mum's milk just in case they're not getting enough to satisfy them. Oh, and I'm back to my regular bottom licking. One-week-old-puppy farts are surprisingly stinky.