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The Dehydrated Puppy!

A puppy can become dehydrated very quickly. It must be fixed quickly or heart will be affected and the kidneys can be damaged; your puppy will die.  If the puppy cant get enough from the mom, you will need to hydrate the puppy.

A good rule is: smaller or weaker pups who are full term should be fed or hydrated every 2 to 3 hours. I use the rule of 2 hours. If the puppy doesn’t get mom’s milk once every 2 hours, problems begin. 

Sometimes all that is necessary is to hydrate a pup, warm him, give him some time to rest in the incubator and he will be ready to go back in with the mom.

You can bottle feed him.

You can feed him by tube feeding.

You can inject fluid into the tissues immediately under the skin.

If the puppy has diarrhea, you will need to use sub-cutaneous hydration.

If your puppy does not appear to have diarrhea and is dehydrated, you can use oral hydration.

Bottle-feeding will work on a stronger puppy with a strong suck reflex, but if that puppy had a strong suck reflex, chances are pretty good he would do just as well next to mom.  And if so strong how did he get dehydrated?

Tube feeding will frighten you at first. There are even articles on the internet that tell you how dangerous tube feeding is, vets in debt from school still write these web pages, so you will instead pay them exhorbetnat fees to do the same thing you will be able to do.

Tube feeding has been around for a long, long time, before vets graduated $200,000 in debt. It is the arguably safer than bottle feeding.  Bottle feeding sometimes results in pneumonia.  It can deliver the exact correct amount of fluid, to the very right place, in the least amount of time.

In addition, if you use tub feeding it will allow for hydration using Pedialyte, protein feedings or a combination of the to. Baby foods can be thinned and fed by tube and medications can be given by tube.

It is easy to learn how to tube feed.

You will think certainly you will kill the puppy. But then you will finish the task when you realize in certainty that the puppy will die without it.

A size 8 French feeding tube is perfect for a pup up to 8 ounces. For a pup weighing a pound and a half or so, a size 10 French tube is fine.

The same companies that sell the feeding tubes will sell you the matching syringes.

Measure the tube by laying the puppy on his side on a clean, covered surface. Find the last rib. The last rib is the approximate level of the stomach. Hold the tube at the level of the last rib and just place it alongside the puppy until you get it to the level of the mouth. Just imagine where his esophagus would be and lay it along the side of the body following that pathway. Mark it with the marking pen right at the level of the lips.

Insert the tube holding the puppy and insert the tube into the puppy's mouth. The puppy will fight you the most as you get to the back of the throat. That is where his gag and swallow reflexes are. It is uncomfortable for him when the end of the tube hits those areas. Just push past the resistance at the back of the throat and keep pushing the tube in until the mark made on the tube is at the puppy’s mouth.

If it stops too early and it will not go farther, then you are probably in the lungs, which begin about the puppy’s elbow. If you get the tube into the trachea, the puppy will be turning blue because you have occluded his airway.

Syringe in the food/fluid source with the syringe held above the puppy's head. Push the syringe in slowly, not forcefully. If milk comes up out of the nose, you are feeding the puppy too quickly. If the puppy is crying, all the better, because as long as he is crying, you can rest assured that the tube isn't in his lung.

When removing the tube, crimp the tube near the baby's mouth and quickly withdraw it. Crimping will keep the tube from releasing the milk in the tube as it is withdrawn. If milk is coming out of the tube as it is withdrawn, there is a chance it can get into the trachea and be inhaled into the lung.

Your puppy will need approximately 15 ccs of liquid food source and/or Pedialyte for every 2 ounces of body weight per day.

Pedialyte contains important electrolytes, water and glucose. It does not contain protein. It is a short term solution only. Eventually you will need to feed the puppy milk (protein).

Keep feeding him every two hours for the first day or so, weighing him often to make sure he is gaining weight.

The sooner the puppy is able to go back with mom and nurse, the better.

There isn’t any substitute better than mother’s milk.

Be sure to keep the tubes and syringes clean between feedings.

Basically, 2-3 times per day will be sufficient for the sub-cutaneous hydration unless it is the only source of hydration available to you. Then, you will need to increase the times per day that you can hydrate using the sub-cutaneous technique.

If a puppy gets dehydrated, a vet would administer 80-100 ml per kilogram of puppy weight sub-cutaneously or intravenously but he would deliver that amount of fluid with a full IV set-up versus a syringe. Depending on different diagnoses, a vet might choose to administer normal saline, dextrose and water or Lactated Ringers, but for keeping on hand in your emergency stores, Lactated Ringers is the best choice.

Buy a bag of Lactated Rangers or another type of IV fluid from your vet. Once you have begun to use your IV solution, keep it refrigerated.  The container will be a clear plastic bag, sort of like a balloon. At the bottom of the bag will be a rubber port. It is that port that you will use to withdraw the amount of liquid that you will need. Just push the needle into that port and withdraw what you need. Warm it gently and proceed to use it.

Inject the fluid near the shoulder in the neck, just as if you were vaccinating the puppy. Once the needle is under the skin, inject the IV fluid into that area. Once it is injected, there will be a soft watery little bubble there under the skin but it will absorb quickly.

Once you have begun the process of hydrating your puppy, you need to check the color of his urine often. You will know the puppy is getting enough fluid when his urine is light straw colored. If the urine is dark, he is dehydrated. If the urine is almost colorless, you may be hydrating the puppy too much.

 submitted by Alan Nafzger

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