Hand Rearing Seven Puppies

Welcome to our blog about our seven puppies, how we ended up with them, the highs, the lows and everything in between. Written by their foster mum who is one of our team members.

Currently the puppies have no company sponsors so if you have a company and would like to help pay for their care with a one off donation please get in touch, we get thousands of views on our social media posts so it’s great advertising. Your name will go here for all to see 

Thank you so much to ‘Your Company’ for sponsoring ‘Colour of Collar’

Whilst camping with my son, I got a message on the Facebook page from an owner who needed help with her dogs, a mum and her puppies. I offered immediately to go home early and pick them up the next day. The owner asked us to pick them up the following Monday and said now she wanted to keep mum so we’d be hand rearing the puppies. Not a problem, I’ve done it many times over the years and will give my all to save them. We got everything ready and I prepared for no sleep, it’s part and parcel of the exhausting challenge that is hand rearing puppies. Hand rearing is a full time job that consumes your life, it can make you ill and it forces you to cancel plans until they are old enough to be left for a few hours. Even coffee with a friend becomes take out and take home. It’s unpaid, no one here takes a penny. I do it because they need me. Their life depends on me to make sacrifices, I’m not complaining, far from it, but donating to help us save more lives is greatly appreciated. This is part of all the hard work that goes unseen, my arms are covered in scratches from them clinging on to be fed, starving little puppies who don’t know that there is and unlimited supply of milk and they can have it any time they want it. I have had the most of 3 hours sleep since they came home, the first night was a half hour nap. I’ve spent a fortune on cleaning products, kitchen roll, puppy milk, blankets and more. Thankfully we’ve had some donations and their wishlist link can be found here to help if you’d like too, we really need puppy pads, puppy chew toys and vet bed type bedding. Thank you  Amazon.co.uk

Monday came, I was ready, their mum was ready for them to go as she’d started showing signs of aggression towards them and was barely feeding them. She’s lost a lot of weight and was really struggling. At 1pm I collected seven little bundles of worry and took them home to warm them up and start feeding them. If only it was that easy, some of them took to the bottle well as they were starving, we don’t know when they had last fed from mum, others had to be syringe fed as they wouldn’t accept the bottle at all. We were very concerned about their poor condition, never before had we seen puppies so skinny. The vets gave them fluids under their skin to try to get them through the worst, I was already doing everything they suggested and more, so there was nothing more anyone could do. Their malnourished bodies were struggling to cope, all we could do was hope giving our everything was enough.

I was syringe feeding the flat ones almost hourly, having to keep them awake as they were so weak all they wanted to do was sleep. I was so scared they wouldn’t make it, taking just 10mls of milk at a time before refusing to swallow and letting it dribble out of their mouths. I let them nap as I bottle feed the ones who would take it before going back to the weak ones to try to get more into them, gently waking them up and trying for another 10mls, their tiny tummies couldn’t take much more. The bottle fed ones were on around 40-60mls per feed in the beginning, they soon worked out how nice is it to feel full, seeing their sucked in abdomens become plump little bellies was brilliant. I was wiping their bottoms to help them go to the toilet and burping them as needed too, little puppy burps are adorable.

They are set up in a pen in the lounge, I’m ‘sleeping’ on the sofa 2 feet away. They get 24 hour care and on demand feeding. The floor of their pen is 90% heated by heat mats. There is a foil backed blanket under them as well to ensure they stay warm as they couldn’t maintain their body temperature. With blankets wrapped round to prevent any drafts, my heating is on too. These gorgeous little babies have everything they need, they just need to keep fighting to survive.

Pink, the smallest little girl took a full week before she had her first bottle feed. Yellow worried us a lot too, Red was on and off but mostly on. Then we have Green who never missed a feed, Orange the same, Blue was fussy, as was Purple; but as time went on, everyone fed better. Relief has started to overtake worry, but we know it’s still touch and go, they are still at risk.

Today, 9 days after picking them up, all seven German Shepherd cross Labrador Retriever puppies are causing much less worry, usually everyone feeds well but Pink can still refuse so she gets a syringe feed as needed, they go to the toilet themselves and have had the smallest heat pad turned off because they can keep themselves warmer, meaning 60% of their pen is heated now and they lay on the warm bit as and when needed.

Their collars are rainbow themed for a couple of reasons. You can’t help but smile when you seen a rainbow in the rain. The pot of gold at the end of their rainbow is a bottle of milk. And sadly, their mum lost all the puppies in her last litter. We have offered support for mum if needed, currently her owner is managing.

Thank you all so much for your donations and your support, it means the world to us and enables us to save lives just like these puppies

Donations can be made via Paypal to info@chesterfieldanimalrescue.org.uk or via bank transfer to Chesterfield Animal Rescue, Sort Code 20-20-50 Account Number 93038009

You can drop items off at 3 Loundes Road, S18 4DE but please do let us know when you’re coming so we can make sure someone is there.

We will keep updating this post with news about how they are getting on, thank you again