Edensundown Labrador Retrievers
 

27-10-10 Puppets page

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Swimmer Puppies

How to save swimmer puppies and prevent them from becoming one.

Hi, I had my first swimmer puppy in 2010. After over 16 years of seeing puppies born I was not surprised as I had heard of them before but had never seen one.

 I had noticed that the pup of a litter of one had not moved around much. Sometimes I had noticed that the mother was pulling the pup to her as I walked past. The pup was very cute as she was the only one.  I had handled her every day but really did not notice her getting to fat, which made her rib cage expand out wards.

Puppet was not moving her back legs as she had no litter mates to climb over to get the muscles to work in her little legs. So due to that I had to get her to exercise them every day as much as I could. If they eat every 4 hours, normally they would move their legs that much, so I did Puppet around every 3 to 4 hours. I got her back legs and had to make her do a bicycle movement.

I had to get a sock and cut holes into it for her front arms and make sure it was not cutting into her legs or belly and put cotton wool balls in to the front of her chest under the sock to bring the ribs back to the middle of her belly.  Her front legs also had to be pulled into the front of her gently toward the middle of her chest together as if she was clapping her paws together but her shoulders had to be brought into each other to use those muscles as well because her front legs were stiff because she never used them.

My vet had told me to put her down, I told him I’ll take her home and work something out.  I got on the net and spent 5 hours reading on what I wanted to do to save her.  I also talked to 2 other breeders and got ideas off them.  I kept Puppet on her back as the pressure of her weight would  squash her organs  and would have caused a slow death over weeks.  As soon as I started the sock method and the exercises, she started coming good over night.  It’s the same as if we have a stiff muscle it needs to be worked on to stop stiffness.   

HOW TO PREVENT Swimmer Puppies in the first place.

I was told by a breeder to get towels and roll up like it was other Litter puppies so they have to climb over the  lumps under the blankets as if they were climbing over their litter mates. That way they will use their legs and they won’t get fat and their ribs will not expand outwards.

I really do hope this will prevent anyone from going through what I had to and seeing pups like this. If anyone would like to talk to me on how to save pups and you don’t quite understand what I have written, feel free to ring me any time. http://www.swimmerpuppy.com/saved/ebony/ this web site helped me a lot

 

Regards Paulene

 Phone (04 ) 2796 3755 or (02) 6496 3755  

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Contact Details

Paulene Andrews
Tamworth, NSW, Australia
Phone : 0427963755
Email : [email protected]