lifeinflux

Facing a Hard Reality – Days 10 and 11 (Friday and Saturday)

// January 31st, 2011 // Featured Post

Friday night, we realized that Panda was not doing any of the things the other puppies were doing. In fact, three of them – Carter, Panda and Bella, were all scrawny and not pooping the way our big five were. The three of them had not yet transitioned over to puppy food, Sunny was no longer nursing willingly and these three were in questionable straights. After a night of listening to Sunny whine and demand to go out simply to get away from her brood, we were exhausted and overwhelmed. So we bundled up the three puppies to get them checked and weighed. Pandy and Carter had not put on any weight. Bella had lost 9 ounces which, at this age, is a lot. We were given different puppy food (hard and soft) and told to get something into these three puppies. If nothing came of this, we’d have to talk about force feeding and IVs. As for Sunny, we all determined that this was a dog who had no idea HOW to be a dog and therefore we’d have to make her be one. As a final blow, we found out the puppies had fleas. So after spending over $500 on that vet visit plus all the medication to rid our entire brood of pets – Mimir and Kodi included – of their fleas, we headed home, exhausted. The three puppies were so tired we let them sleep until the entire brood was up and active around 1:30. We fed Carter, Bella and Panda first giving them straight fat via a nutritional gel supplement. Carter and Panda both took the gel like champs. Bella refused the gel, refused to eat and refused to nurse after we followed the vet’s directions, put Sunny in her crate with the puppies and basically put the puppies on her until they latched. After that exhausting exercise, we fed the puppies their usual puppy mush and then dosed every furry creature in the house with Capstar to kill the fleas. After shoving 11 pills down 11 unhappy pets’ throats, I was pretty much done for. So, we wrote off the rest of the day, stayed in the house and tried to rest as best we could in between picking up puppy papers, and trying to train them to pee and poop in one area and sleep/play in another. We were not successful. Bella still was not eating when we went to bed at midnight. And we decided to wait another week before continuing the potty training as the pups were just not ready. Per some well-intentioned instructions, we left food out for the puppies and isolated Sunny in her crate. We are calling that our BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER.

Sunny howled for the food from 1:15 AM until 5:50 AM. Somehow, miraculously, Drue slept through the noise (somewhat). Jason also slept through the noise. I, however, did not, and I sat on my bed cursing at both Sunny and Jason alike. Granted I recognize this is not Jason’s fault but I was so miserably exhausted and so jealous that he could sleep that cursing him felt appropriate at the time. Sometime around 3:00 I let her out and took her outside to potty whereupon I saw the neighbors were up. This could NOT be good. It meant they could hear Sunny as well! How that played out is a post of its own. The end result had me emailing our rescue at 6 AM begging for advice and assistance. I also reached out to a friend who specialized in training rehabilitated dogs and his advice was simple: Sunny needs to learn how to be a dog. This requires an enormous commitment AND rehabilitation. After passing along all concerns to the rescue, we were told we have two options: we can step up and try to rehab her OR we have to put her down. I won’t lie: at 6 AM with zero sleep, removing Sunny in ANY WAY POSSIBLE seemed like the solution.

However, at 11:30 after 3 and a half hours of sleep and a shower, I wondered what, if anything, could be done to really SAVE this smart, boneheaded, but completely lovable non-dog. So I started emailing people. I emailed people who specialize in cattle dogs and people who rehab dogs for a living. I emailed people about how to get rid of fleas safely. I emailed people regarding when we could really separate this litter from their mom and ensure ongoing success with these puppies (5 and 1/2 weeks is okay and 8 weeks is preferable). We’re knocking on week five so we’re really looking at another 3 weeks and change to go before the puppies are in great shape and can go to their forever homes. Jays and Drue got four hour naps in and I spent the time texting six different people who know quite a bit about cattle dogs gone wild. We were given two sound pieces of advice:

1. Make Sunny be a dog. Take her on walks, put her puppies on her to nurse, respect her wishes for alone time every OTHER time she asks, ignore her noise at night after telling her “bedtime, no noise” and see if that works. Feed her separately from her puppies. Feed her puppies prior to letting her out to nurse them. Do not leave the puppy food down at night; the puppies should eat enough during the day to be okay at night (and therefore sleep). Try her one night out of the crate with no food down. If that does not work, put her in the crate for the next night. Show her what a dog is and what good things come from being a dog (not a food stealing, counter walking, howling, growling impossible beast) and praise every little thing she does right. Set boundaries for even little offenses we’d ignore if coming from Kodi Bear and most of all, love on her constantly. Force her to acknowledge our place as leader of her and that she is part of OUR pack. And insist that the vet give her vaccinations on the 14th and work towards a full weaning by that Monday (pups will be seven weeks then).

2. Accept that all the puppies might not make it. It seems cattle dogs usually have 5-6 pups per litter. They are not equipped to really care for more and that if we require her to care for all of them (which we’ve been doing per advice from our dog board) she will stop caring for all of them. Let the three do what they will and let them either fight for their order in the pack or let them go. This is hard for us. We want all of them to live. But we also have to respect what Sunny can and cannot do. The amazing news is that by Sunday’s 2 PM feeding, Bella and Carter were out of the woods. Both were eating the puppy mush and Carter was sucking down the supplemental gel. Both were nursing well and by Sunday night, both had the beginnings of round puppy bellies. Panda, on the other hand, was and is heading downhill fast. After doing well on the supplemental gel, she started refusing it. Too weak to battle for a place to nurse, she stopped nursing and she refused hard food, soft food, mush and canned food. In desperation, yesterday, I force fed her a mixture of canned food and water strained down to liquid via a syringe. She fought me every step. Finally, I decided to give her 24 hours. If we don’t get a miracle from Panda like we did with Carter and Bella, we’ll have to take her to the vet and have her put down. I cannot bear to watch our Panda Bear suffer.

I wish I could say that with all the advice and support, last night went amazingly well. As with everything in life, we had our successes and our try-try-agains. The success was that Sunny went on THREE WALKS and on the second one, we introduced her and Kodi outside the house. Kodi approached her tail wagging and Sunny crouched but gave him a passing sniff. We’ll take that as a win. Sunny seems to enjoy her walks; rather, she’s enjoying being outside the house once she gets over her initial “HOLY CRAP! I’M OUT OF MY YARD!” moment. However, she does not sniff anything, cars terrify her and people confuse her. But she has gone around up and down our street a few times and even made it around the block twice. At this point, we’ll take that and call it progress.

Last night we left Sunny out with the puppies and pulled up all the food. They only nursed once which tells me they don’t need food from her at night. They also did not let her sleep and she was so desperate to get away from them, she scratched at the gate and howled a little at 12:15, 2:30, 3:45, 4:45 and 6 AM respectively. Each time I simply said “no no Sunny, bedtime” and she’d stop howling. Each time she’d stop howling, she got a treat. Small wins, right? The scratching continued which meant I got little to no sleep again. So tonight we’ll put Sunny in her crate from 11:30 to 6 and leave the puppies out with some water, their toys and pads and see if this is the magic solution. So last night was not the total success we were driving for but we got a few. Carter and Bella as of Sunday night have tiny but plump bellies. Panda is on a decline and if we don’t see something amazing happen Monday, we will put her down Tuesday to save her the pain of starving to death.

After contemplating putting Sunny down, we’ve decided as a family we want to work to prevent that from happening. With some help of new friends who breed and raise and rehab cattle dogs and a lot of luck, we’ll make it and Sunny will be the amazing dog she has the potential to be. Wish us luck!