02/10/2024
Wishing the Sweeties a very happy 2nd week old Birthday and before I dive into details I wanted to first celebrate this before the sad story to follow. It’s easy to let grief consume you and take away from the sunny spots in life and being able to celebrate 2 weeks with this crew is something I’m beyond grateful for.
As for my past week and half, I could only describe it as a complete and utter nightmare. I want to share this story with you as I’ve always promised to be transparent as a Breeder. And breeding is not just cute puppies with pretty backdrops and adorable photo props. Its hardship and it can be absolutely devastatingly heartbreaking.
Firstly, I’m no stranger to grief. I’ve lost more important family members than a 39 year old human should and being a breeder, this isn’t my first loss nor will it be my last unfortunately. But losing a week and half old puppy is a type of grief that can’t be put into words. It is heart crushing. Unfortunately, on Friday my sweet girl Dolce was given her wings and she took her final breaths in my hands.
I weigh my puppies 3 times a day for the first two weeks as catching weight drops quick can tell you a lot about what is going on with a puppy – both good and bad. The puppies were now over a week old, thriving, gaining and fine. Blossom has been an absolute trooper and has been so mindful of her body, she’s excellent about cleaning them and the milk bar was plenty. It was in the afternoon when I noticed Sundae wasn’t nursing as strong and she had dipping in weight. If there’s one thing I am it’s being a visual person. Any change in colour I can pick up quick and while subtle, she felt off. I monitored her feedings closely and when she started falling asleep on the ni**le, I realized something was happening and I had to intervene.
The thing with neonate puppies is they can crash from a variety of things and the toughest part sometimes is figuring out what the main issue is. There is also certain orders to things you need to be mindful of. Want to kill a puppy quick? You feed it when its cold. I could max out Facebooks character limit by going on and on about treatment of these fading puppies. But, a “fading” puppy is a blanket statement which means a puppy is fading from SOMETHING which is usually one of the 4H’s. The 4H syndromes are four things that Breeder’s can measure. Those are Hypothermia, which is low body temperature, Hypoglycemia, which is low glucose or low sugar, Hydration or dehydration, and Hypoxia or low blood oxygen.
With Sundae, I was dealing with likely all four of them but I wasn’t sure what the root cause. So, what do we do? We start the fight to save them. This meant checking temps, tube feeding of both formula and electrolytes, giving sub-q fluids along with the help if heat and oxygen with my Puppy Warmer Incubator. I threw everything at her and within 12 hours, I had her back nursing.
It felt like only a second I breathed a sigh of relief as a hell storm hit me. One by one each puppy followed suit and began to fade. Some, like Lollipop, were very critical as she took over 24 hours to even try to nurse.
The feeling of picking up a puppy and have it feel limp in your hands hits us Breeders right in the gut. It is not easy to keep your composure with a clear level mind during these terrifying fights but it’s so important to try. One of the best resources I have are fellow breeders. I have a good 5 on speed dial to call when I need to problem solve or just talk it out and see if I’m missing any. These breeders not only encouraged me to keep fighting, offered solutions but gave me the words “Sam, you’re doing everything you can” which I needed to hear more than anything.
One by one, fight by fight I managed to pull through each puppy. All of them began to nurse and gain once again and I breathed a sigh of relief. I managed to actually even get a few hours of sleep that night and headed off to work the next morning after I checked the babies. At 8am, my puppy nanny arrived and we ran through everything and I noticed that Dolce didn’t feel right in my hands. I asked her to prioritize her feedings, which she did and by 11am she had a good feed of Momma.
But then, for whatever reason, she just stopped nursing.
I rushed home and when I saw her she was pale, limp and not nursing. There was not possible way that she was stepped on so what was this? I’ll tell you, that is the toughest pill to swallow. Sometimes…many times…we just don’t know what’s wrong even with a vet’s opinion.
The fight was on to keep her alive but this battle was different than the others, this one was far quicker and way more intense. She was pale even being in the incubator and any tubing I did, it wasn’t being digested. I fought for her for hours and decided that I would throw everything I could at her. When she began to agonal breathing I knew her time here was going to end. I kept her in the incubator as long as I could until I felt her fight was lessening and it was in my hands that she took her last three breaths as I held her close to my chest and told her how beautiful she was.
And then, my beautiful girl was gone.
I had a few comments said to me like “that’s why I don’t announce my litters until they’re safe” or “that’s why I don’t name them” etc. But this little girl, whether it was one day or more deserved a name of her own and her first photo.
Ithink that’s why this grief is so hard. I saw so much of my Sugarbee in her and I wanted her to grow into the beautiful beagle she was meant to be. It made me so angry she was robbed of that and I questioned not only my skill to keep her alive but myself as a breeder if I could do this again. To hold these little helpless balls of fur and know the potential they have to change someone’s life and home is both a beautiful and terrifying thing.
When I laid her to rest at midnight on Friday, I went back upstairs and collapsed into the whelping box with the remaining six and sobbed. In that moment I told myself I was done, I couldn’t possibly go through this again and that I’m not strong enough too. As I laid there with my palm of my hand facing upwards, Lollipop scooted herself and rested her head in the palm of my hand. The same puppy who was almost dealt the same card as Dolce but pulled through. And in that moment I knew I couldn’t let myself get swallowed by the grief of losing her and I needed to give myself credit that I kept six others alive.
We all process grief differently and it comes in waves and I still see her presence throughout my whelping room from the Fuschia paracord I made her collar out of when I needed another girl colour because I didn’t have enough to her name still written on my whiteboard recording her last weight.
And while I have moments of anger, I reflect back on this post that was once shared with me:
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🌈 The Rainbow Bridge For Breeders🌈
“Sometimes a dog comes to Rainbow Bridge who has never known kindness from a human being. Theirs was the hard life of a stray in the street, or worse, an abusive home. All they wanted from humans was a word of kindness, or a gentle pat; all they have known from humans is yelling, screaming, thrown objects, kicks, or worse. They have run from humans all of their lives. So this dog has no one to wait for at Rainbow Bridge. They have no way to get into Heaven.
So instead, they are sent back to Earth as newborn puppies, destined to stay for just a few hours or days. They are sent back to a good and conscientious breeder, who holds them, and rocks them, trying to keep them warm, who drips formula down their throats and tries to make them comfortable until they finally slip away. And then, they each return to Rainbow Bridge, and they understand what the other dogs are waiting for there. They each have their own human to wait for now, the one whose soft voice and gentle hands gave them the only tenderness they had ever known. And when that breeder finally passes from this Earth, these little lost souls join in greeting this human, their human, and they cross over Rainbow Bridge together into Heaven.”
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And while her time was short, she was given as much love as I could’ve given her and I am blessed to have the days I had. She will live on through the spirit of her brothers and sisters and I will work on being kind to myself knowing I did everything I could for her.
So, my dear readers, that was my nightmare. It may not even be over as we never know what challenges lurk around the corner. But, I’m happy to share these 6 Sweeties second week headshots with you and I cannot thank all who reached out with support and kind words enough. Having a support system in this is key and I have one of the BEST through a group of the most cherish individuals a girl can ask for.
Here's to sweeter, sunnier days and as always, thank you for following my journey in both the happy and sad moments. See you next week!
-An Exhausted Sam
