Toffee's puppies 3,5 weeks old

[Kasia Czapla]

Some of you know already the story of our struggle for Toffee's life. After the whelping everything seemed to be OK, Toffee had milk, started feeding the puppies and seemed to be bit tired but fine. Usually the bitch is "cleanig herself" few day after the whelp. But with Toffee the bleeding started. It was comming from the inside of her uterus. Four days after the whelping we had to ask the vet to come and make ultrasound - we thought there might be still something inside. But he said everything seems to be good, except from the bleeding. Toffee was getting weaker and weaker, her milk was not good enough quality, so to save the puppies we started bottle feeding them. On the day of Crufts we had made the decission to open Toffee, as her temperature was only 36,6 and she could hardly get up from the bed. I was at Crufts, so Bodzio called our friends to take care of the pups and he took Toffee to his vet. After opening her it turned out that the uterus was clean, but there were small wounds after puppy bags that wouldn't stop bleeding. So the decission was - SAVE TOFFEE - SPRAY HER. Her complete uterus was removed and bleeding stopped. She got connected to a drip for rehydration. Few critical hours, but in the evening she seemed to be better already. In the meantime aunt Malinka was cleaning the puppies and taking care of them. Next morning Toffee was already much better, she was eating her first meal (Polish sausage ;). It took her some time to recover (she is still not walking too fast and not daring to jump), but got back part of the milk (we are still helping with bottle) and she takes care of the puppies (with a little help of Malinka sometimes ;)
So it was quite stressful period for us, luckily Toffee survived and puppies are growing OK. It was her first and last litter, but you always have to look at the positive site. But I do not wish any of you to go through the same horror.

More photos of the puppies on my website www.diervilla.pl

[Kasia Czapla]

Dear friends, I would like to thank you all for your kind words. I am not so often online lately due to change of my job and also duties with the puppies (in fact now pleasure with the puppies). But its really nice to feel your support. We've gone through hard time, but now it can only be better. Puppies are super sweet and playful, for almost a week they eat starter puppy food with some meat in. Getting dirty all over and making me and Bodzio dirty even more ;) Toffee is back in shape also, starts enjoying running in the fields close by already.
I will try to post more photos later this week. THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN and greetings from sunny spring like Poland!!!!!