It can be time-consuming and frustrating, as well as exhausting to take care of newborn puppies.
Newborn puppies should be kept constantly warm and their feeding schedule always on time. They should always be clean, as well as their environment.
If you do everything perfectly, you are giving these helpless puppies a chance to experience life further.
Here are some tips and advices that you can follow in taking care of your puppies, especially if it seems like life has handed you the responsibility all too soon.
Environment
You have to keep in mind that puppies are unable to regulate their own temperature yet, so they have to be kept comfortably warm.
You can build a makeshift ‘nest’: ordinary cardboard box with newspaper or paper towels covering the bottom part; the paper towels can easily be replaced with new ones if the puppies soil them. For the first week, you can place the box in a room with at least 90F temperature, and lower it to 85F on the second week, reducing slowly to 70F after four weeks.
A litter of puppies stay warmer faster and longer because they tend to sleep one top of the other, a puppy pile, and they help their brothers and sisters by sharing heat. Conversely, a single puppy will need more heat to survive.
You can put a heating pad or hot water bottle in the box with the puppies, or keep them under a 25watt lightbulb. Make sure, though, that only one part of the box is lighted or heated; the puppies might find them too warm, and they can move away to the other side when it happens.
Since newborn puppies don’t know yet how to regulate their own temperature, they can get either too hot or too cold, which can be really dangerous to them.
You can take their temperature using a rectal thermometer, if needed. A new puppy’s temperature would range from 94F to 98F. Over the next weeks, this figures will rise up to 97F to 100F, and up to 102F when the puppy is a month old.
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