Un-Wanted:Puppies?
Unwanted Puppies?
It seems it is “puppy” season again – and not all puppies are wanted! We often get in puppies and kittens found by the bins. It can be a difficult one to explain to the lucky “finders” that as they have picked them up, they are now responsible for them. In rare occasions, we take them in and foster them ourselves, but it is very hard work and we are probably the people less indicated as we’ve got very little spare time. So, we only do so if the people that found them are on holidays and can’t organize homes for the little ones themselves (then there are other types of tourists, that could say, where there’s a will there’s a way, and might smuggle a kitten to Germany in their knickers, but I obviously don’t know anything about that ;0). Otherwise the new pet-owners must bottle feed them until the puppies or kittens can eat by themselves, and then we’ll happily help out with finding new homes.
If you find a newborn animal by the bins there’s a lot you can do to save it yourself. First of all, babies are not good at all at controlling their body temperature, so if they feel cold and listless you need to heat them up quickly, with help of warm water bottles, heating blanket or hair-dryer. You have to be careful with the hair-dryer, the best thing is to make a little bundle with blankets and blow into it rather than directly at the animal, and keep your hand on the animal all the time to make sure it doesn’t get burnt. Once it’s warm and responds to stimuli you need to get some food in it. It’s best to get a special milk for puppies or kittens (I recommend Royal Canin Babydog – or cat as it comes with a start kit and doesn’t give diarrhoea, which is nice to avoid when you have a litter of 4-5 small ones in a box), but as you’ll often find the babies when everything is closed, you can give them normal milk with a syringe to get by. Until they reach the age of minimum 10 days, you’ll normally have to feed them every 3 hours, which means getting up during the night as well. After those 10 days you can feed them more during the day and they normally sleep through the night.
It is important to stimulate the anus and genital organs with a wet tissue after each meal, in order to help the puppy or kitten to pee and defecate, the mother would normally take care of that. When they are around 3 weeks they can start to eat by themselves, it makes it a bit easier to be a foster carer, and at that age they look really cute, moment to take some good pics and make someone fall in love with them! Face book for example works really well for re-homing puppies and kittens.
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