If she had just died, would her puppies be still alive? I would have to operate fast and save the puppies.  This was a salvage surgery no veterinary surgeons would want to performed.

I checked her eye reflexes by touching her eye lids. There was life in the blinking of the eye.  Like the ebbing of the tide, she would leave this world within the next hour.

The Caesarian section had to be very fast. Time was of the essence. I palpated her abdomen deprived of fat.  She was the anorexic nervosa type if there was such a condition in the female dog. Eating bare minimum during pregnancy so that she would have an enviable slim figure.  No energy to give birth naturally.

I gave her the electrolytes and dextrose first. Then I gave her anaesthetic gas by a face mask. She did not resist unlike healthy mothers. In less than 5 minutes, she was knocked out. I inserted the 6/0 endotracheal (breathing) tube to her lungs and prepared for a quick surgery.  Bluish knots embedded in her midline muscles under her skin and some colourless undissolved sutures in her uterine tissue indicated that she had at least one Caesarian section performed by another veterinarian. 

How fast can one be? There were four puppies. Two were present in one uterine horn and two in the other. The puppies squealed when I broke the amniontic sac. Healthy vigorous ones moving and crying immediately.

There was no need to do it but I held the head of each pup with both hands. Then I swung the pup face downwards in an arc five times to expel any fluid in the lungs, splashing umbilical cord blood onto the cabinets. I had no time to knot the umbilical cord which had been clamped earlier.

Mr Chew rubbed the neck of the puppy with the tissue paper as he held each on the palm of his hand.  "Hold the puppy face and nose downwards," I advised. "This would permit any nose or lung mucus to drip down when the puppy breathes out."

The bitch had an uneventful anaesthesia. I reduced the percentage to zero two minutes before the end of stitching so that she could breathe in oxygen and clear the anaesthetic gas from her lungs.  Healthy bitches would wake up within five minutes and could stand up groggily. This bitch just slept on.  She was oblivious to the puppies rooting for her nipples to suckle.

She had no milk production at all and despite an oxytocin injection, she might not release milk till two days later.

Mr Chew said: "I have one nursing bitch but she already had three puppies to feed!"

It would be very tiring for a breeder to feed the newborn puppies every two hourly with bottled milk. The puppies would not get their maternal antibodies to protect them against viruses.

This bitch was weak. I gave her additional electrolytes and an antibiotic. The breeder would give her the multivitamins and their special concoctions and health tonics. She did survive the next two days when I phoned.

In this case, I would advise that the breeder plan her Caesarian section in the evening when she was still conscious rather than wait till she was in shock.  This bitch had two Caesarians before and it was unlikely that she could deliver by vaginal birth.  This mother and her puppies would have died if Mr Chew did not have a good assistant watching over the bitch past office hours. 

To succeed in the business of canine breeding, it is paramount that  breeders do not wait till the bitch encounters such stressful situations before electing for Caesarian sections as they lose the mother and puppies or get weak stressed out puppies due to prolonged dystocias.  

If the bitch's rectal temperature is less than 37.5 degrees Celsius and she has difficulty in birth for 24 hours, do get a Caesarian section done. 

 
Copyright:   asiahomes.com
24 Jun 2003