Abandoned newborn puppy and mum now thriving
Tiny Mitzi wouldn’t have survived if the team at Together for Animals member Blue Cross hadn’t intervened. The German shepherd puppy was abandoned at only three days old alongside her terrified mum, Mila.
They were taken to the local authority kennels by a man who said he found the pair abandoned under a bush. Knowing they needed expert care, the dog warden asked Blue Cross’ Burford rehoming centre to take them in urgently.
“They knew we had a purpose-built puppy unit and it was clear that both mum and pup were going to need lots of help and support,” Rachel, Rehabilitation Trainer and Behaviour Advisor, explains.
Mila’s worried disposition was also indicative of a past of sadness and under-socialisation.
Rachel continues: “She was so scared. She would just cower in the back of her kennel and bark or growl, out of fear. It took two weeks to get near to her.”
Normally, with pets as petrified as Mila, the team would take a step back, but when Mitzi was no longer getting enough milk, there was no other option but to intervene.
“We had to push things more than we would do normally because Mitzi would have died if we didn’t intervene. We had to get to her and start to provide supplementary feeding,” says Rachel.
The displacement, trauma, and stress Mila had endured was likely behind her struggle to care for Mitzi, but the team also noticed that Mila would only feed her puppy during the day when her core team of three carers – who she gradually learned to trust – were around.
This indicated added separation issues; while the young mum remained scared of everyone, she needed human company and reassurance from afar to nurse. So, her carers took it in turns to stay overnight in the kennels.
Rachel says: “We initially tried supplement feeding Mitzi through the night, but Mila became increasingly stressed about us doing this, and although she was feeding during the day, she was not providing any other maternal care at all. So, Mitzi was missing out on a huge amount of early experience and stimulation.”
The decision was made, when Mitzi was two weeks old, to separate her from mum. Mitzi went into foster care where she was fed every three to four hours, round-the-clock, and received all the socialisation she needed.
This included her carer using a dinosaur toy to imitate play wrestling because Mitzi didn’t have any siblings to interact with. Without this type of contact, lone puppies can develop touch sensitivity. Mitzi started to thrive, as did Mila.
“We took it step-by-step, and day-by-day, but within a month, Mila had started to eat out of our hands and was a completely different dog,” says Rachel.
“We started to see improvements in Mila’s confidence every day, and little bits of her personality started to show – we knew she had a cheeky and intelligent side in there somewhere and to see her playing with another dog or out in the sunny countryside gave us a lovely glimpse of the dog she would grow into in time.”