I thought I would put up some information about worming puppies. Please don't think I'm trying to be a know all or preaching: but it is obvious from some of the photos of pups for sale on here that the puppies are carrying a pretty big round worm burden.
Puppies of 6 - 9 weeks, if not wormed properly (with the correct dosage or type of wormer) will be well stuffed with worms at this age. ALL puppies have worms, no matter how careful you are and how well you wormed the bitch. The roundworm cysts which are found in EVERY dog alive, become active when the bitch is pregnant and the larvae migrate from her body into the puppies even before they are born.
You won't see any sign of a puppy having worms until about 3-4 weeks of age, but once they start on solids its all systems go for the worms and they start to grow and thrive.
Typical appearance of a puppy carrying more than a couple of roundworms is the distended belly: which makes the little legs look skinny. A slighly bulgy eyed look is also one of the main signs that a pup has worms. Couple this with a scrawny looking neck, over large appearance to the head (no matter what breed of dog we are talking about) and in severe cases a failure to grow at a decent rate.........and you can be pretty sure that this pup has a lot of roundworms.
If left untreated, or not treated correctly, these will stunt a pup's growth and in really severe cases cause damage to the gut lining resulting in really bad chronic diarrhoea, sometimes bloody stools, and leave the pup wide open to infection such as bad stomach bugs which may even appear to have parvo like symptoms which in turn can lead to dehydration and death.
There is no excuse in this day and age not to worm pups properly. Most people use Panacur, but how many people know that one dose of Panacur does sweet f*ck all to a worm? The reccomended treatment for tiny pups is a daily dose for 3 days. And this needs to be done every 3 weeks from 3 weeks of age for the first 3 months of life.
Here's a fact sheet about Panacur: read the data sheet.
http://www.hyperdrug...ductinfo/PANL1/
Personally I prefer to use something like Drontal Plus. I weigh each pup in a litter then cut up the tablet, dividing it as many times as is necessary depending on the weight of the pup. For example: if the whole tablet does 10kilos of adult dog, then I might have to divide that one tablet into 6ths for a puppy.
Quick tale: I once took on a pup was in a very poor state: half the size of its litter mates and with all the classic signs of a heavy roundworm burden. At the time I had been given some Panacur: so duly gave the pup the 3 day treatment as reccomended by the manufacturers. Pup still looked awful, so a week later I gave her a quarter of a Drontal Plus: within 4 hours she had shat a writhing spaghetti like tangle of mature round worms!! And for the first time ate normally and started to grow properly!
This tale doesn't have a happy ending as the round worm had so severley damaged her gut that she died at the age of 9 weeks at the vet, having contracted a nasty stomach bug which appeared very similar to the symptoms of Parvo. She was on a drip etc etc, but they couldn't save her as her innards were in too bad a state to recover from the effects of both bug and worms.
This happened quite a few years ago, but I'll always remember this pup as she had the most fantastic temperament and character: I'm still angry and sad that no one could save her.
Had she been properly wormed (and fed) from the start she could have made a good dog.
Now, most wormy pups I see are nowhere near as bad as this pup was, but chronic diarrhoea can and does affect the health of a dog, let alone a more fragile pup, so we owe it to them to worm them correctly and by using the right wormers.
You can use Drontal Plus on very small pups (3 weeks of age) with no side effects at all: so why go to all the bother of forcing a paste down their throats if it doesn't work as well?
The pics I've included in this saga are how a puppy SHOULD look: rounded all over, sturdy legs (even Whippet pups should have sturdy legs at this age), slightly too much skin for its body and a general air of well being. No sign of a bloated belly and you definitely cannot see the ribs at all and the belly isn't sticking out as though the pup has swallowed a football!
Once again, I don't mean to preach or offend anyone and this isn't aimed at anyone in particular: I'm still learning all sorts of things about dog care and I've kept, bred and worked them most of my life and if I can point out one or two tips and hints then that's all I'm trying to do.
Edited on September23rd '09
Just to add: the round worm life cycle is a 3 week cycle so it is important to worm pups every 3 weeks for at least the first 3 months of their lives. Thereafter I worm my dogs every 6 months unless I see signs of tape worm segments in the dogs' faeces or round their anus. Eating raw fresh rabbit, especially the guts, is the quickest way for a dog to pick up tapeworm. Freeze rabbits for 3 weeks before feeding to kill any worms and egg cysts.