# incapable mother



## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

first time i heard of this, a friend had a planned breeding with a first time mother (gsd's of course). the mother dropped the pups all over the kennel and cowered in the corner of th kennel geting as far away as possible from them snarling and bristles up. she killed two pups instantly before anyone could react. the shocked owners removed all the pups and lucky in that neighbourhood there were two pet dogs with litters that took on the pups straight away without fuss while still caring for their own pups. the pups have been surrogated and getting bottle supplements. 

the female has an incredibly good temperament other than this and has zero dog agression and has owners kids playing with her and climbing all over her every other day before this happened - what went wrong??


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## Stevenzachsmom (Mar 3, 2008)

I have heard of this happening before, but am not a breeder and have no idea why. I hope someone answers soon, as I am also interested.


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## LoveEcho (Mar 4, 2011)

We had this happen with a dog at the kennel. Killed all puppies in the litter except for one.

What I understood was that she did it because she felt threatened. Normally we removed the pregnant bitches into a separate room days prior to their whelping... she gave birth early and unexpectedly (I was not working there at this point so I don't know what the exact circumstances were), surrounded by a dozen other dogs (all in their own runs, but still) in a very stressful environment. It's a fight-or-flight type situation, and if she's stressed she'd rather kill the puppies and be able to run/etc than risk the lives of everyone involved. I'm curious what the validity behind that is.


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## llombardo (Dec 11, 2011)

Could it be that something is wrong with them and she senses it?


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## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

the pups are physically healthy and evrything else seems normal at this stage. the reaction of the female like she was horrified and scared for her life from the pups.


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## Narny (Sep 8, 2010)

When I was younger we had a cat that did this... she didnt even remove the sacks she just dropped them everywhere and walked away. 

Is it possible that she didnt understand what was going on so she just dropped them?


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## llombardo (Dec 11, 2011)

Narny said:


> When I was younger we had a cat that did this... she didnt even remove the sacks she just dropped them everywhere and walked away.
> 
> Is it possible that she didnt understand what was going on so she just dropped them?


I always heard that cats would suffocate or ignore their kittens if there was something wrong with them....I thought I heard this about dogs to


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## selzer (May 7, 2005)

When I have a litter due, especially with a new mother, I am there. Sometimes, I have to break the sack and rub the puppy until it squeaks and the bitch will take over. I keep her separated and safe from the other dogs. I do not bring people in to witness the miracle of birth. I am there helping with her, saying "push it out, push it out."

It sounds like this poor bitch was teamed up with some inexperienced owners who did not know how to create a den for her, reassure her, take an active part if necessary. Now both bitch and pups will suffer from their lack of doing what they should have. 

Just because the pet dogs had milk and pups, does not mean they were still spewing cholostrum. That is extremely important. They should have muzzled the bitch and put the pups on her at least for 24 hours, they should have done this every 2-3 hours. Also they should have cleaned the pups and helped them urinate and defecate. Chances are the bitch would have come to herself and taken care of the pups, but if not, the pups would have gotten the immunity of having that cholostrum. 

This is a terrible situation.


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## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

yr out of line if you are saying the breeders somehow did wrong, this happened very quickly and while you would be saying soothing things like "push it out, push it out." the pups would have been torn to shreds.


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## Lauri & The Gang (Jun 28, 2001)

x11 said:


> first time i heard of this, a friend had a planned breeding with a first time mother (gsd's of course).


How old is the bitch?

Just because Mother Nature gave them a uterus doesn't mean that every female makes a perfect mother. Some just DO NOT.

I would suggest they spay that bitch and take a serious look into her background. Did this happen to any other bitches from that litter? From litters from that Sire or Dam (with different mates)?


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## x0emiroxy0x (Nov 29, 2010)

x11 said:


> yr out of line if you are saying the breeders somehow did wrong, this happened very quickly and while you would be saying soothing things like "push it out, push it out." the pups would have been torn to shreds.


They are obviously backyard breeders and inexperienced ones at that. Selzer has more experience whelping than half the people I know....don't come on here for advice/questions than put down the person with the most experience and correct answer!


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## Chris Wild (Dec 14, 2001)

It takes hours for a dam to deliver a litter of pups, so at some point the breeders really should have realized that there was something going wrong in the way she was acting and intervened. Your description of her behavior is completely abnormal. It is possible had they helped to get the pups nursing, rather than allowing the dam to hide from them (even if they had to hold her down and muzzle her for the pups to nurse) that things would have turned out different. Nursing releases many of the hormones that trigger the maternal instinct and get a bitch's brain in the right frame of mind to properly care for her litter. This can be especially important if it is a first time mother. So had there been earlier intervention before things may have turned out much better. Or perhaps they wouldn't. Some females just don't have good mothering instinct. Almost like something isn't wired correctly in their brain. They may be perfectly normal and well temperamented in other respects but be horrible mothers.


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## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

Lauri & The Gang said:


> How old is the bitch?
> 
> Just because Mother Nature gave them a uterus doesn't mean that every female makes a perfect mother. Some just DO NOT.
> 
> I would suggest they spay that bitch and take a serious look into her background. *Did this happen to any other bitches from that litter? From litters from that Sire or Dam (with different mates)*?


 
i do not have the info to answer those questions. i would guess that the owner would not be wanting to see anything like that again. the sire (of the female) is a well accomplished sport dog that some members here know very well and is a stud (now retired) of one of the most respected kennels in the states and has been spoken about in the best of terms on this forum. the sire of the pups is from one of the most prolific breeder of gsd in modern times altho i do not know how far back in the ped this sire is, he is Fero - again not sure how far back actual Fero is.

i choose not to disclose names of kennels.


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## Verivus (Nov 7, 2010)

So should horrible mothers be bred?


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## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

Chris Wild said:


> "... It is possible had they helped to get the pups nursing, rather than allowing the dam to hide from them (even if they had to hold her down and muzzle her for the pups to nurse) that things would have turned out different..."


that is certainly possible, what actually ocurred i was not there to see. my guess is that some intervention was attempted but just guessing. long story short the pups were put on surrogate mothers.


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## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

Verivus said:


> So should horrible mothers be bred?


will you know they are horrible mothers BEFORE they are bred??? if so how? the comment about prior history in the line i guess could be a clue, but lines get scattered around the country and outcrossed i would think to get this info easily. 

the mother herself was born so i guess her mother and mothers mother....obviously reared at least one pup each without being too absurd??


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## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

x0emiroxy0x said:


> They are obviously backyard breeders and inexperienced ones at that. Selzer has more experience whelping than half the people I know....don't come on here for advice/questions than put down the person with the most experience and correct answer!


 
i am sure Selzer is big enough to speak for her/himself. 

what you think is "obvious" or "correct" means little to me.

as far as you telling me what i can and can't do means even less.

have a nice day and a happy new year.


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## Verivus (Nov 7, 2010)

x11 said:


> will you know they are horrible mothers BEFORE they are bred??? if so how? the comment about prior history in the line i guess could be a clue, but lines get scattered around the country and outcrossed i would think to get this info easily.
> 
> the mother herself was born so i guess her mother and mothers mother....obviously reared at least one pup each without being too absurd??


Well I thought it was rather obvious that nobody would know they are bad mothers before being bred so I didn't feel the need to explain myself in detail, but if that's what you need so be it. Let me rephrase myself so everybody can understand. 

REPHRASED: After learning the dam is a horrible mother to it's 1st litter, should she continue to be bred?


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## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

gotcha, sorry about my interpretation of yr question.


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## Narny (Sep 8, 2010)

Verivus said:


> REPHRASED: After learning the dam is a horrible mother to it's 1st litter, should she continue to be bred?



LOL


Ok so in my personal (uneducated about dogs in this manor) opinion I would breed the dog one more time. I would make sure I did the right thing and watched the bitch like a hawk but I would do it one more time as long as shes a REALLY good dog in every other aspect.


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## carmspack (Feb 2, 2011)

This female should never be bred again.

Maternal instinct is inhereted by the daughters . 
I have a female that has to be pulled out by the collar to leave the pups to take care of her own needs. After the pups are weaned and homed she will still fly down to the whelping room just to make absolutely sure they are not there. Super mother , as was her mother , her grandmother , great grandam , and now it is revealed so is her daughter.

--


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## Lauri & The Gang (Jun 28, 2001)

x11 said:


> the sire of the pups is from one of the most prolific breeder of gsd in modern times


Prolific doesn't always mean good. I'm not saying that is the case with this breeder - just saying.

As for breeding the bitch again - these people were *SERIOUSLY *lucky that they could find other nursing bitches that would accept more puppies (many bitches won't).

Hand raising newborns is a 24/7 job. The pups need to be nursed every 2 hours and have their bottoms wiped with a warm, damp towel in order to stimulate them to pee and poop. If you get some that don't take to nursing on bottles easily you need to tube feed them.

Let's say it takes 15 - 20 minutes to nurse a puppy, burp it, stimulate it to potty, clean it up, check it's weight and put it back with the others. If you have 8 puppies - that's a total of 2 hours worth of work. Just as you finish with one round of nursings you need to start again.


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## cliffson1 (Sep 2, 2006)

Sometimes with a females first litter she is overwhelmed if the size is very large(like 9 pups or more). I had female years ago that her first litter at 2 1/2 years was 10 pups and she handled six well, but lost the rest. Rock solid temperament, but it appeared it was just too much at that time. A year later she had a litter of 9 and never had one lick of problem....she really needed to learn from the first experience. Not saying this is case here, just giving an example of what I have experienced.


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## selzer (May 7, 2005)

x11 said:


> first time i heard of this, a friend had a planned breeding with a first time mother (gsd's of course). the mother dropped the pups all over the kennel and cowered in the corner of th kennel geting as far away as possible from them snarling and bristles up. she killed two pups instantly before anyone could react. the shocked owners removed all the pups and lucky in that neighbourhood there were two pet dogs with litters that took on the pups straight away without fuss while still caring for their own pups. the pups have been surrogated and getting bottle supplements.
> 
> the female has an incredibly good temperament other than this and has zero dog agression and has owners kids playing with her and climbing all over her every other day before this happened - what went wrong??


x11, this is really, really bazaar behavior. My initial post may have been a bit premature. "The mother dropped the pups all over the kennel and cowered in the corner of the kennel geting as far away as possible snarling and bristles up." 

My picture is a kennel maybe 10' x 20' give or take, where the bitch is in there literally whelping (dropping) puppies all over the place. It sounds like she she totally freaked out. And was delivering the puppies in a kennel environment where there may be other dogs in other runs increasing her stress. 

Whelping is terribly stressful on a bitch. I have been blessed with good dams, who care about every single puppy born. My very first thought was a c-section. Some bitches when they have a c-section do not realize these are her puppies, and the anesthetic wearing off is disorienting, and suddenly finding herself with a bunch of hairy little monsters might have been rather hairy. But then I saw dropping them all over the place -- I guess I am just thinking that we are a lot more hands on when it comes to whelping litters. We do not let them drop them all over the place. We have a 4 foot square box, or a 4'x5' box, and we are right there. It is very hands on. But the emphasis is always not to stress the bitch, any more than she already is. 

I usually pull the puppies out and put them in a box, either right in or right out of the 4' box, when she starts turning to have another puppy. It is a terribly wet and messy ordeal, and puppies must be kept dry and warm, so I put them in a box when she is turning and spewing water. But if she stops and starts paying attention to where that pup is, I just put it right back in with her. I will dry it off again when she is working on the next one. Keep stress levels down. 

The idea of the dog doing this in the ordinary kennel run where the other dogs are running back and forth in their runs barking and being idiots -- they do when people are there and when stuff like this is going on, made me cringe. 

But it can be worse than that, If she had her group of puppies and all of sudden started scattering them, and cowering in a corner growling and bristling and then killed a couple of them, I would be worried that something was seriously wrong with her, was this right after whelping them, or was this a day or two later. Could she have a serious infection. Bitches can kill their young if they feel seriously threatened, and having a stuck puppy or a retained puppy that is sickening her might cause this. 

I guess we just don't have enough information. 

It is common for people to suggest that a bitch not be left unattended with her pups until the umbilical cords drop off (a few days). Usually I stay right with a new mother as I cannot know that she is an excellent dam unless I go through a few days. But I have to sleep too, so I stay close and I do sleep if all is going well with her. 

As for breeding this bitch again, my gut reaction is no. Even when I have a bitch develop a bit of a fever, I haven't had them attack and kill puppies. Again if it was a C-section, that could be a whole other story though. If she was terribly young, like 10-15 months old, maybe that played a part in it. But even puppies that have puppies usually do not act this extreme. If it wasn't a c-section, then I would say she has some wires crossed in her head.

The sire of the litter is of no consequence in this, and I am not sure why he is being mentioned at all.


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## x11 (Jan 1, 2012)

selzer thanks for informative post. i was not trying to be disrespectful earlier in the thread, i do get a bit guardy when i think unjustified comments are being made about the breeders i respect and know are doing the right thing.

so hope you are not angry or anything at me.


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## selzer (May 7, 2005)

My initial post contained my concern for the puppies, particularly in them not receiving colostrum. And concern for the bitch as well. Growling and cowering and bristling is not normal behavior for whelping, so my thought was the bitch needs to be with someone who realizes she may be in trouble or at least terribly stressed.

Not angry or anything.


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