Voices From A Defenseless New Born Puppy

Featuring Cotton's Diary

The female puppy is named Cotton by fosterer Serene who happened to be volunteering at Furry Friends Farm when the puppy was brought over by Claudio and Lily after they had their lunch at the coffee shop on Sunday, February 28th.

Thank you to Serene for this lovely diary and for fostering little baby Cotton ...

Photos Of Rusty & Cotton In Their New Home In Ipoh

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Furry Friends Farm's

Successful Fostering and Rehoming Programme

Happy Tails Stories of Cotton and Rusty !

A successful rehoming programme was carried out by Furry Friends Farm's dedicated volunteers team from Petaling Jaya. A big applause to the team members, Serene, Dawn and Jasmine whom have been making efforts to help in rehoming Cotton, our first abandoned 5 days old female, black puppy after being fostered by Serene for the past two months and Rusty, a male, brown, stray dog rescued by Jasmine and friends and had been staying at Furry Friends Farm for the past six months.

_{Added on April 29th, 2010}

A-hem… First of all, a big thanks to Sabrina, who trusted me to foster Cotton. Secondly, to Dawn, who’s also Cotton’s nanny when I’m not available, for helping with my work and my personal life, especially when Cotton was with me. To Dr.Wong Chooi Thing, for being so patient with me & Cotton, and also for giving so much care and love to this little pup. Along Cotton’s journey, I had a lot of uncertainties, but thanks to all the compassionate people around the world to posted their experiences on the web on how to take care of a new born abandoned pup, their sharing provided me with a good guiding path. So that I may share my experience and life with Cotton (sorry, my sharing came in awfully late now that Cotton is already 2 months old). Lastly, thanks to lil Cotton! She had given my hubby and I wonderful time and had made me into a better person (I’m a spoilt child and a spoilt wife with my family and hubby pampering me to the max). Cotton and Ah Wong is now bringing alot of joy into my mom’s life, in a way helping her deal with the recent passing of my dad without she herself realizing it. Thank you to everyone who also loves and cares for Cotton. Okay…now I’m done with ‘Grammy award’ speech!

Actually, fostering a 5-day old pup was not that all difficult. But due to my inexperience of handling a new born pup and a very bad experience I had last time, I couldn’t help being over-worried with this little monster. As you had read how Day 1 turned out a disaster, Cotton is a survivor. She didn’t cry or yelp at all the entire night despite she was hungry. She kept sleeping to reserve her energy when there was not enough food. If she had cried all night long that 1st night, I think I would have cried together with her cos we were both helpless.

The next morning, after consulting Sabrina and got Cotton a bigger nursing bottle, both of our lives were much easier after that. So my 1st lesson was - if you are uncertain about the sizes of the nursing bottle for your pup, please grab all the available sizes! This will ensure both pup and nanny a lovely and peaceful night.

Just when I thought everything was going smoothly, this little monster gave me a second heart attack on the 1st night. When I came back from dinner and opened the door…“OH MY GOD!” The lil monster with un-opened eyes had climbed out of her small box and was lying motionlessly on the very cold, hard tiled floor. I rushed to pick her up, and tried to feel for her heart beat…my hubby stared at me silently and whispered softly “Alive?” I gave him a big relief look and said “OHHH! Thank God! She is!”

I immediately changed a taller box for her. Then she puked in her small bed. Since it was past 12 midnight and no one I could call for help, I surfed the web for help.

Oh… new born pup needs to burp just like human babies. Use a warm damp cloth to wipe the pup up right to stimulate the mother licking after feeding, this will help to get the puppy to burp and have bowel movements. If this worked, continuously wipe her for a week until she knows how to burp by herself. After a week tho, I still continued to wipe her after meals cos she always got herself very dirty. She never watches where she walks so she was always stepping in her own poo. In addition to that, she loved to dive into the recycle items bag and into the dust bin. Despite her size…she’s a super pup.

My 2nd lesson was - never underestimate your puppy eventho they can’t see, hear nor walk yet! Do whatever safety precautions necessary nevertheless. Infact as a foster mother, I had to think and act like a ‘bitch’ to fire up all the ‘mama dog’ instincts on her lil pup! During our 1st meet up with Dr.Wong, she had advised me to use a warm, wet cotton piece or ball to gently rub on the puppy’s genital and anal area to stimulate their urination and defecation after every feeding. It worked! When I wiped on Cotton’s genital part, her urine shot out like a water gun; and when I wiped her anal, her poo came out like the McDonald’s dairy ice-cream machine. Sorry to all McD’s ice cream fans! Cotton had diarrhoea and soft stools very often. According to Dr.Wong, soft stool is normal because she hadn’t started on solid food yet, as long as her soft stool had a form, it was fine. The 1st time Cotton had diarrhoea was because I overfed her. How did I know I had overfed her? I found my answer on the web while searching thru diarhoeaa- it says that one of the most common causes for a young pup to have diarrhoea was overfeeding. So try to cut down the amount of feeding and increase the feeding time instead. So apparently, I was overfeeding at that time.

Following that, I was very careful with the amount of milk that I fed, she would still have diarrhoea on and off but never lasted more than a day. After her 3rd can of formula milk, I started to wean Cotton to solid food. I still continued giving her milk with her ‘chut chut’ during the weaning process cos she was still adapting to it. She loves her ‘chut-chut’…I guess it’s a baby thing. Even now that she’s a big monster, when I give her ‘chut chut’ with plain water, she will still suck it like a machine gun. When I was considering getting her another can of formula milk, I remember Dawn mentioning getting soya milk for Sabrina to feed the pups.

So I got some for Cotton. Ever since Cotton changed to soya milk, she no longer had diarrhoea. Later on, I found out that some puppies have lactose intolerance like human babies, so the best is still mother’s milk….nothing beats that! Cotton had eye infection and flu when she was 8 days old. It made us both frustrated cos I had been keeping her clean and warm the whole time so I had no idea where that the infection came from. I washed her bedsheets and diapers 5 times a day, equivalent to5 loads of machine wash. Dr.Wong said she had probably gotten the infection on the streets before she got picked up. Cotton was put on antibiotics for 10 days until her flu stopped, while her eye infection healed after 3 days.

While Cotton was on antibiotics, her poo-poo stinked so badly and she had horrible bad breath. I kept forgetting to ask Dr.Wong about it, because I have had too many questions everytime I was her. On the same day, I found some small crawling ants-look-alike creatures running on Cotton. I thought they were ticks, but later found out from Dr. Wong that they were LICE and Frontline would do the job. So I put on gloves, sprayed Frontline on my palms and rub them on Cotton. A week later, the lices were gone. When Cotton was 22 days old, I started to tackle her toilet habits. She did great for the 1st week.

After that, she refused to wee and poo at the usual place. She would wee everywhere except her usual toilet place. I assumed she had done that on purpose, so I tried to teach her by rolling up a bunch of newspaper and whacking it on the floor loudly when I spotted her wee-ing at an inappropriate place. (I think this method only works for dogs, but not for small pups less than 1 month old…or maybe it’s just Cotton). Anyway, this made matters worse. She started to eat her own poo right after she producing it! I got worried and researched online. It said there are alot of possibilities why puppies might eat their own poo and one of them was stress. Thinking I might had stressed her out while ‘training’ her on her toilet habits cos she’s too young. So I stopped her toilet training. The next day, she went back to her usual toilet to poo and wee, but she continued to wee all over the house. This really bothered me a lot, so I decided to find answers from the internet.

There are few known causes: Firstly, young puppies less than 3 months are not good at controlling their urination and defecation. Secondly, they might be feeling very insecure. I was convinced of the second cause as there were a few incidents that made me think Cotton was feeling insecure. The 1st incident: Since Cotton opened her eyes and less intensive care was needed, I had less time to spend with her as I needed to catch up with my work that piled during the time she was an infant. I guess she wasn’t very happy about it and wanted more attention. When I spent more time to play with her and taught her some basic training, her toilet habits improved. But sometimes when she played until too excited, she would wee here and there…I think this is where the urination controlling part came in. So when all these wee-ing‘accidents’ happened, I would just give myself a long *sigh…clean it, and reprimand myself also being too excited and forgetting to give her a break every 15mins to go toilet during her play time.

Sometimes when I remember to catch her to wee, she would run and wee at the same time. Once her playing engine started, it was really difficult to stop! The 2nd incident: The night before her 1st vaccine, she wee at almost every single tile in the house. Somehow she knew I was bringing her out the next day and she was afraid to leave the house. The 3rd incident: The night before bringing Cotton & Rusty back to Ipoh, she went on a wee-ing spree again. The morning before we left the house, was a disaster. After packing everything and ready to go pick up Dawn and Rusty. I released Cotton from her play-pen, placed her at her toilet, so I could pack up her play pen. 5 mins later, when I checked on her, she was hiding and sleeping behind the washing machine.

I thought she was sleepy, so I let her back into the house. She immediately woke up, ran to the hall, wee-ed on her pillow, my curtains, sofa, cushion and her ‘kai-kai’ bag…simultaneously in less than 5 mins. Then she started to play ‘chase chase’ by herself… *SIGHHH!...as usual…I just swallowed the frustration and started the cleaning and wiping works that Cotton calls it ‘wiping the furniture’. Cotton is now in staying in Ipoh with my mom and Rusty@ Ah Wong. Bearing in mind Cotton’s ‘super hot dog’ character and aware that my mom is inexperience at handling dogs, I got them a very nice and ‘seasoned’ dog trainer.

The trainer comments for Cotton were: Very smart and cheerful, but super stubborn and chili hot temper. My last update from my mom was when she got snapped by Cotton while having a ‘no-biting-shoe’ training session. Last week, my mom also got bitten when she brought Cotton to the vet for her 2nd vaccine. This little insecure monster can be very panicky while in the car. But while they at the vet waiting for their turn, Cotton cooled down and licked the wound she bit on my mom. Haha…what a lil sweet monster she is! Okay, I should stop here, FFF website should be flooded by now… ^_^