Applesmom.
Right, here goes. I was only 15 at the time and everyone thought the pup was going to die. She was so tiny and weak. I took her and started feeding her with lactol, a powder milk make especially for pups and kittens etc...
My dad brought another one to me, a bit bigger than her but still being pushed around too much by the others. I suppose they made good canine company for each other. When we tried to put the little bitch back with the litter, she'd go downhill fast so I had to take her back and carry on hand rearing her and she'd perk up again within an hour. She was just unable to feed at all and, even though Mist would have allowed her to feed, the other pups just pushed her out of the way and she weakened fast.
Still, she survived and they were both eating solid food before we just put them back with the others. I would have been happy to keep them with me, it was my dad who said about putting them back. I suppose because they only had my scent on them which Mist knew and because Mist was so maternal anyway that she took them back as her own without problems and the other litter mates seemed fine with them also. These two pups always remembered me though, especially the little dog, he became quite attached to me and would cry if other people held him but then quieten down when I took him back although he was comfortable with mum and siblings still if I wasn't there. It was quite heart wrenching when they were sold.
I couldn't just suppliment them whilst leaving them with Mist and the other pups because I didn't live with my dad and thats where Mist and the pups were at that time. There was nobody else willing or able to take them in and hand rear them. My dad would normally let such pups just die but I couldn't do that.
I bet Mist would have taken any other dogs pups as her own to tell you the truth...just like she always tried to take Jess's as her own, lol.
When she was a pup, she used to dig holes in the garden and put my dads plant pots in them, haha. I read in one of my dog behaviour books about another dog doing the exact same thing and it turned out she was doing it as a maternal thing, digging a den and treating the plant pots as puppies, haha. The behaviourist said that she would likely be a very good mother if she was ever bred from...our Mist was.
I don't think they all need previous litter experience to foster a baby animal though. For example, in our daily paper not long back, there was a female cat, spayed, who acted as surrogate to a baby orphaned weasel. She hadn't had kittens before but her owner found that she took to the weasel, cleaned it, curled up with it and kept it warm etc...There were photos of her with it.
There was even an article posted even more recently where a young female leopard tried to mother a baby baboon. She was filmed cleaning it and picking it up like a cub and taken up into the tree where it was safe and there were photos of her doing it in the paper. Unfortunately, without it's real mum and her milk, it weakened and died and the young leopard finally left it after so long. She wasn't much more than a cub herself, obviously had never had cubs of her own. She just didn't have the means to rear a baby baboon.
I'm sure most animals would not act in this way but you always get your one in a millions, lol.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks