Sudden fatal respiratory failure in puppies - any ideas?
My daughter has bred a litter of 13 Dalmatian puppies. They have all checked out as healthy with the vet. Yesterday at 4 1/2 weeks, we suddenly lost 2 of them. They had just fed and were resting in their pen. The mother was not in with them (so no crushing occured) about ten minutes after they were placed in the pen one of them issued a loud cry. My daughter went to investigate and found one of the strongest female puppies lying dead with a bloody froth around the mouth. She the checked all of the puppies and found the strongest male was having difficulty breathing and was "swallowing air" and bloating the stomach. All of the puppies were taken to the emergency vetinary surgery in Frankston. My daughter had the breeder of the mother on the phone who instructed her to ask the vet to deflate the abdomen and drain the lungs. The vet gave the puppy oxygen, which helped and advised that there was fluid in the lungs. My daughter repeated the breeeder's request to the vetenerary surgeon, who basically said that he was not prepared to do anything (except euthanaise the puppy for $60) unless she first had the lungs x-rayed for $600. As this was beyond her budget and 10 x the price of x-rays at our regular vet - she asked him to please just treat the symptoms, which he declined to do unless she first paid for x-rays. I arrived at the clinic and we took the pupppies home. The puppy's breathing was very laboured and short interspersed with occasional short sharp cries and he seemed to have spasms in his somach. His temperature seemed to be falling. I kept him warm and massaged his chest and tapped it to try to free up congestion, but he did not cough up any fluids. He seemed to improve and rally a few times even tried walking around a couple of times, but after about five hours - breathing became suddenly more laboured and noisier. Finally he seemd to be trying to bark and coughed up blood tinged fluid, He then stopped breathing, but then revived 6 or 7 times and still coughed up the bloody fluid. Finally he just could not fight any more and succumbed. We had investigated all possibilities - phoning vets overseas and the poisons lines to check that they could not have been accidentally exposed to poisonous plants and so forth. We were trying to keep him alive until our vet opened, but it was just an hour or so too long for him.
Our vet sasy they have never seen or heard of such symptoms and rapid decline and we have ordered a fulll autopsy. We are worried that any of the other puppies may suffer the same fate, and would apreciate any advice or assistance in the meanwhile. Has anyone else suffered such an occurrence? What was the cause? How to we prevent the others from suffering in the same way? Any advice will be appreciated.
