As a breeder with 20 years experience whelping litters, I was appalled by some of the weird and frankly bad advice on how to safely deliver a stuck puppy at home. The info that exists on the Internet, advising owners to use a towel to remove a neonate from the birth canal, for example, is dangerous. The correct answer “to how to help deliver a stuck puppy at home” is easy. You can do it safely with your bare hands, in minutes, without risking your puppy’s life, without a ride to the veterinarian’s office.
Preparing Yourself for Whelping a Litter
As the breeder preparing for a litter to be whelped, there are several things you will need to do for yourself, to be properly prepared.
- Trim your nails level with the ends of your fingers – this is a hands on experience
- Wash your hands with antibacterial soap often
- Keep 5-8 clean, dry hand towels at hand
Things you should not use to deliver a stuck puppy at home
- Do not use a towel of any kind to grip a puppy to remove it from the birth canal. Use your sterilized hands or hands with surgical gloves to grip the puppy. You need to feel what is happening with the puppy.
- Do not use lubricant. You will never be able to get a grip on the puppy once KY Jelly has been added to the equation. The mother has provided the lubricant, and if the amniotic sack is broken, there is that much more lubricant.
- Do not attempt to grasp the puppy with forceps or any sort of pincers. Do not try to wedge any foreign objects into your dog.
How to Recognize a Stuck Puppy in the Birth Canal
If your girl is proceeding with delivering puppies, with the actual hard labor contractions lasting 10-25 minutes per delivery, she is doing fine, and you should only concern yourself with helping revive the newborn puppies.
However, puppy sizes will vary within the litter, and while the first deliveries may have gone off without a hitch, she may find it difficult to deliver that big pup or pups.
You can recognize she may need help with delivering a stuck puppy if you see the following:
- Contractions are becoming prolonged
- She is looking up to the ceiling or grunting
- She is sitting up or sitting in a pooping position, trying to expel the puppy
- She has been trying for 30+ minutes in hard labor to deliver the puppy
It is normal for dams to lick their vulva during labor. Biting her flanks or vulva or yelping is not normal. Grunting or straining more than during the previous puppy deliveries is cause for concern.
Generally puppies are easily delivered with the dam lying on her side; sitting up to push out the puppy is an act of desperation on her part. Knowing how to deliver a stuck puppy at home, before whelping, will help you to keep calm during an extraordinarily stressful event.
Two Options For How to Deliver a Stuck Puppy
If after a prolonged delivery a puppy presents, but she can’t push it out, or pushing is wearing her down, you have two options. And unless you live behind a open vet practice, you will need to handle this yourself, at home immediately, especially if you can see that the vulva is bulging or the puppy has presented.
Option 1: Walk her around.
Sometimes this will allow the puppy to shift and be pushed out. I have seen puppies who were still in their sack part way out, but she was unable to get it further out. She began to get panicky, and so did I. Walking her caused the puppy to return to the birth canal and then re-present several minutes later. We continued walking, and she delivered the puppy normally herself, five minutes later.
Option 2: Physically Removing The Puppy From the Birth Canal
This is preferred when the puppy has presented and the amniotic sack is broken. Time is of the essence, if you want to save the puppy’s life.
If you can see a bit of nose and little paws peeking out of the vulva, you can easily deliver the stuck puppy yourself safely.
- First walk your index, middle and ring fingers around the puppy’s head gently to pull it forward and push back the vulva. The vulva should form a collar around the puppy’s neck.
- Now walk the index and middle finger in and behind the puppy’s elbows. Begin by slowly and firmly tugging to pull the arms forward out of the vulva. Slowly increase force until the body begins to follow.
- Once the ribcage is out, stop! Everything else will follow easily, except the umbilical cord and placenta. Pulling while the umbilical cord is taught can cause an umbilical hernia or worse.
- Reach down and find the umbilical cord. Slide your hand down at least 1.5 inches from the puppy’s belly and grab the cord firmly. It needs to come out with the puppy at the same rate as the puppy.
- Angle the puppy in a slight arc towards the hocks (heals) and away from the tail. Pull the puppy and umbilical cord at the same rate out of the birth canal. Don’t worry if the umbilical cord snaps somewhere inside of her. She will expel that placenta with the next puppy or an oxytocin shot, if this was the last puppy.
Now that you have helped removed the stuck puppy from the birth canal, it’s time to revive the puppy! Newborn puppies are very resilient to the vicissitudes of delivery, so don’t give up on newborn puppy resuscitation techniques and getting the puppy alive and kicking, for at least 20 minutes, at a minimum.
