Holy Rabbit Hole — or should I say Rat Hole?
First, all is well here at Puppy Central.
Daisy continues to be an excellent mother. Puppies are kept clean and shiny, and all are gaining weight well.
We feed Daisy as much as she wants to eat, including during the night shift, because making all that milk requires a lot of calories.
Yesterday I posed the question about whether newborn puppies experience pain — that is the source of my Rat Hole comment above.
There is not a lot of research on newborn puppies — and after reading what they do to baby rats, I say THANK HEAVENS for that — but there is a surprising amount of research on newborn rats. This is, in part, because the rat baby research has implications for the care of preterm human infants.
Who knew?!
Rat pups are born in a similar state to canine puppies and so rat research is relevant to dogs. Further, if baby rat research informs knowledge/care of preterm infants, it is not a big leap to suggest what we know about preterm infants may also have some application to newborn puppies.
Mallow
I do not need to rely on Google for my research — thanks heavens — but I like to know what people are reading when they search terms and questions. As I checked things out yesterday, I was reminded the internet may not be helping our critical thinking skills (Aysha says, “you think?!).
The heading in one post read, “Studies Reveal That Day-Old Puppies Do Feel Pain.” To support this assertion, the author proceeded to mention ONE article by a veterinarian with no citation. I spent some time trying to track down the mentioned article — turns out it was 26-years-old!
Both the way-too-old-to-mean-anything article and the post that mentioned it had a definite bias, and this is another thing to watch for when trying to find answers. Even if you share the bias, it doesn’t help one get accurate answers — and shouldn’t accuracy be what we want?
Yes, I know facts get in the way of what we believe and/or want to be true, but they do seem rather important when one wants to make a good decision.
But I digress. Sort of.
Mariposa and Lupine
Back to the rats and preterm babies.
Newborn rats respond in physiological ways to painful events and stress — and not good ways.
For example, Dührsen et al. (2012) studied the impact of painful events on newborn rats, and they concluded, “severe inflammatory pain and pain caused by repetitive injections in neonatal rats may cause major changes in the developing brain during the first week of life” (p. 35).
In humans, “exposure to repeated neonatal pain-related stress is associated with altered brain development, function, and neurodevelopmental outcome in children born preterm” (Vinall & Grunau, 2014, p. 586).
You can find ample literature supporting those conclusions. Basically, painful and/or stressful events in preterm babies and rat pups are a Bad Thing and can have long-lasting implications for neurological and physical development.
What about more gentle events — like early handling?
In one study of pretty benign (from my perspective) handling of rat pups, there were positive benefits seen in later tests of some skills BUT the researchers concluded this was: “…likely because of consequent boosts in maternal care which is certainly involved in the modulation of hippocampal function and HPA axis response, responsible for individual differences in stress reactivity and in cognitive performance…” (Plescia et al., 2014, p. 15).
In other words, they suspect it was the maternal behavior upon the return of the rat pup and not the brief separation (which was quite kind — nothing added to make it more aversive) that caused the benefits.
Huh.
Clarkia
Let’s talk dewclaws — those are typically removed in the first week of a puppy’s life and absolutely represent an aversive event.
ACK.
Front dewclaws are functional and there should be no question about those — they stay on my puppies.
But what about rears? The Breed Standard says they are to be removed.
Five of the Wildflowers had no rear dewclaws, two had just one rear dewclaw, and two puppies had both rear dewclaws. These were removed by our veterinarian with local anesthesia (buffered lidocaine — the buffering helps it not to sting so much) followed by quick access to Daisy for nursing.
Based on my research over the past day or so, I will explore a topical anesthesia and also add some kind of puppy pacifier during the procedure — sucking during painful procedures helps preterm babies and would be easy to do with puppies.
My take-aways…
Newborn puppies should NOT be intentionally stressed or subjected to painful or aversive events; these have the potential to essentially change the hard-wiring of a puppy and not in beneficial ways.
When newborn puppies are handled (in gentle ways — for example, weighing and cuddling), return to the mom in such a way to stimulate positive maternal behavior.
Why do some continue to insist newborn puppies are not impacted by pain? Perhaps for the same reason Carpenter (2020) suggested many continued to posit human baby boys did not feel pain during circumcision — because “…it was convenient” (p. 56).
Knowledge — so darn inconvenient.
Lupine
Can Sage make his way to the milk bar? Watch THIS to find out.
Clover
Larkspur
Paintbrush and Lupine
Buttercup
Mallow
Love
Work Cited (and a few of the additional things I read to inform my thoughts)
Carpenter, L. (2020). If You Prick Us: Masculinity and Circumcision Pain in the United States and Canada, 1960–2000. Gender & History, 32(1), 54-69.
Dührsen, L., Simons, S., Dzietko, M., Genz, K., Bendix, I., Boos, V., . . . Felderhoff-Mueser, U. (2012). Effects of Repetitive Exposure to Pain and Morphine Treatment on the Neonatal Rat Brain. Neonatology, 103(1), 35-43.
Plescia, F., Marino, R., Navarra, M., Gambino, G., Brancato, A., Sardo, P., & Cannizzaro, C. (2014). Early handling effect on female rat spatial and non-spatial learning and memory. Behavioural Processes, 103, 9-16.
Roofthooft, D., Simons, S., Anand, K., Tibboel, D., & Van Dijk, M. (2014). Eight Years Later, Are We Still Hurting Newborn Infants? Neonatology, 105(3), 218-226.
Victoria, N., Karom, M., Eichenbaum, H., & Murphy, A. (2014). Neonatal injury rapidly alters markers of pain and stress in rat pups. Developmental Neurobiology, 74(1), 42-51.
Vinall, J. & Grunau, R,. (2014). Impact of repeated procedural pain-related stress in infants born very preterm. Pediatric Research, 75(5), 584-587.
Xu, W., Cong, X., Mcgrath, J., & Henderson, W. (2017). The Impact of Cumulative Pain/Stress on Neurodevelopment of Preterm Infants in the NICU. Nursing Research, 66(2), E26-E27.