At about seven days the first litter developed small brown bumps on their front feet and around their mouths. I was told that this was common with handraised pups - we assume that it is due to the milk that is messed causing a small localised infection. I washed the bumps with plain water, but they didn't budge. They didn't appear to be spreading or causing the puppies any discomfort, so I was not particularly worried about them.

Then at about 13 days one of the pups had a terrible tear under his tail and a couple of the other pups toes seemed very red and swollen to me. Almost overnight the swollen toes turned into horribly red, cracked, bleeding skin.

The dry, cracked, crusty skin can be seen on the puppies feet. The toes are also very swollen. This was absolutely horrible for the puppies and without a doubt the worst part of my handraising experiences.

Some of the pups also had red, bumpy areas of skin on their inner thighs and tummies. We started washing the affected areas with diluted Hibitane and applying anti-bacterial cream six times a day. This process took an hour, so in addition to the feeds it was a nightmare! It was at this stage that I became very ragged. I felt like we were over the worst part of the handraising and things should have been getting easier, but it just kept on becoming more difficult.

The only pup who never developed this condition was a puppy who had been on antibiotics (Cobacton) for a tummy bug. She started these antibiotics the day before the toes become swollen. So all of the pups went onto the same antibiotic and after five days of antibiotics, washing and cream the condition resolved.

This was a horrible experience. I vowed to avoid this problem altogether with the second litter and so I started washing their feet after every feed from the first day. Instead of this solving the problem it cause it to happen within the first week!

So, it was back to the antibiotic that had worked before. The condition resolved again, but this time I used a Vitamin E cream instead of the anti-bacterial cream and I also only applied it three times a day. Over applying the cream caused the skin to slough, which opened up further areas for infection.

The problem might have been caused by how I was toileting the pups. During their toileting, the urine was running down my hand and touching the puppies on their toes. The skin became dry and cracked and bacteria found its way in.

The pups also sucked one another's feet which ensured the spread of the bacteria and made the toes moist and thus ripe for infection.

I also separated the pups into individual baskets to control the sucking, but this caused problems with temperature control! With the second litter I segmented the whelping box - what a win! Read more about this under Temperature Control.

I didn't manage to avoid skin problems with the pups, but I found the following certainly helped:

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