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030728Singapore
pet health and welfare educational for animal lovers, excerpts from Asiahomes
Internet's Tips For Pet Lovers,
Singapore, sponsored by AsiaHomes Internet.
Last Updated:
28 July, 2003 The Maltese puppy was enveloped by meconium 
I could not believe my eyes! It was past midnight but I was wide
awake. This Maltese bitch was young and in her
second pregnancy. She had
just strained to deliver her puppies "two hours ago" at 11 p.m. The water
bag had appeared at the vagina and the mother could not give birth.
It was an after-midnight Caesarian section. A routine one, I thought. I incised the uterine body expecting to bring out one healthy puppy. There was a huge brown clay-like mass bulging out. Inside this 50-ml mass was a dead and dry fully developed puppy. Stillborn? What was this powdery light brown chocolate mass? It looked as if the puppy had profuse diarrhoea and the mass was meconium. The breeder took over the puppy to clean and revive it. The second puppy was also stained by this mass. However, its amniotic sac was intact. It looked dead too. It had a large umbilical hernia and its right half of the body was paralysed. As if it had a stroke. The breeder said: "A deformed puppy! The right limbs are not moving." In the left uterine horn, two norm  al puppies were taken out.
Altogether, one normal puppy was stillborn, one was deformed and two were
normal. What was the cause of the large chocolate brown mass enveloping the
puppy? It was a mystery to me. Was it caused by drugs? Lack of
essential vitamins or minerals? Yet the other two puppies were normal. Two days later, I asked the breeder's assistant about this Maltese's history of pregnancy. She said: "The Maltese had a normal delivery in her first pregnancy." Well, that was good. "But, all puppies died."
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