I have two puppies that are 4 weeks old. They have had a rough start to life, the female had 8 puppies and all but these two died within the first week. These haven't seemed to very healthy either. Both puppies seem to be a little smaller than they should be at this age, but they are both fat and healthy looking except for their feet. The male's feet are OK except for the front right one, it is sort of curled up and he is walking with it like that and I am afraid he is making it worse. The female's back feet are OK also, but her front ones are horrible. Both of them are curled under extremely bad and when she walks, it is also like she is walking on the top of her paws with them curled under. I have been told that cod liver oil can help this and I started doing this yesterday, but I wonder if this will really help. I'm am not even sure what causes this, I have seen this and heard of it before, but I have never heard what causes this. Any insight would be extremely appreciated. Thanks!!

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DUSTY TRAILS KENNELS, "WHERE EYES AREN'T THE ONLY THINGS THAT SHINE"

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its called rickets and is cause by lack of vitamins and nutrients that the mother should of have but didn t. the only thing i know of how to fix this is by the cod liver oil and calcium and a good multi vitamin and plenty of sunlight....

Stop feeding them puppy food. Don't give them anything "high protein" or high anything. I assume you fed them a lot in the attempt to get them to a more normal weight since they had such a bad start. It's better to have them grow slowly.Rickets happens a lot with hound pups because a lot of them look underweight when they hit the lanky, leggy stage so they get fed to hot of a food. It makes their body grow too fast for their skeleton and the legs bend over. Adult dog food, fish oil, fresh air, sunshine and exercise should bring them around.

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