Below are pictures of our last litter of newborn puppies here at Summer Brook. These puppies are of a Tara/Jake litter. We will post pictures of London’s newborn puppies by the time they are two days old. Scroll below the pictures to read about developmental information for newborn puppies.
Developmental Information
The average newborn Golden Retriever puppy weighs about 14 ounces. They are totally dependent on their moms. Their eyes and ears are closed and they depend on their already developing sense of smell to find their moms. They cannot walk, but rather scoot around on their bellies.
During these first days, the mom is the primary caretaker. In fact, usually the moms are hesitant to leave the box even for potty breaks. The mom will not only keep them fed, but cleans them as well.
However, newborn puppies need us humans for the best possible chance of surviving and thriving. We take turns keeping watch over the puppies for the first two weeks, including overnight. Puppies are so small at this age that without supervision, it is very common for the mom to accidentally lay on one of them.
We handle them often and start clipping nails weekly at one or two days of age. We weigh them daily to make sure each one is growing well and getting their share of mom’s milk. We also give them daily probiotics which keeps their digestive system strong.
At three days, we will start ENS (early neurological stimulation). You can read about ENS on our Raising Puppies page .
We ask families to wait until puppies are at least two weeks old before making definite plans and booking flights to pick up puppies. We don’t anticipate loosing any puppies, but it does sometimes happen in those first couple of weeks. We’ve only lost one puppy (ever) after two weeks of age.
We’ll continue keeping you posted on how Tara’s newborn puppies are growing on a weekly basis. See our Available Puppies page to get to pages of Tara’s newborn puppies at other ages.