what can i do to help my puppy?

Question
What can i give a 5wk purebred pitbull?

Answer
Hi Julie;
I would bottle feed it for a couple of weeks with puppy formula.
You can get a puppy nurser at Petsmart and most other pet stores, and from Veterinarians.
That is the closest thing to mother's milk for them.
You could mix some of the puppy formula with some Gerber's rice cereal.
I would get the dry cereal, and mix it into a gruel, and you will probably have to put some on your finger, to the puppy's mouth, and teach it to eat. Then lower your finger to the bolw, with some of the food on your finger. That will lead it's mouth to the food.
If it has already been fed a puppy food, you could continue with that, but if it is coming straight from nursing it's mother, 5 weeks is a little young to break away from the mother.
Gradually mix the rice cereal with some puppy formula dry dog food. Soften the food with some of the formula till the puppy learns to chew the food.
Feed it 4 times a day ( a 24 hour period)
You can possibly go for about 6 hours to sleep some, before waking to feed it again.
If it sleeps longer, let it.
Give it something to sleep with, if you are not letting it sleep with you.
A clock, the older fashioned kind that ticks, reminds it of it's mother. A warmed stuffed toy might make it feel like it is with it's littermates.
Make it a bed next to your's, if it is not sleeping in your bed, so if it cries in the night, you can drop your hand down to touch it, and reassure it.
I let my dogs sleep with me, when they want to, but when I am housebreaking a puppy, I sleep with it in the bed with me.
Wheh they wake, they have to empoty their bladder.
I have my mind set to wake as soon as that puppy starts moving around, so I can get up fast and take it outside ( or to puppy pads, or wherever you want the puppy to learn to go).
There is a lot of motivation to wake up when they puppy starts moving around looking for a place to pee.
You don't ant to stay asleep until it pees on you.LOL
Takes only a few days to teach it to go outside to do it
s business, after it learns that is where it is supposed to go, it will whine or bark to let you know.
It needs to go to a Veterinarian now, to be examined and make sure nothing is wrong, and to schedule the start of it's puppy shots.
Charlotte