When discussing dog infanticide, you should know that death normally occurs within the first five days of a puppy’s life; however, it can happen up to 10 weeks of age. Additionally, around 30% of pedigree puppies die in their first few weeks, with only around half dying from causes that can’t be identified.
However, you should know that a dog will never kill out of jealousy, and there must be another motivation for a dog to kill another dog, especially puppies. Unfortunately, there are a variety of causes for this, and we are unable to diagnose your dog via the internet.
Infanticide as a reproductive strategy has not been reported in domestic dogs, even if they are feral or free-roaming. Still, it has been observed in wolves, coyotes, golden jackals, and dingoes, with female wolves committing infanticide.
Interestingly, the alpha females kill the pups of subordinate females, not the males.
Female dogs may argue over who gets to keep a newborn litter or puppy, but they will not kill it. Even though most whole bitches have a strong maternal instinct, males occasionally care for puppies. Infanticide is a poor reproductive strategy because it reduces genetic diversity, shrinks the gene pool, and weakens the species.
This may be one of the reasons why bitches mate with every available male, resulting in a litter with multiple fathers and extensive genetic diversity while also ensuring that no male fully understands which puppies are his. As a species, dogs have mastered the skill of surviving.
Table of Contents
Dog Infanticide – Reasons Dogs Kill Other Dogs’ Puppies
1. Dog Infanticide Caused By Disorder
Aggression is a symptom of some disorders. Rabies is the most well-known and harmful, but numerous other viruses, parasites, and illnesses can affect an animal’s behaviour.
If you reside in an area where rabies is present and your dog attacks all other dogs, including you, you must exercise extreme caution. Rabies has no known cure and every canine and human who contracts the disease die.
Vaccination is the only means of defence; a veterinarian should examine the blood for evidence of such disorders. If this is the case, you must keep her isolated from the other dogs, so they do not come into contact with her saliva.
They must not eat or drink from the same dish and must not lick anything she has come into contact with. This is not a prison but a quarantine facility, and it’s not to punish a dog but to safeguard everyone else.
2. Dog Infanticide Caused By Stress
For a dog, living with so many dogs and having puppies regularly sound like a lot of stress. Dogs, like humans, can suffer from burnout and PTSD.
Perhaps she is so anxious that she kills the puppies to alleviate the stress in her surroundings.
3. Dog Infanticide Caused By Pain
When a dog experience pain daily, they become cranky. Dogs who are continually in discomfort are prone to become aggressive. They are frustrated because they are always in pain and do not want other canines to bring them more agony through particular behaviours and movements.
You may not know where she is in pain; it may be her spine or neck, her legs, a toothache, or any of her internal organs. If her behaviour has altered recently, such as limping, playing, or eating less, it may offer you an indication of where the pain is located.
4. Dog Infanticide Caused By Malnutrition
It’s also possible that your dog is malnourished. She eats plenty and isn’t hungry, but the food is deficient in specific nutrients, such as a mineral or vitamin, that she needs but doesn’t get enough of.
Malnutrition can cause a dog’s behaviour to change, but it usually starts with eating items that aren’t food or obsessing about food. A vet must collect a blood sample and examine it in a lab to detect malnutrition.
Then you might switch to a different food or give her nutritional supplements.
5. Caused By Inbreeding
It appears you have no influence over which of your dog’s breeds interact with whom. This means that a sister and brother, or a mother and son, could produce children.
This is known as inbreeding, and it can have a variety of repercussions on the pups. Inbreeding, in particular, has been shown to reduce fertility by raising the homozygosity of detrimental recessive genes.
Inbred fetuses are also more likely to have spontaneous abortions due to inherent developmental problems. Physical abnormalities and genetically acquired disorders are also more common in viable inbred babies.
Inbreeding has been linked to an increase in various genetic illnesses, including blindness, hearing loss, neonatal diabetes, limb abnormalities, sex development issues, Schizophrenia, and others.
Animals’ bodies and brains are both affected by inbreeding. It’s possible that your dog is schizophrenic or suffers from another mental condition, causing her to kill the puppies. If that’s the case, there’s no way to get rid of it.
The only method to avoid inbreeding is to desex all your female dogs so they can’t have children or segregate male dogs from female dogs that haven’t been desexed.
6. Caused By Combination
The road to success is never easy. It’s possible that several things contributed to the dog killing her puppies. Your dog may have had a mental condition since birth due to inbreeding, but she only lately began killing puppies owing to stress or her advanced age.
Many mental illnesses appear or get stronger at a specific age. Or she could have been in continual discomfort for a long time, causing her to eat less, causing malnutrition, and ultimately causing her to kill the puppies. Any combination of these elements is feasible.
Solution To Dog Infanticide
If you allow your dogs to reproduce in this manner, you risk this dog not being the only one who suffers. The recommendation is that you find a way to control your dog’s breed.
You may desex all or just a few of them and keep them apart from the others. Create a family tree for your dogs and ensure that no siblings, parents, or children breed with each other.
[…] days of life but can occur as late as ten weeks. It is responsible for approximately half of all puppy deaths, and around 30% of pedigree puppies die in their first weeks of […]