Are the runts of the litter just as healthy as th rest?
Puppies can be runts for many reasons. It could be simply that this puppy was attached to a “bad” spot in the mother’s uterus and did not receive the same amount of nutrition due to less blood flow than the other puppies were getting. Another reason a puppy could be a runt is that since dogs are capable of breeding/conceiving on different days of their cycle, the puppy that was conceived last didn’t have the same amount of growing time as the rest of the puppies. Neither of these reasons cause permanent damage to the puppy, but without having a vet run tests, you have no way of knowing if the puppy is a runt because of one or both of these reasons. However, there are slso a lot of genetic problems that can lead to small puppy size. Such as heart defects or liver shunts. A liver shunt, or a portosystemic shunt, is a normal fetal blood vessel that in the womb bypasses liver tissue, allowing the mother’s system to filter out toxins for the developing baby. In some puppies, however, the sh
