Expert: Have4Paws - 1/9/2012

Question
I have a 11 week old female pure bred beagle. There have been a handful of times where she will just start yelping as if she's in pain. I don't see anything wrong with her and have seen her do it a couple times and it appear that everything is fine. She stops as soon as I pick her up and hold her close. Then she usually falls asleep in my arms. I'm just wondering if you have heard anyone encountering this before or if you know something breed specific that could be the problem.   I am taking her to the vet in a couple days for routine puppy stuff but wanted to ask someone who is very familiar with the breed.   Any info would be greatly appreciated

Thank you for your time,
~Jen

Answer
Hi, sorry to hear about this. No this is not a breed specific thing and it is not really normal behavior if it just happens out of the blue. I am wondering if she is having stomach pain, like cramps. Is she having any diarrhea? Your best bet is what you are already going to do, take her to the vet to be checked out. Also just know that as tempting as it is to hold her close, cuddle her and let her fall asleep you are inadvertantly teaching her that yelping brings you to her and gets her picked up so it is motivating to continue and will be after whatever is going on is figured out. So... my advise, check to see if she is ill or ok,then put her back down. You can hold her when she is not yelping which tells her that when she is being calm and quiet she will get your attention. Hope that makes sense, definately not trying to be cruel but this is how things start sometimes that down the road someone will say to me, "I just don't know where this is coming from" and it is usually from an incident where you didnt even realize you were giving them the wrong message