Am hoping some of you can give me some advice on doing cheek swabs on puppies - I have a litter that is 4 weeks old. Any tips for getting good accurate results?

TIA

There are a couple steps you can take to try to eliminate potential cross contamination.

1- Do it after separated from mom for an hour or so.
2- Best if puppies are asleep and you can quietly remove one at a time without disturbing the others to much if you can.
3- You can swab at this point, but if you want, a single spray of clean warm water in the mouth will get the pup to clean its mouth up if there was anything contaminating it.

The steps above are more for our peace of mind that we do our best to ensure no cross contamination. You can do this on week old pups if need be with success as well.

DDC will also give you a little guidance as well if you contact them.
The likelihood of cross contamination is quite low.

Best of luck!

Basically, you can't do cheek swabs with 4 week old puppies. The puppies would not be able to touch any other puppies or even their mother for 10-12 hours.

This is why you don't ask technical questions on a general forum - you can get completely opposite answers
I recommend you call DDC and talk to the "experts" on the subject of cheek swabs.

Call DDC. Ask them your question. It really isn't that complicated but get yoru answer from those that deal with it.
Good luck.

thanks for all the replies - was in the process of contacting DDC but, as is the way, was looking for instant gratification. hence, the request for info.

Thought I would share my info from DDC:

So, to the person who said no swabs on 4 wk puppies: actually, you can. preferably they should not have nursed for one hour. Nursing will not cause cross reactivity, but it does provide an excellent medium for the growth of bacteria. You can rinse the mouth with water before taking swabs.

Otherwise, any age pup can be tested.