How Do You Know If Your Dog Is Pregnant?
I’m going to talk to you for a few minutes about pregnancy and delivery in dogs. This is a really comprehensive subject. So obviously I can’t cover it all just in this one little vignette here, but certainly if you have other specific things you want to address, we can look at that doing doing that in the future.
So everybody loves the miracle of birth. It’s great everybody likes to see either humans or puppies or cats or horses being born, and I’ve heard many times in the exam room that hey doc. We just want to breed them one time, so the kids can see the puppies be born, and I would encourage you to find other ways to see puppies or kittens be born instead of breeding animals that maybe shouldn’t be bred.
So think about that – and you can also look at some videos on youtube to see how puppies are being born. Here i realize that none of those animals were bred just to be videoed. They were bred because either it was accidental in a stray.
That type of thing in a shelter dog or because they were purebred dogs, and they were meant to be bred because they were good dogs, so any way, responsible, breeding, very important and usually only purebred dogs – That have gone through a number of checkups for their health should be bred.
Dog gestation period is about 63 days plus or minus five days is kind of the rule of thumb. I’M not going to talk much about cats, but just so you know, they’re just stationed period is about the same, it’s about 65 days plus or minus five. When I refer to gestation period. That means from the time that they have conceived until they birth.
The puppies or kittens litter size can be hugely variable. Anything from a singleton puppy, which would be one up to some of these larger breeds, can have like 13 puppies. So I would say the average is more like 3 to 7 puppies. You know given the depending on the size of the dog in the breed.
So, how do you know your dog is pregnant? Well, first of all, you may have witnessed the breeding, and hopefully, if you’re breeding responsibly, you did witness it, and you know what days the dogs were bred. So in those cases you can feel pretty secure that you’ve got an animal. That’s been bred. If you don’t know – or you know, your not sure.
There’s a couple of ways that veterinarians can help you determine that there is a hormonal test and I actually haven’t done that one very often. But there is a pregnancy test for dogs and I believe they have to be around 30 days for that one. I don’t know how commonly it’s used unless you go to a reproductive doctor.
Probably the most common thing that I’ve done over the last 20 years would be at about day 21 to 30. If a dog is presented to the clinic, I can sometimes palpate the puppies in the uterus, and this is kind of an obviously a time-honored technique that isn’t always successful and does have some dependency on the veterinarian and their skill at palpating. But that is something you can consider doing.
How do you know you’ll need to involve a veterinarian in the birth of puppies? So that’s the good news. Usually, vets don’t have to get involved, but if you see before the day of delivery, if you’re, seeing abnormal discharge or maybe signs of illness in a dog won’t eat, won’t drink lethargic. That type of thing, that would be a reason to take them in. If the Temperature has dropped and you’re already beyond the sixty five days, and that temperature is dropped, and it’s been more than 48 hours. That might be a good reason to have the dog checked out.
If you see a pet, that’s actively pushing for more than 30 minutes and they haven’t produced a puppy, you need to call the vet or get right to an emergency clinic. Now, if labor is on and off and it it happening for more than 2 hours then it is a good time to call in the vet. If you know for sure that there are more to puppies to come, sometimes there can be big lapses, but certainly if the dog is showing any indication that she’s in discomfort, and has it produced a puppy within four hours than I would recall the vet also.
If there’s a birth sack visible, but it’s not continued to advance or the puppy is not coming out, that would definitely be an emergency. After the birth, any signs of illness in first 24 or 48 hour period, or even up to a week, puppies can fade very quickly. Now if, you notice that one isn’t nursing, they’re, very susceptible to hypothermia, which is being too cold, and to hypoglycemia, so that is a definite emergency need to see a vet ASAP.
If you see any signs like that in a puppy with the or the dog that has delivered, then a lack of appetite depression, vomiting, diarrhea, swollen or painful mammary glands. You know they can get mastitis (inflammation of breast tissue), or any kind of a discharge. If it lasting more than two weeks or if you notice that that discharges off-color like if it’s yellow or green, a lot of things can go wrong. I would say it is a good time to see a vet.
