Dog Pregnancy and Postpartum

Hi, I'm Dr. Bruce Ard with the Wagon Train Veterinary Clinic, and in today's segment, we're going to answer questions about dog pregnancy. The before, the after, sometimes the during, but we're going to answer any questions that you might have about dog pregnancy. Lacey and I have put together a list of some very commonly asked questions that we run into on a daily basis. We're going to run through those and hopefully give you a better understanding. Lacey? How can I tell if my dog is about to go into labor? Well, so a couple of things. Number one, pregnancy duration is 63 days, give or take, so it's a very big help if you know when your dog was bred, and so the whelping date can be established that way. So that's number one. Number two, on the assumption that you've done some of the other preliminary testing, like if you've had x-rays and a pregnancy test and all these other things to confirm pregnancy done, probably the best way to know when they're going into labor is to regularly check their body temperature. I would say maybe for about a week to five days before the expected due date, I would start taking their temperature at least once daily. You will typically, and again, I'll use the word typically, some dogs don't read the books that we learn from, but you will typically see a temperature drop to anywhere between 97 to 99 degrees, and that typically happens roughly 24 hours before they go into labor. Again, so you take a temperature, if it's low, take it again in a couple of hours. If you get two back-to-back low temperatures in that range I just mentioned, there's a very good chance that you're going to have puppies in the next 24 hours. So that's probably the most accurate indicator that I can think of as to when your dog's going to go into labor. Is it safe for my dog to give birth at home? Absolutely, yeah. Better your home than mine. No, I'm kidding. Yes, I mean, where else are they going to have it? I mean, unless there is a veterinary situation, dystocia, declamps, any kind of medical condition that would warrant a veterinary getting involved, then no, there's no reason for me to get involved. Assuming you have the proper preparations at home, a whelping box, towels, a good dark, quiet spot for the dog to go into. If you've made all those preparations beforehand, and we'd covered them on the previous video, so if you didn't, go back and watch it. But if you have those things ready, heck yeah, a dog can have it at home. You're just looking for any abnormalities. I don't want to steal the thunder of another question perhaps down the road, but you're just looking for any abnormalities. If the dog is in active labor, like contracting for 30 minutes or more and no puppy, I need to know about it. If they're going multiple hours between puppies, I probably ought to know about that too. One other thing that helps, how do you know when they're finished? And again, I don't know if that's a question you have later, but I'm going to answer it now. How do you know if they're finished? Well, that's when x-rays really come in. You can do x-rays after about day 50 of pregnancy, and you get a good idea of how many puppies that she has to deliver, because otherwise you're just kind of guessing. So maybe she has four and she stops. Well, are you going to know if that's all she has? If you didn't do x-rays, you really are not going to know. So that's one of the benefits of checking x-rays before they go into labor. Where should my dog give birth at? At your house. At a whelping box. So what does that look like? What's a whelping box? It's a quiet, dark, comfortable spot, preferably one that the dog is comfortable with, because let's be honest, they don't want to have puppies in the middle of your living room floor. You might want them to, because, oh, look at me. Oh, there's one, there's two. She doesn't want to be around all that. She wants to be in the dark where it's quiet and you have no idea what's happening. So prepare that spot for her. And if you have that spot prepared, show it to her before, let her sleep in it before, get her comfortable with it. That should be her safe haven. That should be where she knows she can go and she's going to be left alone, quiet, and nobody's in her way. And so show it to her for the couple of weeks leading up to surgery, if possible, or surgery, to birthing, if possible. And short answer, that's where she should have her puppies, would be there, ideally. A quick question. Only if there's a problem. Dogs, look, God knows what he was doing when he made us, when he made dogs, cats, and all these creatures. I mean, they know what they're doing. Even if they've never given birth before, it's called genetics. They're going to figure it out. So I try not to intervene unless I have to. And again, I kind of briefly touched upon earlier, like pushing for 30 minutes with no puppy, those kinds of things. If there's things like that that are happening, then absolutely get on the phone, call me, let me know, or better yet, bring the dog in and we'll do what we have to do. But other than that, stay out of the way. Let her do her thing. She's going to get, she's going to eat the placenta. She's going to lick the puppy clean. She's going to lick the puppies to make them go to the bathroom for the first time. They need to nurse on her immediately to cause not only milk letdown, but it also, excuse me, causes a release of oxytocin, which helps the uterine to involute and start to either contract more. Or when pregnancy is done, it makes the uterus kind of collapse and empty, blood clots, extra placental tissue, all that stuff is passed. And just the simple act of a puppy nursing does that. So again, stay out of the way as much as possible. Call me if you need to, but otherwise let the pups do their thing. How do I know how many puppies my mom will give birth to? X-rays. Yeah, short answer, but yeah, x-rays. Ultrasound is another test that you can do leading up to it that might tell you about the viability of the puppies and how vigorous they are. It'll check their heart rate. That's kind of neat to see, but it's very, very difficult. I would argue almost impossible to give an accurate puppy count on ultrasound. X-rays anytime after day 50, that's when the skeletons are visible on an x-ray. That's going to be the best information you can have to know the number. How long does Iver usually take? I'm going to be honest with you. Just from personal experience, I can tell you that this is an extremely variable answer. I have seen some dogs where they are over and done in a matter of 30 minutes to an hour where the entire litter, and I do mean like Labrador size litter where they might pass 10 or 12 puppies and it's just like popping out. I have literally seen, because I owned one, a dog that came from a litter that was born over three days. This female would have like three or four and then she'd stop and you go, oh, she's done. And the next day you'd come home from work and there was four or five more. And then it happened over three days. So is that normal? No. Would I be nervous? Yeah. Had that dog been brought to me as a veterinarian, I probably would have done x-rays and said, oh God, there's still three more. Let's go get them. But there's a lot of variability. I would tell you on average, a couple of hours is on average, but there's so much variability depending on the size of the puppies, depending on the size of the female, depending on the size of the litter, depending on the breed of dog. There are certain breeds like English Bulldogs. I'll just pick on them because they are the poster child for dystocia. Those guys have a hard time passing through the birth canal naturally. So sometimes it takes a little bit longer and sometimes people don't even want to take that chance and they'll do a scheduled C-section. For certain breeds, that's not a bad idea too. What do I need to do once my dog is given birth? Once the dog is given birth, again, you're kind of wanting to stay out of the way and let mama do her thing as much as you can. But what does that look like? All I want you to do is be a conscientious observer at first. So I want you to ensure that those pups shortly after birth are nursing. If they're not, encourage them to nurse. If you have to, that's one way you might want to get involved. You can milk a little bit of milk out. You can squeeze a little bit of milk out and try to put some on the puppy's lips or tongue and try to encourage them to latch on. You shouldn't have to. Most puppies figure it out with the help of mom. But you should observe that they are nursing properly. You should observe that each placenta passes. If there's one puppy, that equals one placenta. You should see that. You might have to look closely because mama might take care of that real quick. But you want to make sure that that passes. You want to make sure that she's cleaning them adequately. Again, I'm not implying that you jump in there in the first five seconds and say, oh no, she didn't do anything. I'm going to dry it. But after the first 10, 15 minutes, whenever she's not cleaning or drying that puppy, then maybe you can kind of stimulate them a little bit with a warm towel and dry them a little bit so they don't start getting cold. I would do that, but immediately try to put them right back with mom and let her take over that role if possible. Okay, that's it. Oh, that wasn't bad. All right, guys, I hope that answered some questions. I know I had fun filming this one. So if you've got any more questions, reach out to us. Come by the office. Look us up on Facebook. Whatever modern modality you want to contact us, we'll try to answer whatever questions you have. Appreciate you tuning in, and we'll talk to you soon. Take care.