How can I ensure the well-being of my pregnant dog?

First off, as with any dog, we need to make sure that their health is good in general. If you know that you have plans of breeding your dog, make sure she’s examined beforehand. Make sure she’s in good physical health enough to withstand the rigors that come with pregnancy. So, that would be step one.

Step two would be to consider getting her tested for any infectious diseases beforehand, things like brucellosis. That’s the main one that comes to mind for me, but just make sure that she is a good candidate for pregnancy and doesn’t have anything infectious that could be passed on to the male or her puppies. And then the third and final thing, and again, this goes along with just good medical care in general, but we’ll want to get a good parasite screening on her. Certain intestinal worms can be transferred either placentally or after birth to the puppy. You want to make sure she’s cleaned beforehand. And that usually makes for a smoother birthing process and the first few weeks of a puppy’s life.

How long will my dog be pregnant?

The gestation period for dogs is about 63 days. Some people break it down to the trimesters. If you do that, it’s 21 days per trimester, but it’s 63 days. So we’re looking at almost exactly two months for pregnancy.

Will my veterinarian use diagnostic testing to determine if my dog is pregnant?

I kind of stole my thunder on this answer a little bit, but the relaxin pregnancy test is one. And again, that’s a little bit earlier, so you can do that one probably around day 30 or so, or later. It doesn’t have to be on day 30, but no sooner than that. The big one that a lot of people like to do is X-rays. You can get radiographs of a pregnant female’s abdomen, and you can detect somewhat of a puppy count or the number that can be expected.

Now, you can’t do it just anytime during pregnancy. The skeletons of those puppies don’t ossify until about day 50 or so. So anytime before that, I’m not saying you won’t get any glimpse of bones and maybe get a rough estimate of a puppy count, but I don’t recommend doing it until they hit day 50 or later, just for that reason. I don’t want to do it early, and then I’m still scratching my head thinking, well, this might be a puppy, or that might be a puppy. If you wait a little bit later, that can help you out there.

One of the tests that some people like to do, and maybe not so much for the count but the vitality of the pregnancy, is an ultrasound. Again, it’s challenging to count puppies. If you have a litter of 10 or 12 puppies, it’s going to be pretty doggone hard to count. And in fact, it’s going to be virtually impossible to count 10 to 12 puppies on an ultrasound. But you can tell the vitality of it, checking heart rates and things like that on the puppies to make sure that they’re nice and viable.

What are some possible complications of dog pregnancy that I need to be aware of?

You always have to worry about milk production. This is in the female herself, not so much the puppies right now, but in the pregnant female when she starts producing a lot of milk. Well, that calcium comes from somewhere, and she’s typically pulling it from her bones. I don’t like beginning calcium supplementation until after the puppies are born if it’s needed. But I want to increase their caloric intake, and in that case, calcium intake, beforehand, usually in the form of feeding a good, well-balanced puppy food.

I don’t see it often, but dogs can get gestational diabetes, very similar to what happens in humans. And probably some of the more common complications occur either during or after the delivery themselves. You can have a retained placenta, and that’s never good, as that can lead to a uterine infection very quickly. You can also sometimes have mastitis. The ducts are very open, and sometimes they can have an ascending bacterial infection that’ll get in there and cause mastitis. You’re going to see what almost looks like bruising or discoloration to the mammary glands with mastitis. The milk that comes out is no longer going to be white. It’s going to be this yellowish tan, sometimes even darker than that type of substance.

In some cases of uterine infections, you’ll see a very putrid, dark, just yucky vaginal discharge that will be coming out. And the reason I’m hemming and hawing on the answer is because you’re going to get some vaginal discharge for the next few days after birth anyway. We all know what puss looks or smells like. If you see anything that looks like that, that’s not normal. Normal vaginal discharge after birth would be a dark green bordering on black. And that’s from the placenta from the puppies themselves. But if you start getting that kind of brownish, tanish, or yellowish type discharge, that usually is not a good sign.