Medical considerations during and after pregnancy
Small litter or Very Big puppies:
This time your bitch is pregnant, and you confirmed healthy heartbeats etc, but once the
labour starts it’s not progressing, and after 4 hours no pups has been born.
This can be due to either a small litter, and they don’t provide enough stimulation for the
birthing hormones to progress in active birth.
Medical intervention will be needed as the pups may die as they only have enough oxygin
to sustain them for 24 hours after the bitch’s water has broken.
Either the bitch will be administered some drugs to help the contractions along, or a
C-section will be done.
The other possibility is that it’s a larg litter, and the very first pup is very big, thus ‘blocking’
the restof the litter to be born. This is also very serious as the one pup can cause the rest
of the litter to die.
The same solution as above will be followed.
Due to above cenario’s it’s advisable to do x-rays around day 52 after mating, to establish
litter size.
Mostly if it’s a small litter (less then 4) the puppies will tend to be very big, and birthing
should be closely monitored.
Large litter:
In this instance you are dealing with a very succesfull breeding attempt, but having a large
litter cause lots of problems on it’s own.
The bitch might go into labour at the correct time, have 4 or 5 puppies with intervals of
between 30 minutes – 1 hour, and then things slows down.
Unfortunatley alot of bitches just don’t have the stamina to birth a big litter of 10-16 puppies
without help. They plainly get to tired half way through.
Once again medical assistance will be needed. Normally a shot of calsuim will be
administered, as well as ocytocin to help the process along, but if the process takes to long,
or if the bitch is not responsive to treatment, a c-section will be needed.
Premature placental seperation:
This is not a nice cenario. This is when no pups have been whelped, but the bitch is passing a
thick green -black discharge from the vulva.
Please rush the bitch to the VET. As premature pacental seperation means the puppies
oxygin supply has been cut off prematurely, and one or more pups has already died.
C-section will be needed.