Delivering Puppies

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Dr. Marcia Martin and we're here at Safe Harbor Animal Rescue in Jupiter, Florida and today we're going to talk a little bit about how to delivery puppies. Once again if you're lucky you won't have to do anything and mom will do it all and you can just watch. But there are certain breeds particularly that have problems called Dystocia having puppies and that would be English Bulldogs are famous for not being able to pass those big headed puppies. Chihuahuas and some of the smaller breeds often have trouble having babies on their own and may wind up with a C-section. So basically at around 62 days you should start noticing that mom is having pre-delivery behavior. She may be pacing, she may be off her feet, maybe even a little nauseous and maybe a little diarrhea. Make her a nice nesting box. A lot of times what people use is those big plastic swimming pools full of newspaper and blankets, somewhere where she can go and feel comfortable and relax when she is ready to deliver these puppies. There is no guarantee she will actually use this fabulous box you make. She may wind up on your couch or your bed, that is also very typical dog behavior. She once she is past the pre-delivery stage and she lays down and she is actively contracting you should notice that she'll be panting and you'll actually see that abdomen contract and maybe her tail will go up and she'll be looking back towards her genitals and licking back there. About an hour or so of this and she should start producing puppies. The puppies should pass and mom should remove the membranes off of the puppies face so that it can breath. She should stimulate it by licking and cleaning it and kind of nudge it over towards her abdomen and towards her nipples so that the puppy can be encouraged to eat. Now if she goes more than an hour between puppies you should really call your vet and make sure that everything is o'kay or take the dog in and make sure that everything is o'kay. You need to be sure that mom is passing a placenta with each puppy because a retained placenta can cause infection in the uterus, emergency surgery and can be a really bad complication so you want to be counting those placentas as the puppies come out. Now mom hopefully we may have had some prenatal care and we may have some idea of how many puppies are in there by taking an X-ray towards the latter end of the pregnancy so that you know how many puppies to expect so you know if mom is actually done but once mom has passed all the babies you should take her to the vet, have the puppies checked out, have mom checked out and make sure everything is o'kay."