How to Determine Whether a Dog Is Pregnant

Video Transcript

"Let's talk about how to determine if a dog is pregnant. Female dogs take about sixty-four, sixty-five days for gestation, that means from conception to when they have the puppies. And so during that time they're in the first half of that typically there's not many changes and the latter half of that especially toward the last two weeks of pregnancy you're going to notice a lot of changes and most dogs what we're talking about is an increase in the weight and abdominal size. Also, along with that comes swelling of the mammary tissue which is right below on that ventral aspect of the belly. That mammary tissue is swelling because it's forming milk to be able to nurse the puppies. Also, along with this an appetite increase is typically seen because they're also compensating for the growth of the puppies that are inside of them. So, weight gain, increase abdominal size, increase mammary tissue size and appetite increase are very typical. Now, your veterinary clinic can help you with that. They can do radio graphs, they can do ultrasound and find out how many puppies are there which is never a bad idea to know before a female has her puppies."