How To Care For A Pregnant Dog

Hi. I'm Jamie Crittall from Beech House Veterinary Centre in Surrey and I'm here to talk to you about dog breeding. Hi.

I'd like to talk to you about caring for a pregnant bitch. You might think she needs lots of special attention but actually you'd be wrong. She doesn't need anything other than a really good healthy balanced diet designed for a pregnant bitch.

She can still be exercised and still have lots of fun, lots of care, TLC, but no more than she would if she wasn't pregnant. In the last three weeks of her pregnancy, the developing puppies would be sort of taking up that space within her tummy and as a result, her stomach won't be able to fill as much as she could before and at that stage, it's worth feeding smaller amount but more regularly. If she was being fed twice a day, go to three meals a day but small amounts.

She may want to start eating a little bit more because by the time she gives birth, she'll probably be between 15 then 25 percent from when the weight she was before she was pregnant. The other thing to be doing in the last three weeks of her pregnancy is to avoid her from being too over boisterous, don't over-exercise her. But you would also want to introduce her whelping box and you can have a look at the right sort of whelping box in another video on Videojug.

So, when you introduce the whelping box, make sure it's still in a quiet area but a place actually you're going to be there. You want to make sure she feels reassured and it needs to be draft free. And at this stage, it's really important to let your vet know that she's pregnant if they don't already know because it's good for them to know and on those very rare occasions where you end up having an emergency, they're prepared for them.

And the two things that I would always watch out for in the last bit of pregnancy, if you think she's becoming a bit weak, she may not have enough blood sugar but even more sinister then that, if she becomes twitchy or you think she's very stiff in her movements, sometimes they can vomit. That maybe the sign of eclampsia here and really is an emergency and you want to get her down to the vet as soon as possible so they can help treat her. So that's how to care for a pregnant dog.

Nature is a wonderful thing and most of the time, everything goes really, really well, but just be prepared for those odd emergencies but your veterinarian practice can really help you. .