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Dog Breeding: Detecting If Your Dog Is Pregnant
There is no infallible method to confirm if your dog has a pregnancy very early in term, before 21 days. There are those few exceptional individuals who, by having developed an exceedingly close rapport with their female, may be able to detect a pregnancy as early as 10 days. Through a heightened awareness, they are able to observe minute subtle changes in their dog.
Those people who are able to determine pregnancies by two weeks and matrons who so strongly show hormonal changes are the exceptions to the normal course of early pregnancy determination.
The earliest signs of a pregnancy are often behavioral. Through initial hormonal changes, the female dog may need additional physical attention. Or she may appear to be depressed and withdrawn from her owners and normal routine. In these cases, a strengthened emotional support helps such sensitive females to retain their pregnancies.
Other changes are physical in appearance. Often, it is how the mother-to-be carries herself; she may appear to move differently once bred. Her appetite may also change radically, sometimes within hours of a successful breeding. Such behavioral changes may be exhibited by either a depressed or increased desire for food intake. The expressed behavior can also be that of a need for variation in the diet.
Some females may start eating feces, either their own or, in rarer cases, that of other dogs. This form of aberrational behavior is often fostered by unclean living conditions, a dietary insufficiency, a mineral/vitamin deficiency or a combination of factors.
Dog Pregnancy Tests
There are a variety of tests that can help in detecting a pregnancy. Many of these tests are only as good as the technician or veterinarian administering them. Palpation has long been accepted as the standard for detecting a pregnancy. The optimum period for an expert to perform the palpation is 21 days past conception. At this time the puppies feel, upon palpation, round and enlarged like eggs.
Fertilized eggs do not attach to the uterus's lumen (wall) until approximately 18 days past conception. Determining a pregnancy at this time is not always possible if the female tenses during palpation. Should the clinician performing the palpation not be an expert and roughly handle the female at this time, an abortion can be caused by separation of the newly attached placenta from the uterine horn's wall.
When utilized properly, ultrasound has proven to be a successful method of determining pregnancy. Working on the same principle as sonar, safe and noninvasive as a test, the process of ultrasound consists of bouncing radio (sound) waves off internal organs.
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