PAWZ Road understands the excited feeling for you and your mother dog that expecting a group of healthy and lovely babies. However, nobody enjoys a helplessness situation, mother dogs either. So it is indispensable for you to prudentially assist your dog to litter smoothly. If there are confusions for you about it, we would like to help you in the following ways.
Grasp The Signal of Childbirth
If you see the mother dog start to put in energy hardly, or there is a color of the secretions (usually a dark green bulge in the genital area), the mother dog is about to delivery. Starting from this time, if normal, the puppy should be born within 1 hour.
Prepare for Reception of New Puppies
- Washing your mom dog’s nipples with lukewarm water, wash away the dirt, and gently squeeze the nipples so that the milk canal is unblocked.
- Preparing a lot of absorbent cloth, because the dog has a lot of water and blood during labor.
Familiar with Childbirth Process
1. There will be the fetal membrane with many of the amniotic fluid, and the mom dogs will break it in time. Then the puppy’s hind foots will come out from the amniotic membrane firstly, this is a normal production process.
2. Once a puppy is born, the mom dog will bite off the funicle and continue to litter. If the mom dog does not do this, especially when the puppy's face is still covered by the membrane, you can try to help her by removing the fetal membrane from the puppy’s nostrils and face, then cutting off the umbilical cord at 4 cm from the navel. At this time, you must put the umbilical cord between your two fingers and nip off hard instead of using scissor. Then returning the puppy to the mom dog immediately.
3. After giving birth to a puppy, the mom dog may have a rest for few minutes or few hours. This interval will be gradually decreased with the progress of childbirth, but sometimes this interval is not necessarily regular.
4. It takes different time to give birth to each puppy. However, it won’t exceed 2 hours at most ( Not referring to the 2 hours after the puppy being born ). If your dog don’t have a puppy after 2 hours, you need to seek a vet for help. Generally, there are 4 to 8 puppies in a single birth, and the average litter time spent is about 6 hours in total.
5. After 2-3 hours, if your dog becomes quiet or licks puppy’s fur without any hard action, which indicating that the childbirth has finished. What if a small number of babies are delivered again after 48 hours? Most of these are stillbirths.
Several Matters You Should Clear
- It's better to stay with your dog at home for a few days when she is going to litter. Because sometimes mom dog will be too late to tear the placenta. You must help her to do it. Otherwise, the puppies are likely to suffocated.
- Preventing the puppies from being pressed by the her mother’s moving body during childbirth.
- As far as possible to appease and soothe the mom dog's emotions, accompanied by closed owner, the mom dog will be more at ease. Usually the mom dog know the entire process even if it is her first birth, she can handle everything independently. Therefore, the most important thing is not to distract the mom dog, only one helper (owner) is enough, and keep quiet.
- Tips: Attach a colorful rope on the new baby’s neck to distinguish the brothers or sisters.
PAWZ Road sincerely wishes the above can help your mother dog give birth to the healthy puppies successfully, especially for new dog parents.
Thank you for your reading!
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