OK, the entertainment value of people picking each other apart over trivial matters is beginning to wear thin. Here is a new situation I encountered recently. I was at the vet's having the crew checked for heartworm several days ago (all negative- yay!) when the vet appeared at the door with a blue tick coonhound and asked if I thought she had had a litter. She had huge hanging teats that were not engorged with milk and looked like a litter had recently been weaned from her. Her owners had sent her to an out-of-state trainer and had just gotten her back in that condition. The trainer insisted it was a false pregnancy. From the timing of her latest heat cycle, she would have whelped a month or more before. Here are my questions.

Would a false pregnancy be that pronounced (she was really hanging low) that long after the whelping date?

Does anyone know of any sure fire way of telling if a girl has whelped over a month after the fact?

I was told that this has been known to happen with coonhound circles. A female sent for training is bred either accidentally or deliberately, and the puppies are sold without the owner's knowledge. Whether they would be sold unregistered or under false registration I don't know. I've never heard of such a thing in the retriever world, and I have had dogs professionally trained myself and have many friends that do so, too. I know about several accidental pregnancies, but they were not kept secret from the owner. This blew my mind! Any comments?

from what you describe a litter rather than a false pregnancy seems more likely.

BUT???? Why would someone send a bitch out for "training" when she is due in heat? Wouldn't you usually wait for a girl to come in and go out if it were nearly time for a heat cycle when planning something like this?

I also have heard of "careless" Handlers sending home a bitch in whelp, accidently bred while in their care to be shown, all this goes to prove how careful we need to be when trusting our dogs to other's?

I'd never seen these people before I met them at the vet's, and I know very little about coonhounds and how much training they need to do their job, so I can't speak for their situation, but retrievers in advanced training often are at the trainers for 6 months or more, and many field trial dogs would be at the trainers 10 months a year as long as they are competing so yes, they would be there during a heat cycle. My trainer always exercises males separately from females to ensure that there are no accidents. Of course, I visit whenever I can to watch the dogs run or to run them myself. I'm fortunate to have a good, conscientious trainer only75 minutes away.

I should add that the training season here in Wisconsin is fairly short. Sometimes you can only work in the water for 5 months or less, and if you want to get the training done in time to run in a hunt test the same season, you don't always have a choice of avoiding a heat cycle. Of course, that wouldn't apply to coonhounds, but maybe they have similar issues of which I am unaware.

I don't know what the deal is with these field trainers, but keeping bitches in heat away from the boys doesn't seem to be much of a priority with some trainers. I personally know of two litters that were the result of bitches/dogs being with a trainer and accidentally bred while under their care (two different trainers, btw).

It's no wonder we have silver Labs. It seems oops breedings do occur with field trainers, so it is not too difficult to imagine a Weim accidently breeding a Lab and introducing the dilute gene into the breed that way.

Dianne

RESPONSIBLE retriever trainers are observant and keep the bitches in heat away from the males. They still load them on the truck, train the males first on each set-up, then the bitches in heat last.

We train ALL THE TIME regardless of heat cycles. As a bitch owner, when I have sent a female to a trainer, I let the trainer know when her next heat is due so he can mark it on the calendar and keep his eyes open.

Just like everything else--there are good, responsible, trainers, sloppy trainers, careless trainers, unethical trainers.

MK

Maybe I've led a protected life, but I have never heard of a retriever trainer who has let a bitch in training get pregnant and have a litter without letting the owner know!

Me too! We had many girls in training and there was NEVER an oops!
Sheltered,
A

I don't know - coon hound people might be a different bunch.

I have a girl that has had a false pregnancy with every heat cycles since she was two. Her teats get big and engorged with milk. The poor girl looks like a brood bitch from a puppy mill. She never tucks up anymore. I'm going to breed her one more time and then I think it best to spay her.
R

I'm really late in replying to this, but one of my girls came in for first heat at 6 months over Thanksgiving...brought her mother in with her
She had a false pregnancy and boobs to prove it. Two months later she had hanging boobs but teenie teats. How long was the bitch with the trainer I wonder, maybe it was mentioned.

This was awhile ago now, but as I remember, she would have whelped over a month before, so more than 3 months after her heat cycle- Her breasts were 3-3.5 inches long,and the teats were definitely not tiny. I did not ask how long she had been with the trainer, but I assume she would have been with him at the time she would have been due to whelp, and possibly at the time of her heat cycle. I was mainly wondering if anyone had a fool-proof way of detecting if a bitch had whelped, as that was why the people had brought her in. My vet did not know of any.