Hi, I feel awful..........I have a bitch that I bred who supposidly was not pregnannt but..........this morning when I went out to the kennel - yes shhe was back in the kennel I found one perfectly formed puppy in with her --- dead of corse. I brought hher to the Vet to get an xray just to be sure she was not pregnent 3 days before her due date which was the 15-16th. I was sure that she was not pregnant and my Vet was sure also and did not even want to xray her. I did progesterone testing so felt I knew the due dat this puppy is 5- 6 days past that. There was no blood she has no swelling either in her belly or her vulva......if I try really hard I am able to get a drop of milk out of one nipple. I feel like I let this girl down big time. She is acting totally non pregnannt normal...........I will call my Vet this morning and go get that xray we should hhave had before hand!
I feel oh so guilty and so sad ---- please no flames.

I am so sorry for you. I had a similar situation back in October. I had a bitch who was in heat in June, and I had her segragated from the males. She went out of heat, and 4 months later, yes I said 4 months later, I found 2 perfectly formed dead pups in her crate. She never looked pregnant, and did not get any milk until she actually delivered her pups. When I put her in her crate for the night around 10PM she seemed fine, and never an indication that there was anything to come. She must have had a split cycle, and when she came back in, she had a silent heat. I never notice the males being the least bit interested in her the second time. It is very hard to take, especially when you feel that it could have been prevented.

Your girl may have another pup in there, so definitely do get her x-rayed.

I am sorry for your loss.

Thank you for your kind response. I have her in the kitchen now - she is playing with a ball! This was a chilled semen breeding - she looks so NOT PREGNANT. When I brought her to the Vet just before hher due date the Vet palpated very deeply felt nothing - there were absolutely no siigns that she was pregnant! I will never not x-ray a bitch that I have bred again! My Vet opens at 10 am - I think I am fine waiting for him rather than running to the emergency Vet down the street don't you???? I checked all the dogs last night about 11:00 - she was her normal self then. I don't know if the puppy would have survived if she were set up in the whelping box where it was nice and warm - my kennel temperature is only 60-65 right now.

I too am sorry to hear of this, and I can imagine how you must feel.

It could have happened to me in the past, based on your dates. I've had girls who didn't take, I kept them in with me around their due dates, nothing, and a week later, I too have let them go back out to the kennel. I am sure many breeders have all done the same. Just last week a breeder who used my male, thought her female didn't take, and only because a puppy happened to be felt moving around by the owner, did she even realize the female was pregnant after all. Luckily, because of that fluke patting of the female, where the puppy was felt moving, did this story have a happier ending than yours. That pup was born in the vehicle on the way to the vet's after a particularly rough labour. It was confirmed that it was a singleton. This could have been missed too, but luckily wasn't. But please don't beat yourself up over this. Yes, it's sad, but if anything, chalk it up to experience and you can always remember your little angel puppy in your knowledge and experience.

Hi again:

You don't know if the puppy would have survived its delivery, and you don't really know if it ever took its first breath. With only one pup, its quite often the case that the female doesn't get the natural drops in her hormone levels and then the natural oxytocin to even get a good labor started, and get enough contractions to deliver the pup live. I've had pups born even within a litter, that I knew hadn't been dead long, but had definitely died. I can often tell by the way they bleed out from the cord, as though there is no more circulation in their body, so the blood pooled in that area just bleeds out. So again, try not to beat yourself up and wonder "what if I'd done this or that" and only take what you CAN benefit from, such as the idea of doing a pre-whelp xray from now on, whether to confirm pregnancy or to confirm that they aren't. That will help you in your future breeding endevors. Beating yourself up won't. Luckily, your girl sounds healthy and fine, so if it were me, I would wait to get into your vet for an xray. Again, I'm so sorry.......

Linda,
Thank you for being so kind....I truly feel awful. It's not like I haven't done this before either. I brought her to the Vet for an xray to confirm that she was NOT pregnant but after my Vet and I looked at her together 3 days before her due date we both felt that the xray was not needed. Isn't hind sight a great thing! I can not believe how not pregnant she appears. There was not a drop of blood in with hher and the puppy and she is totally clean also - usually you can see some sort of discharge or blood on the bitches tail...she is totally clean.

I'm very sorry.

I just returned from the Vet's office where we had an x-ray and a pit shot. My regular Vet was not there he will be as upset as I am that we missed this one but the Vet I saw agreed that she does not look or act like a pregnant girl at all. He thinks that with only the one puppy that her body just did not recognize the pregnancy. In the x-ray her uterus looked like a non pregnant one too! She is none the worse for the wear - I am still feeling guilty but know I have to stop that! He wants me to take her temp periodically - she was 102.6 in the office.
Thanks again for all the kind words.

I'm so sorry this happened to you.

I feel so badly for you, but it could have been worse.
I knew someone in the same position, only the pup was too large to be delivered. The bitch set up with a HORRIBLE infection. She had to be spayed and they came VERY close to losing her.
Again, my sympathies...

I'm so sorry for your loss. Please don't beat yourself up. You can absolutely say that you did the right things based on the information you had at the time. Veterinary medicine is not perfect, and we're not perfect.
You sound like a very responsible breeder who strives to do the right thing. I always felt, even as a young person, that regret is a terrible thing. If you do the right thing and do the best you can based on the circumstances at the time, you can have no regrets. Unfortunate things do happen to all of us occasionaly, despite our best intentions. I hope this helps you to let go of the hurt you're feeling.
Sounds like your girl is acting silly and playful, so spend some time playing with her today and cherish her. This is for you as well as for her!

Sad Breeder,

I had a bitch that I bred a few years ago, and like yours, she didn't look pregnant at all (and I mean *at all*). I had bred her, and watched her, and ultrasounded her at four weeks. Nothing seen. Her vulva went back to normal size (which is normally a bit large in this line of bitches. She had a waistline (unusual for my dogs), she had no mammary growth, and had no behaviors that indicated pregnancy.

I kept her in the house and close to me through the entire 63 days and beyond. I decided not to bother with an x-ray. Day 63 came and went, and I was satisfied. I almost put her back in the kennels, but wanted to shuffle a few dogs around, so I didn't do that right away. I am very lucky I was feeling particularly lazy that week. On day 66, she dug a hole out in the parameter of my isolation kennels (close to the house where I can watch the dogs in there). It was unusual for her to dig, but she only dug that one hole, and it was a shallow hole at that. There was no other behaviors of labor. I was interested, but it didn't really raise a red flag.... yet. It was enough for me to decide to stay close to her in the house. Hours went by, and she slept. Nothing more. Suddenly, at about 4pm in the afternoon, she woke with a start. She woke panting, and I thought I saw a tiny push. I mean to tell you, there was zero panting prior to that. I knew immediately that she must have a puppy. I ran around like a crazy woman to gather up the whelping material I had decided was not needed. She pushed, pushed, pushed... oh my she pushed. Exam revealed a head. And she pushed... no progress. Damn, I realized it was a big puppy... too big. So off to the vet we went. They x-rayed. TWO PUPPIES!! I nearly fainted. The one was stuck, and assumed dead, they manually extracted it with great difficulty, but the bitch tolerated it well. That puppy was dead. However, the second he was cleared out of the way, a smaller black boy shot out and literally skidded across the floor past the vet, ending up in the middle of the room, all by himself, placenta behind him. We took the new mom home with her little surprise, and named him Jet (because of the way he zoomed out of her). Mom never came into milk, and he was happily bottle fed on Goat's milk. She had very little discharge. It is as if her body just never caught on. She did love him. That was a good thing.

I could play "woulda, coulda, shoulda" forever with that one. Maybe if I had x-rayed her I would have planned a c-section, maybe I wouldn't have. Maybe that puppy would have lived... Maybe it wouldn't have. The bottom line, is that I re-learned a lesson that I already knew from so many years in this. NEVER ASSUME.

Nature played a nasty trick on you. You might have done this or that, but there are no do-overs. So now you move on. You have new (or re-learned) knowledge that you can pass on to others, and bank for your own personal decisions later on.

You'll beat yourself silly for awhile, giving yourself all of the requisite emotional wounds that will pain you just enough in the future to prevent this from happening again to you. We all learn to walk by banging our chins on a table or two. Most of us wear a scar, where we smacked the table edge one too many times. It's those injuries that taught us balance. Today, you are *far* more balanced than you were before that puppy was delivered. The major scar you wear today, will fade with time, and only serve as a reminder later. Walk on!

Dian Welle

I am so very sorry you and your girl had to experience this painful time. God speed little one. I'm sure that you'll be beating yourself up and feel flabbergasted for awhile, as is human nature.
Over 3 years ago, my hubby says to me that he thought the dogs might have gotten together for a second.......needless to say I threatened to neuter him and my son. Lesson learned about that one! So going back to the date he told me it happened, on about day 58-59, I took my bitch to the vet to confirm or deny pregnancy. We took three shots and I drove the films to the hospital to be developed. She since then teases me that I cost her 20 grand for a developer and an addition to the clinic for the developer . Well, at the hospital, there were three radiologists, myself and another intern that looked at the films. Boy was I breathing the biggest sign of relief. My young dog didnt have a prelim or anything....Thanksgiving Day 2003, she delivered three beautiful boys ( Byc x Byc breeding ) 2 chocolates and 1 black. If you can imagine my horror, my shock and my anger, WOW.... After I got over threatening my hubby and son once more to neuter *THEM*, I got my young dog prelimed ( good hips / normal elbows ) a Cerf exam ( normal ) and then finals ( same as prelims ).
One of those chocolate boys is Ch. pointed, another is an explosive sniffing dog ( along with his sire ) and the other is an extremly spoiled baby in his family...
My vet was absolutely horrified that there were puppies because I'd brought back the developed film and she went over them also !
Those pups easily could have passed on to the bridge. We were getting ready to leave for Thanksgiving dinner. I dont know if I've ever moved so fast in my life ! Whew. Speedy setting up whelping box ( that I'd just taken down a few days previous )and the emotional exhaustion set in and I finally got to have a small bite of dinner dh brought back for me at 9 pm.
And for several months I did the coulda/woulda/shoulda thing but it didnt change the facts, although I learned a lesson on trusting with my dogs...

I agree, don't beat yourself up. You did everything you could and it was just missed. We had a similar thing happen last year with one of our girls. We only got one tie during the breeding and it was on the last day of standing heat. On day 33, we took her in to have a relaxin pregnancy test. It came back negative. She didn't show any of the early signs of a pregnancy, not one ounce of weight gain, nothing at all, so we believed the test. She went back out into the kennel, but we continued to monitor her. She never did develop any signs of being pregnant. A month later, my fiance went out to spray out kennels and he found 3 live pups in with her. We ended up losing one, although I don't believe it was because of where she whelped. But I still felt so guilty that she had to go through that alone, especially since it was her first litter. Looking back, we should have taken her in for an x-ray just to confirm the results of the relaxin test. We simply had no reason to believe she was pregnant and we made a mistake. All you can do is learn from it and move on. I'm so sorry for your loss.

Sorry to here of your lose. Sometimes we rely on the Vet to give us answers but they are human and sometimes miss things. It makes you loose faith in them but we need them. My Vet missed sarcopic mange! Needless to say I diagnosed it on the internet and we got it under control in a few weeks. But.... he missed it and it was pretty much textbook.

Did she ever have milk? Did you check too see?
I just had a litter of one, I just didn't take no for a answer and instited that the vet take a xray. I did a ultra sound and the vet said there wasn't a puppy. I told them to do a xray, because I didn't believe them, she didn't look pregnant either, but there was milk. It could have been a false pregnancy, but I had to make sure. Sometimes we live and learn by our mistakes. Next time find a different vet to xray the bitch. I'm sure you are very upset, but you know that things happen. Just "Think Smarter" next time. Our dogs can't speak for themselves and we have to do whatever it takes for them.