I have a friend who has a female due to whelp today,tomorrow.
She take her in around 30-40 days for a blood test to determine
if she is pregnant or not. Test said no she is not. She starts developing milk,
losing hair and GROWING....so she gets an xray done to see from there what
is going on because she KNEW she was pregnant. Xray shows nothing. Yesterday this
female goes into the typical digging, panting, but nothing, until today she started
losing water with blood. She takes her to her vet and they do another blood test
on her and it shows her to be pregnant, but she is not dilated and her temperature is
still at 100. They told her to take her home, watch her and come in tomorrow morning if nothing has
happened tonight and they would go from there.
To me it sounds like she is just at her begining stages of the delivery, but has anyone
gone through this? The vet thinks she was pregnant at one time
but obsorbed the puppies and still has at least one placenta and will need to open her up
in the morning to see what is going on with her.
Does her vet have an ultrasound? Obviously want to make sure this girl is or is not pregnant? Also would want to re-x-ray. But also she could have be having a very severe false pregnancy? I had a PBGV bitch who developed milk, and nested. She never actually had symptoms of labor other than the nesting. But she did try to make all of her toys nurse. And when I took everything away from her, she did mourn for a short time and then eventually went back to normal. I would be very concerned about the bloody discharge if she is not pregnant. Let us know what happens.
Julia
It's hard to know exactly what's going on...we are dealing with third-hand information, and I know even first-hand info can get misunderstood.
I, too would want to do an ultrasound tomorrow AM at the latest, to confirm pregnancy, and also determine if the fetuses have beating hearts and their gestational age. Tell your friend she needs to try to calculate when the bitch might have gotten pregnant, so she and her vet can determine when she should be whelping this litter. I would think she would have some idea?
Those pregancy tests are not 100%, so in my opinion are pretty worthless, but an xray or ultrasound is as close to 100% as you can get.
If there are no fetuses but evidence of reabsorbtion as verified by ultrasound (preferable) or xray, I would consult with a repro vet or someone knowledgeable in canine reproduction scenarios.
Good luck!
If you take an x-ray much sooner than day 57 or day 58 you will not see any puppies as their bones have not calcified enough to show up.
If your vet does not know this then I would be concerned there is a lot more in this area he does not know. Go to another vet with experience in this area.
