Dog Pregnancy

How can you tell if rather or not your dog is pregnant? Detecting dog pregnancy may not be very simple. In order to confirm dog pregnancy, you and your dog should take a trip to your local veterinarian office. The earliest method of detecting dog pregnancy is often detected by ultrasound. The ultrasound test is a nice noninvasive and very reliable test. Fetal heartbeats of the puppies can be detected at around the 25th day of the first breeding. Even though this is a reliable way to determine pregnancy, it will not detect the fetal number.

Dog pregnancy is somewhat different than human women pregnancies. Women can take urine pregnancy tests, and go through hormonal changes to help detect pregnancy. Dog pregnancy however is different. An interesting fact about the dog reproductive cycle is that the dog will go through just about the same hormonal changes whether or not she is pregnant. There is no progesterone blood or urine test to diagnose dog pregnancy. But, there is a blood test that can be done. The blood test detects relaxin, which is a hormone that is produced by pregnant dogs, but not by non pregnant dogs.

Another way doctors can determine dog pregnancy is by simply feeling on the dog’s abdomen during a certain period of time. Usually they can begin to feel the puppies around twenty to thirty days after conception. During this time, there is uterine swelling around the placental sites that feels like firm and discrete lumps. A third way of detecting dog pregnancy is by taking x-rays. Fetal skeletons can be seen at around forty five days into the pregnancy. This test however can not be done until late gestations. By this time, you may already know your dog is pregnant. When you do find out that your dog is pregnant, find out from your veterinarian all of the precautions and preventive care you should do for your dog to ensure a great pregnancy. And when the puppies come, have lots of fun with them.