7 Tips For Dog Care Before, During And After Childbirth

To anyone who is having a dog, you will be exhausted when your dog is in the pregnancy period. Experiences or knowledge is required to prepare the best for your pet. Let's put these helpful tips below on your check list to ensure your dog's safety:

1. The sign when mommy dog is going to give birth.

You will realize your dog is having babies when there are these signs: 
_Milk flows before babies’ birth about 3-4 days. 
_Seeing babies moving in the stomach.
_The less food your dogs eat, the more peeing they go or even go peeing uncontrollably because of the blocked bladder.
_Before having babies from 2-4 hours, your dog will refuse to eat, breath hurriedly, rake and scratch.

At these times, you should find a quiet and warm place for the dog or you can build a wood box 20 centimeters tall and lay a clean fabric.

Pay attention to the food that you will feed them. Don’t use foods that are difficult to digest like milk, meat…during the pregnancy. During childbirth, you should notice if they are having difficulty in laying out, being in pain or after 4-6 hours there is still no puppy, you have to quickly bring them to the vet.

2. Should we intervene in the “delivery”?

It will be better if you let them deliver themselves but you need to pay attention to the progress. However, if your dog’s behavior is too bad, don’t intervene too much because it will cause stress and shock to your dog or even break the uterine artery, causing blood losing and risk of death.

3. When it hard to delivery?

It's considered to have problem if, after 6-8 hours, dog still cannot give birth to any puppy. You should get them to the vet as soon as possible.

4. Should we let them eat the placenta?

When your dog gives birth in a natural way, they will eat the placenta as a reflex. Don’t worry, it’s a normal thing. However, it's better to intervene in the delivery. Let the dog eats 1 or 2 placentas but not all of them because placenta is difficult to digest.

5. How to cut the placenta?

You can meddle in to cut puppies’ placenta. You should belt the thread away from stomach skin 1 centimeter or clip their belly button by hemostatic forceps (you must ensure to antiseptic it well by 70-degree alcohol or Iot 5% alcohol).

6. Should we let the puppy contact and suck milk immediately after birth?

Alike human, puppies need to have the first milk of the mother dog to have good resistance. Twenty-four hours after giving birth, if puppies haven't had any milk from the mother, they can die quickly.

7. Caring tips for dog after the delivery:

• Let the mother dog drink salt milk and eat snack
• Find the place that is quiet and private for them to rest
• Clean their body
• Rearrange birth place, change another clean fabric but don’t put them too fluffy because those fabrics can get in the way and make it difficult for puppies to find the mommy breast or even mommy dog can bear upon puppies.