hi another question for a friend i should charge them all for the advice ive been given lol
she has a large breed dog that is 3 years old this is her 1st litter she had 2 slip matings but the stud has never missed with any other girl before.
she took her to the vets when she was 4 weeks pregnant the vet scanned her and said that the sperm can live up to a week so she could only be 3 weeks pregnant.
the vet confirmed that she was pregnant as she showed her a white blob with a small black shadow in the middle of it (sorry if ive put that in a wrong way)
she then took her back 2 weeks later it was sometime this week and the same vet has now said she is not pregnant she scanned her but not like she did the 1st time it was only a quick one and only on the one side.
she then told her that her girl had absorbed the puppies and if she was to breed her again she would do the same thing.
i asked her if her girl had changed and she said yes her belly was much more swallon,her teats were sticking out more and she was different in herself.
she is very upset now she was all prepared had her utilty room all ready all the right equipment in place then to go on and be told this.
just wondering if anyone else has had this problem and then resulting in puppies.
i know scanners can be very wrong this is just to put her mind a rest.

hi donna , :)

if she as absorded all the pups this could be due to stress of the scan as it was done early (im only saying could :) )....i dont take my girls for there scan till after 35 days (5weeks) so theres less chance of this happeing ..or maybe there could of been something wrong and thats natures way (sorry hope that dont sound horrible :( )

or could be that its a small litter and pups are tucked up high ....the only thing i can say is maybe she could go and get her scanned at different vets? now shes over 5weeks if there are pups still they should be ok from being absorbed ..or wait and see as shes got everything ready :)

i do hope all goes ok and pups are still there xx

thankyou white lilly i havent heard of this before as my girl had no probs with her pregnancy it must be hard to see puppies on scan and then 2 weeks later theres nothing there. she said she only scanned one side so do you think they could have been on other side? thanks again

Pups can be reabsorbed for a variety of reasons, sometimes we don't even know that the bitch was pregnant ;-) For a vet to then say that she will reabsorb again is not true. She may reabsorb if the reason for the initial problem is not found, as the same reason may stop her going full term again. Before mating her again I would have her checked for infection and put onto a course of antibiotics prior to mating.

Edited to add: vets can be wrong with their reading of scans, as many on here will testify :-) Sheep scanners are the best if you can find one.

thankyou for that i know i know thats the prob with the scanners not vey accurate

"thankyou for that i know i know thats the prob with the scanners not vey accurate "

It's not the scanner that's not accurate, it's the person doing the scan, some Vets are excellent at it and others hopeless.

I have had a bitch that had one litter of 8 then re-absorbed two further litter attempts over a period of 3 years before finally having a litter of 10 !! Herpes vaccination was used for every mating. 

On both occassions when she re-absorbed relaxin test proved pregnancy but by 5 weeks I suspected pregnancy not progressing normally and scan showed non viable embryo's .. no idea why this happened and after second time did think we would never get another litter from her. However, on final attempt we covered her with AB's a week prior to mating and for 3 weeks after and gave her Wheatgrem oil capsules to boost Vit E , obviously we will never know if this really did make the difference but we got a big litter of well developed strong pups.

K

Good grief, sheep have come a long way since I kept them?! ;-)

Hello Donna

I had a girl scanned at 5 weeks and it showed 1 large and 4 quite small pups, 4 weeks later she had one pup.  Archie who scanned her pointed out we were seeing reabsorbtion happening.  She had no problems with any other litters she had.

Joan

hi Abbeypap ...did your girl absorbe all of them ? or did she whelp the large 1 ? xx

joanne

Hello Joanne

She had the large pup (4 oz) no problem.  Friends had me really worried about a singleton but thankfully she sailed through.

eta I will only use people who scan with the dog standing if they insist on my dogs lying on the floor belly up I'll go else where.
Our vet has just got one in there practise so looking forward to seeing how they do scanning my girl in 6 weeks time. 

Joan

thats great to hear ..:)

hope all goes well with your girls scan x