I have just recently mated a bitch -she's not confirmed pregnant yet but by the change in her behaviour I am certain she is. And now I am starting to worry. This will be her first litter, and the first time for years that I have bred from a BITCH from this line. The bitch's mother has had 3 litters, all pups born without any problems at all. One in her last litter was stillborn but the others all live and well, and all others in earlier litters survived. However, the PATERNAL grandmother was my first bitch of this breed and she did have problems. The first time I mated her she was pregnant with two pups and one of them died some time before she gave birth -was all black and decomposing when born, and the other one must have died not long before -I felt it move the night before but it was dead when born. I tried once more (the second time using the CHV vaccine to play safe) and the second time she gave birth to two dead pups, again recently dead, and one live one. The live one is the sire of my newly pregnant bitch. (The mother of him was then spayed so he is her one and only pup.)

So the question is: should I worry that my bitch could take after her granny and have problems giving birth? I was too naive back then and had it been now, I would not have let the pregnancies go past 60 days without asking for a c-section, back then I did not realise anything more was not normal for this breed. Or is it more likely that she will take after her own mother, who has had no problems at all?

Maybe it's a "crystal ball" type of question, but maybe somebody has any experiences to share....

I would expect the bitch to follow the maternal line not the paternal.

Ive always found that a bitch line follows a trend.....until...my bitch's mother had a normal appetite in pregnancy, laid back and normal, easily had large litters 5-8, big strapping lumps..... but the bitch herself has one litter of 2 and one of 4 all small weedy little devils which need a lot of catching up time.
She was WILD for food with a very strange taste for plastic! Couldn't stop her finding bits to chew..nightmare. Mother was an easier whelper.

Totally different.

Hmmm problems already. :( The bitch is 16 days past first mating, 14 from last. Yesterday morning she didn't eat her breakfast -did not worry me. Forgot to ask my husband if she ate her dinner as he fed her, but I think he'd have said if she hadn't. This morning I found she had been sick overnight, and when I let her out I noticed her backside looked all messy, so I assumed she must have had diarrhoea and would need a bath. Picked her up as soon as she came in only to realise she has a very heavy yellow discharge. She is quiet, hiding away. Did eat three quarters of her breakfast. Temp is 38,9 C so not TOO bad. But needless to say I am worried we may have pyometra as opposed to pregnancy. Called the vet and have an appointment but can't get there until the afternoon as my husband is at work and I don't drive. Had her temp been higher and if she wasn't eating at all I'd have tried to call him and get him home (only allowed to do so in dire emergencies on an emergency phoneline at work, like if house burning down or elderly mother in law needing hospital) but as she is now I think it is safe to wait until the appointment.

Fingers crossed for you marianne. Please let us know how everything goes at the vets.

O dear :( fingers crossed all is ok xx

Fingers crossed indeed.  Just to add if you think this could be a pyo. don't feed her anything until you can see your vet - if this is confirmed Pyo, she's going to need an immediate spay, probably (it is possible to sort out a Pyo with antibiotics of course, but more likely she's going to need to be spayed - how sad!).  Your choice re waiting but if her temperature does go up significantly, I'd be calling a cab/vet to come to you?

ps   I don't do C temperature readings, but obviously you must know that if her fever goes over 104F, you need to get her straight into the vet?   Norm - 101F okay, 102F okay, it can happen with stress.  103F and up - worry!

Thanks, I don't understand F at all and haven't got a thermometer that measures in it :) but I used to work as a vet nurse years ago and unfortunately had a case of pyo last September in my other breed (also a 3 year old bitch :( ), so I feel confident enough that I can judge when it is a question of minutes or not. Won't be long now until we can go. And yes, in a very urgent case my vet would come out.

I had a pug with pyometra but because it was an open one it wasn't a dire emergency the pus was draining out if it's a closed one it is an emergency. Hope everything goes ok at the vets.

It's definitely open.

one of my bitches had an open pyo. nothing on her trousers but when she got up from sitting down there was a large blob of Greenish yellow mucus on the floor. My bitch ate her breakfast and seemed her normal lively self. Took her to the vets and they operated. They did have a lot of trouble with the anaesthetic and she had to be kept in over night on a drip but recovered well. I have to say it doesn't sound good for the chances of a pregnancy in your  bitch but at least you have spotted the signs early. Fingers crossed everything is OK for you.

I hate being right at times like these but yes it was pyometra. Molly is on a drip at the vets overnight and being spayed first thing in the morning. :( Can't believe I had this happen to two bitches of two breeds in just a few months!

Marianne, I'm so sorry it turned out this way. Poor girl. Any ideas why this happened or is it just luck of the draw?

Hope everything goes well in the morning.

Just bad luck and I suppose lesson learned -I will never again leave a first litter until age 3 now when it's happened twice. Both the bitches of mine that got pyo were 3 and had not been bred from -one a month shy of it, Molly turned 3 last week. It ISN'T common for it to happen so early, but now I will forever worry so won't risk it again. I'm gutted, Molly is such a special dog of mine and she was the only bitch in her litter, with her 3 brothers all having been neutered so that's the end of that.

> I'm gutted, Molly is such a special dog of mine and she was the only bitch in her litter, with her 3 brothers all having been neutered so that's the end of that.

how sad :( dog breeding is hard at times.

I doubt that the age at first mating has anything to do with it though. My bitch was 3 when she got pyo but had had a litter previously. She had not been mated when she got pyo

So sorry Marianne, not only for your poor girl but the importance of the line, fate is not always kind.  Hope that your girl makes a full recovery and well done in spotting the pyo, s*ds law isn't it.................

Im sorry to read this wishing for a safe speedy recovery for your girl tomorrow xx

I'd like to echo everybody re having to go through this.  But I suppose you are lucky she's still alive!!   I too don't think the age of breeding has much to do with this - but I would say that we never took our low to ground bitches out off our property at all when they were in season - happily we had enough garden in most of the places we lived that exercising off the property wasn't needed for 3 weeks at least.   We never had a Pyo in all the years, and the number of bitches we had.   Whether this keeping them on our property was significant or not I don't know, but my girls didn't risk squatting in the wrong place, when 'open'.

And it is possible for a stud dog to infect a bitch - I know some breeders put their bitches on a course of antibiotics just before being mated - may have been pointless of course but ..... (I never did) but I made darned sure my stud dogs were wiped down well after serving a bitch.

Breeding isn't always a picnic is it!!

Obviously Molly being well is all that really matters. She did not leave here at ALL during her season  -not even to be mated as the dog came here. The dog had just sired one litter before and belongs to THE most careful breeder I know.

> but I made darned sure my stud dogs were wiped down well after serving a bitch.

Wiping down will not remove germs unless you do it with something that will kill bacteria and even then would give no guarantee that there were no harmful germs lurking in hard to reach places. It is probably a good basic hygeine measure but will do nothing to stop the spread of disease.  the bodies own defences should take care of a lot of germs that could be picked up  during normal life. The reproductive tract is not sterile and has plenty of defences. As pyo is common in bitches I tend to think this is bad luck rather than bad management.

to a certain extent the risk of Pyo is age related, as it is the number of seasons and the long periods of progesterone influence that make it more likely to occur, so the more seasons the more risk.

Progesterone levels stay high after a season in unmated bitches for even longer than pregnant ones.

http://www.thedogplace.org/Reproduction/Estrus-Bitch-Wolf-Barber-DVM.asp
Pyometra & Uterine Infections

How does this happen? The bitch's ability to ward off infection in her uterus is highest during estrus when estrogen levels are high. This makes sense because this is the time when her reproductive tract is being exposed to a multitude of pathogens (and for any that doubt, just take a look at the end of your dog's penis). It's a miracle that the uterus can eliminate billions of bacteria without harming the delicate sperm cells.



In contrast, uterine defense mechanisms are minimal while under the influence of progesterone when the uterus "thinks" it is pregnant. It is helpful (albeit an over-simplification) to think that when a bitch conceives and becomes pregnant, the uterine immune defense systems must be turned "off" so that the antigenically foreign conceptuses are not destroyed. If this did not happen, then the embryos would be rejected and destroyed in much the same manner as rejection occurs in mismatched organ transplants. When the uterus "thinks" it is pregnant, it fiercely protects whatever lies therein. And that whatever could be puppies in the case of a normal pregnancy, or it could also be pus in the case of a pyometra.

Hows your girl going? Hope all is well x

Picking her up at 4, all went well. Thank goodness.

Thank goodness :)

Sorry to hear your news. Hope she is OK now.

Molly is back home and in quite a state poor thing -very depressed and still a bit wobbly. At least being a toydog she can easily be lifted in and out and she can sleep safely in a cage. She's happy to be home though and wags her tail when spoken to but gosh I feel so sorry for her.

Awww poor molly. I went on your website and saw a picture. She is a little darling. Hope she feels better soon

Awww poor girly shes now in the best place HOME to recover sending healing energy to her xxx

Wiping down will not remove germs unless you do it with something that will kill bacteria and even then would give no guarantee that there were no harmful germs lurking in hard to reach places.

Of course I did .... and even if it doesn't kill off all the bacteria, surely it's better than nothing!!!??   Basic hygiene - although actually this is probably more relevent if the stud dog is serving a lot of bitches from outside kennels, over a short period of time - which mine didn't!!!

I'd not btw, say pyo is that common in bitches.   Witness our lot.

Hey ho.