Hopefully not!  But Millie's behaviour has been strange for the past 3-4 days.  She has started burying chew toys - she's buried food before but never toys - and its always the little rubbery toys like wellie boots and bones.  She has 3 in particular that she has started moving around the house and whining when she can't remember where they are.  Last night she had me up three times, wanting to go downstairs, each time I took her down, she picked up one of these toys and brought it upstairs on my bed - she'd then get off and go and sleep on the floor, but I had to sleep with three toys on my bed!  She keeps forgetting where she's put them and as she doesn't normally go upstairs, I think the fact she is going up a couple of times a day is to make sure they are all still there. This morning she got up on the bed and noticed one had fallen off, so I had to pick it up and put it back, then she was happy!

She is also digging her beds furiously.  This was something she normally would do to make herself comfortable, probably once a fortnight, now she is doing about 8-9 times a day.  Every time she settles down whether it be on her bed, my bed, the settee, she has to dig at the bed to get it comfy first and she's doing it furiously too.

She was whining all night last night for no reason.  Just walking about, settle down, whine.  Get up, walk about, settle down, whine.  This went on until about 2am.

The only other odd behaviour I've noticed is that she's pooed inside the lean-to a couple of times in the past couple of weeks which is most unusual, particularly within the last week, and when she does go out to the garden, she comes racing back in to the house at breakneck speed every time as though she can't bear to be out in the garden and has to just do her business and get back in as quick as she can.

I haven't noticed any milk production or anything, but just reading old messages on here, the strange behaviour regarding the rounding up of toys is always mentioned when people talk about phantoms so its making me wonder.  Hopefully you're going to tell me it isn't likely to be that!  My main reason is that I'm going away for a week on Saturday and she's going to my sisters, which may be stressful (although I suspect not!) so just trying to pinpoint her odd behaviour before I go so I can hopefully make amends.

HI jessthepest,

When was your bitches last season?  How old is she??

It does sound very much as if she may be having a phantom - they don't always produce milk. If you provide more information then there are more experienced people who will be able to help :D  

She's 10 months old and she had her first season a couple of months ago I think.  I'll do a search for when I posted about it.

Yes she started her season on 26th June so thats....two months ago that it started.

So getting towards the time for her to whelp if she had been mated? Sounds like she's brewing a phantom. If she were mine I would remove all her toys, cut down her protein and up her activity levels. Cut out any sympathy (cruel to be kind) and jolly her out of it. Don't give her time to brood.
:)

ok thanks for the tip.  I told other half to hide her 3 'babies' when he got up this morning.  Unfortunately he only hid them in the drawer next to the bed so she soon sussed out where they were.  And overnight, she added another one to her brood, her great big burping strawberry which she can hardly carry, let alone up and down the stairs several times a day everytime she shifts the 'babies' around lol. 

She was much quieter last night, bringing them down at 11pm and settling them on an armchair with a blanket and happily went up to bed and then not worrying about them until 2.30 when she decided it was time they came up to - but this time I knew the whining at the top of the stairs wasn't for the toilet so I left her to it, let her make 3 trips up and down the stairs.

She's being a pain in the backside this morning though, whining at me all the time.  I think I'm sitting in the wrong place or something....!

oh how annoying.  While I was typing that, she has decided that an ormanental pig up on the mantlepiece is to be one of her brood and is now barking and whining furiously at it because there's no way I'm letting her have it!  How long is this likely to go on for?  How do I cut down her protein if she's on dry food - do I just cut down the amount of food she has in total?

GAH!  More than once today I have found myself thinking "I must just nip upstairs and check on the.....ARGH DAMMIT, THEY'RE JUST TOYS"

There's no hope for Millie if even I believe there are puppies upstairs LOL

Every single toy has now been bagged up and shoved in the living room cupboard for the time being.  She is also taking a liking to a particular armchair, as OH threw his work jumper down on there at the weekend and...typical male...hasn't picked it up yet.  However she is getting comfortable on this jumper, on this particular chair, and this is where she was bringing her toys down to in the daytime.  Would it be a good idea to remove the jumper and put some stuff on the chair (like shopping bags or something for now) to stop her getting up on that chair?