when people say a dog has reabsorbed some puppies what does this mean, why does it happen and at what stage of pregnancy does this take place? also whould you not be aware that this was happaning i.e would it not effect the bitch and how she was behaving. no experiance but have heared it said a few times and would like to get some info on it.

Now breeders are using ultrasound to confirm pregnancy and sometimes litter numbers we are realising how common reabsorbtion is.

Apparently reabsorbtion of puppies can occur up until around day 37-38 after ovulation and reproduction specialists believe the most common cause is that the uterus is not able to support the placenta and provide nutrition to the puppies amongst other reasons such as genetic problems.

My own experience last year was a 4 year old maiden bitch (extremely fit and healthy) with a normal mating.  The season before she had been AI'd with frozen semen but unfortunately she failed to become pregnant.  We had an ultrasound at 28/29 days to confirm pregnancy and it showed 6 puppies had implanted but 2 were non viable - no heartbeat.  The vet thought the uterus looked a bit thickened in the general area and put our girl on antibiotics just to play safe for the rest of the pregnancy. She went on to whelp the 4 remaining puppies.

If our bitch had not had the early ultrasound we would have been none the wiser. This makes me think that perhaps bitches that produce only 1 or 2 puppies may have actually reabsorbed the rest of the litter early on in the pregnancy.

If you do a google search on reabsorbtion in bitches you should find many interesting links and stories.

I think that nature has designed animals that have litters to be able to do this in order that if something isn't right a whole pregnancy is not wasted so to speak, where as with people and animals that usually have single births miscarriage is the result if something goes wrong with the pregnancy.