hi,

How long would you expect the 1st stages of labour to last? 

I really expected my girl to drop last night but she hasn't I'll be on the phone to my mentor as soon as its a decent enough hour to call her.  Sunday night around 7.30pm she stopped eating and her body temp dropped (we haven't been measuring it with a thermometre because she hates it and we didn't want to stress her out) she is a breed that very very rarely has any health problems giving birth and we hoped she would be the same.  Physically we could feel she was a lot cooler, but she started to pant.  yesterday she was panting all the time she was a awake and shifting position a bit.  In the garden ( on a lead obviously) she decided she wanted to dig up the green house and kept trying to squat over the holes (clearly she doesn;t like the whelping box/cave we built her).

She has been un-comfortable but thats more down to beached whale syndrome i think as she's too fat and the puppies are wriggling constantly so she just can;t settle.  But she has been sleeping for 45 mins at a time then panting a little, occassional shaking and was sick yesterday evening and in the early hours.  The shaking didn't come on until around 5pm.  I'm not sure how long this should last and will get her to a vet this morning once I've called the stud dog owner.  She's been having glucose and water to keep her going as she obviously isn't hungry but as our vet is away there is a locum in and I don't know if he could be a little scalpul happy.

She's not distressed and we haven't seen any contractions we have been supervising her constantly

Any advice you've got would be great

Thanks

Susie

>How long would you expect the 1st stages of labour to last? 

IME anything up to 48 hours, although about 24 is more common. Are the puppies still active?

very active!  Just worried as my usual vet doesn't have much breeding exp and most vets i know tend to think scalpul first

have taken her to a different vet who has bred one litter of puppies

If she's not having contractions i wouldn't worry to much as she sounds like she is just in the prepartory stage, if there is any other warning signs i would taker her to the vets straight away.

I'm not sure with shivering etc and squatting but no real contractions i would want to rule out uterine inertia.

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the advice - I think Poppy was doing it her way the same way she has throughout the whole pregnancy and seasons etc.  although a quick internal by the vet may have sped her up a bit!

She had 7 pups (not advertising) between 11.50-6.00pm on Tues so thank you for all your help.  It seems she just likes to do everything her way.  She's being a good mum and so far but we're still on 24 hour watch.  The only puppy squishing problems we've had have been when she jumps up when someone arrives home and wants to say hello and the puppies drop off of her, so now we're seperating them before anyone comes in and she can greet them as she'd like

thanks again

congrats :-) to you and your girl! ive always found the same problem when mum just out the box for a wee ,so i move the pups out mums way so she dont stand on them :-) hope all runs smoothly with your litter xx