Some CD's will remember that we have had no sucsess with breeding due to a variety of reasons.
Our main concern is, at what stage do you require a vets intervention? We dread our girl whelping in the middle of the night again as it took too long to get the Vet to attend the surgery and save the one only pup last time.
The Vets are faultless on other occasions but seem a little blasaise when it comes to whelping" Hope all goes well" comes to mind and admit that most of their female patients are spayed. There's confidence for you.
Seriously, when would you call the Vet?

Really its impossible to say offhand when to call the vet :( each whelping is different.  I can however recommend a book which will scare you to death and help you to understand what is likely to go wrong and whether the vet is needed asap :)  Its called The Whelping And Rearing Of Puppies by Muriel P. Lee and along with The Book of the Bitch is one of the books I would never do without.

Hope this helps

I had both these books beside me at whelping time. Also before hand I read them intensively especially familiarising myself with the "what if" situations so I would hopefully know when an emergency was arising.
The Whelping and Rearing of Puppies is an excellent book.

i agree both these books are excellent.

Thanks,
I have the Book of the Bitch plus others that are breed related.
Our last bitch went from showing no signs to whelping in a matter of minutes.
You hear of so many horror, sad stories -:(

I used ring the vets & get details of which vets were on call for the  week before & after the bitches were due & then the week before they were due ring & ask for the vet on call that night & just tell them I had a bitch due anytime so they would be forewarned, this was done during normal working hours

I never had any problems but when a friend did the same at her vets & one of hers needed an emergency C section her vet what a good idea it was & he would suggest it to all the breeders who used the practice. He said it meant he could make sure he knew what problems might be arising with various breeds & thought it was a complement to him from his clients

I phoned th vets in advance and let them know when she was due so they could make a note for who was working out of hours. Fortunately I didn't need them but thought it was common courtesy to let them know :-)

chocoholic  i did the same and thought it would be to inform them just incase i had to call them out. my vet wasn't interested so i have since changed vets.i had one pup with his front leg stuck underneath, lucky i had studied my books and was able to correct the problem myself without there assistants, the pup was fine and out in seconds . it was the 4th or 5th to be born and i was paying alot of attention to mum with  the other noting how long it took from when the sack appeared till they came completely out. he had taken maybe 30 seconds longer so i had a quick check if he was ok and right enough something was up.