The Soonest Time Possible to Tell If Your Dog Is Pregnant

There are times when suspicion arises pertaining to the pregnancy state of your dog. When you suspect, but you are not sure of whether your speculations are true or false, you need a specialist or an experienced neighbor to come and assess the situation for you. However, these people do not use a pregnancy kit to test for the pregnancy and you really want to know the symptoms they read so that you can as well study the dog by yourself when it becomes pregnant again.

Gestational period

Dogs do carry pregnancies for only nine weeks. Many pregnancy symptoms are seen after the dog has carried the pregnancy for more than half of the period hence making the dog's gestational period to seem even shorter than anticipated.

Symptoms and detection

Most of the pregnancy symptoms in dogs are manifested during its fifteenth week of pregnancy. This is a long time after it became pregnant and the time to delivery is shorter than the time it got the pregnancy. The nipples of the pregnant dog start increasing in size and become darker. Several days later, the hair that covers these nipples start to fall out and the mammary glands start to sag.

Between the third and the fourth week after the dog become pregnant, the dog starts having nausea and tends to have less appetite. This is the earliest time that the experienced dog keepers will sense that their dogs are pregnant. However, they just suspect but there is no guarantee because some other infections can as well come with nausea and loss of appetite. The difference between pregnant women and pregnant dogs is that whereas the former may tend to vomit at some stage, the latter experiences less vomiting.

Between the forth and the fifth week, there is always a tendency of some vaginal discharge being released from the vagina of the expectant dog. The discharge is always full of clear mucous. This is however a symptom that appears in a majority of dogs but may not be in all. Veterinary officers are able to detect the heartbeat of the dog at this point by the use of ultra sound machines and this is the perfect time that the vet officer can confirm and assure you of whether the dog is pregnant or your suspicions were not right.

Veterinary officers at this stage can take blood samples and test for hormonal levels in the dog's blood. However, in this test, there are always some false positives hence making this test an inaccurate and unreliable method of testing for the dog pregnancy. This is especially the case in little litters. Lucky enough, this is a stage when by the use of experienced hands; the vet can feel the abdomen of the dog and be able to feel young developing puppies there. More sophisticated machines such as the x-rays and ultra sound machines can be good for confirmation of the results.

Precautions

It is important to properly feed your dog and give it proper veterinary attention once you suspect that they are pregnant. Lots of proteins and light exercises are necessary during this period.

Japheth Kagolla is a trained medical health missionary. He is trained to treat people using simple natural remedies and foods. He also does lots of freelance writing on health related subjects.