pregnancy calendar and predicting whelping - Page 1

Just wondering if any of you use the canine pregnancy calendar that you can find on the internet, and how accurate you find it to be? its quite useful for timing of events in pregnancy but I have almost always found that the expected date of whelping is two to several days later than the actual date, in fact it gives a date of 65 days from the first mating. My female gave birth 10 days ago, 60 days from her first mating, 5 days before the predicted date. My other female bred exactly a week later than her, we are now on day 63 and still counting, according to the pregnancy calendar she should be due on friday, I was expecting pups a little sooner, especially as her milk was in a couple of days earlier than predicted by the calendar.. But still no drop in temperature or any other obvious signs of imminent birth....she vomited this morning but then ate her food as normal. Getting nervous with her as her last (and first ) litter was an emergency c-section, but her last mating was on Aug 27 so I suppose I should not be overly concerned yet...unfortunately I do not know the date of ovulation, we could not do progesteone testing. Also, how accurate is the temperature drop? I have usually found this to be fairly reliable but my vet says that in many cases temp has dropped, then gone up again with no problems. Other sources say its a C section if there are no puppies 24 hours after her temperature drops.

There is no way a chart can predict a whelp date with out doing progesterone testing. Just because a bitch was bred on X day does not mean that she concieved on X day- sperm can live for up to 11 days after mating! In reality the sperm live for 48 hrs, but have been known to survive for 11 days. Temps can go up and down for several days before whelping, but once it hits 99 or below, there should be pups within 24 hrs. if there is any question and there is any way possible you should try and get a sonogram done now- to make sure that the pups are not in distress, and the heart rates are around twice what moms is. Hope this helps a little and good luck.