Nightmare whelping - Page 1

I count myself very fortunate to have 4 puppies that survived a nightmare whelping. The night before she delivered 8 puppies she had a temperature of 40.1 C / 104 F. I rushed her off to the vet as she was not due to whelp for another 7 days, he was not too concerned and said she was fine other than the temp but if it went to 41% take her back.

In the early hours of the next day I was certain she was in stage one and sure enough at 8.45am she delivered her first puppy, a female gasping for breath, 30 mins later she delivered a male also gasping for breath. Then within a short period of time she delivered 3 puppies all still born, one of them had a placenta that was all wrinkled and rather firm, I thought that this may be a mummified puppy but no it had defecated in the sac and had feces in it's mouth and nose and lungs and it was very dead but I don't think that it had been dead for very long.

At this stage I rung my vet in a very stressed state thinking I was going to lose the whole litter, he told me to just give the bitch Oxytocin and get them out, which is what I did resulting in the next 3 screaming little girls which are all doing well along with their brother who survived and are now 12 days old and very fat.

I believe that the puppy that defecated in the sac may have contributed to the high temperature and induced the early whelping
maybe not but I never want to have another whelping like that.

The bitch was Not a maiden she had a litter of 8 in March 2008 and she is an easy whelper.

i feel so sorry for you,
i know what its like to lose half the litter , it is very hard.
i cant say i have ever heard of the one pup that had poop in his sack,  but i am guessing it does happen.
its from stress.

good luck with the healthy ones.

 Sometimes, these things happen. There are no guarantees in life, I suppose. I remember another nightmare whelping, many years ago. The bitch torsioned one half of her uterus and all the puppies in that side died. I should take the time to write it up, because it was a real educational experience, which someone might find useful. Suffice it to say that if you have a high drive, ball crazy bitch, and she is pregnant, you must keep her quiet and monitor her exercise, or this may happen to you. I was also very, very lucky to save two puppies from that litter. I lost three. There were five, total. 

  Sorry for your troubles, but glad you made it through. My guess is that one half of her uterus was toxic, because of a puppy which had died maybe three days or so before. The bitch's uterus can and will mummify a placenta like that, but cannot  handle a dead puppy at that late stage of development. Why it died is anyone's guess.. could have been something like a heart defect or a detached placenta. When the dead puppy begins to break down from bacteria, toxins are released, which can compromise the other pups on that side, and can cause the muscles in the uterus to become somewhat disabled. 

  I will give you another tip.. It is something most vets can do in their office and very inexpensive to do a white blood cell count, and that can tell you that you have a dead puppy or puppies. This can save you a lot of trouble. In my case, I knew that my bitch had torsioned her uterus (intuition and deductive reasoning) and I knew from palpating her how old her pups were, in utero. Pups cannot survive if they are born earlier than 58 days from conception. So, I called in sick to work (ended up being a disability leave) and put that bitch on a hefty maintenance dosage of injectable "Combiotic", a penicillin - streptomycin cocktail which has been discontinued by the FDA (no thanks for that). I kept her on this for four days, until she had reached the 58th day, and I took her into the vet for a C section. Good old vet, but he made the wrong call, initially. He told me to take her home and let her have her pups, that she was fine and nothing wrong. I knew better.. I knew my bitch!

  So, I told him right then to do a white cell count, and his assistant drew blood. About ten minutes later, the vet came in, looked at me with a very serious look on his face, and he said, "We're going into surgery". I was very flattered, because he must have thought a lot of my competence.. I was invited to sit in and watch the surgery.. something which never happens, I think. Sure enough, there was the dead uterus, looking like a huge, purple yam, and there were three dead pups in it. On the other side, were two live pups, and when they were delivered, the one little bitch cried out.. I thought my heart would fly out of my chest like a bird when I heard that. 

OK.. Lessons learned here. When in doubt, do that white cell count, and it might also be good to learn to palpate, so you know when your litter was conceived. Not easy to do, by the way, but I got pretty good at it, at one time. These two things saved my bitch and the two pups. 

Very GOOD advice DDR

Went thru the same thing in Galveston years ago with Cola who Dr. finally said meet me in office at  2 am in morning..Owner and I assisted in C section and one dead pup was in the way...had we not done this , all would have died..

Yr                 Nightmare whelping is just one of the issues when you breed...
Good Luck , hope all are fine.

Thank you for your advice DDR. I did know exactly when my bitch was to deliver as she only had one mating, she went of heat the very next day so I knew that she was pregnant.
A few days before she whelped the one thing that I was certain of was that she would not go full term she was very big and her abdomen had already dropped, she had gone off her food also and that was why I had already started taking her temperature so early
All is fine now and Mum and her 4 little ones are going well. Here they are photo taken 5 days ago.

Very informative thread, Thanks

~Stacy