[lisatodd]

here is an interesting part of a siminar on canine reproduction.
i copied and paste just part of it here and found it to be very interesting....


Question: Oxytocin (Pit shots).

Can you discuss the proper use of oxytocin injections during whelping? It seems that many breeders use oxytocin early on in the whelping process, when they feel it isn't progressing fast enough.

DrHutch: A puppy in the uterus has only two elements maintaining its oxygenation and life, one being the heartrate of the puppy, two being the blood pressure from mom to the uterus.

The whole goal in whelping is to maintain vital elements. Oxytocin I use in a very specific manner. If you've gone three hours without a puppy, I use one dose of oxytocin. My dose of oxytocin is two units per ten pounds of body weight. Oxytocin is normally 20 units per ml; I never use more than half an ml, no matter how big the bitch is.

I give one injection; if nothing happens, I give a second injection 20 minutes later. If nothing happens, I go to a C-section.

If you get too much oxytocin at a time, you will cause the puppies not to be expelled from the uterus but shrunk wrapped IN the uterus. The two injections of oxytocin actually increase the blood pressure to uterus which is beneficial to the puppies. If we keep giving them, we LOWER the blood pressure to the uterus, which robs the puppies of oxygen.

Using calcium with the oxytocin... now that we can monitor calcium levels in our practice I do not normally give calcium if the bitch is normal, because it causes the heart to slow down. If I need to give calcium I now use Calsorb, an oral gel that is absorbed almost as quickly as injectable. I can give it in small amounts more often, and don't have to worry about the side effects of injected calcium.

To clarify, my standard protocol (with oxytocin) is two injections; if two don't do it, two, four, ten, twenty, is not going to do it. In most cases I keep score by how many live puppies I deliver, not how many C-sections I avoid. I wait three hours from the last puppy.

My signs of dystocia are:

Temp just before labor readjusts back up to normal;

If I have no puppy born in four hours.

That is my definition of primary uterine inertia.

Straining hard for an hour... that is when you would NOT give oxytocin. Longer than three hours between puppies, that's when you DO give oxytocin.

Any black, red, or green discharge before any puppies are delivered indicates placental detachment and needs attention.

Ultrasounds, fetal monitoring devices, are critical to determine fetal well being. The ability to monitor the fetal heart rate is essential with WhelpWise or having an ultrasound.

I have worked and consulted with breeders using WhelpWise; it's ESPECIALLY