Hi everyone! I'm almost afraid to post, not wanting fiercely negative answers to my questions...I have been reviewing this site for almost 4 weeks now and I have been impressed with the relationships between more experienced and least experienced members. What I've read today after registering has not given me peace about posting, but I do understand that there were a couple extreme threads/posts about bad breeding choices. However, I have researched breeding Yorkie's and feel ultimately safe that my choice to breed Sophie was a positive decision partly based on information I have found here on this site.
Please be gentle and truthful. I am not a breeder, but chose to breed my 4 year old Yorkie on July 2 & 3, 2012. This breeding is primarily to satisfy Sophie's natural mothering instinct before we spay her. I am hoping that she is indeed pregnant, because we would love to have another Yorkie in our home! We love Sophie and she is another one of my babies (I have 4 kids, 12-18 years old).
So here's the nitty gritty of my post:
As mentioned above, she successfully tied 4 times July 2-3. The sire is a 5 1/2 pound chocolate Yorkie. Sophie is 11 pounds and is a beautiful blonde and golden haired Yorkie (even though her pedigree is listed as black/tan). She is 4 1/2 years old and is very maternal by instinct. She is very good-natured and very social with our family (and to anyone who will show her affection).
After we returned the sire (Cocoa) to his owner, Sophie just behaved oddly to me. I don't know if it was due to her losing her virginity, but she was more withdrawn behaviorally. However, she also became immediately clingy and needs to be next to someone almost constantly. She was more independent before, so this was a new behavior. Within a few days after the sire went home, her appetite changed...it was odd. She always had eaten hard food, but within that first week she rejected her food and barely ate. I chose to get her soft food just to make sure she maintained her nutritional needs. I even bought a different, better quality food, just in case that was the problem (as in taste changes). At first I mixed soft and hard food together. She ate both for about 1 1/2 days, very little though. Then she wouldn't eat the mixture anymore. I then gave her only soft food and she will eat that. As an FYI, whenever she was hungry or needed more water, she would find me and basically stalk me or poke me with her nose and then I would know she needed food or water. However, she has not been doing that. She slowly eats her food and walks away from it, sometimes not eating it all and I would only give her about 1/4 of a regular sized can of soft food. She would only eat once a day, until yesterday. She came looking for me in the evening and I knew she was hungry since she had water (BTW, her water intake seems lower than before breeding). She ate almost all of her second meal yesterday.
Other symptoms besides being more clingy and decreased appetite were her nipples seemed to be more erect and longer than before. I tried very hard to not be overly expectant of her possibly being pregnant, so I waited to post here until I have been more than 50% convinced that she is pregnant. I noticed yesterday that her belly seemed more full, a couple of inches below her sternum to about the last 2 nipples. It's not completely full looking, like a balloon, but rather more on either side of her abdomen. If she is pregnant, tomorrow she will be 24 days from the last day of breeding. I do have a well check appointment with her vet tomorrow and the doctor said we can try an ultrasound to see if we can confirm a pregnancy. Doc also said that if pregnancy can't be determined tomorrow, we will do another ultrasound next week at 30 days (no extra charge!)
I know that this post is extremely long, but I wanted to give a complete history of Sophie's behavior, etc.
Now I ask of you all who choose to answer to give me more information and resources so that I can investigate and research more about specific pregnancy and whelping details (including lists of must haves for whelping). My goals are to be a responsible and knowledgeable Yorkie parent and possible "grand-parent". Thanks so much to all of you in advance!
