I think it's a bit too early to hear heartbeats and I suspect it may be another week. I heard mine with a stethoscope around 43 days or so. You should place the doppler along her teats on each side. These are where her horns are located.

A good site ...
Canine Reproduction Video and Book on Breeding and Whelping dogs by Debbie Jensen for dog breeders and Whelping Supplies needed to deliver puppies.

I really urge you to buy the book Puppy Intensive Care by Myra Savant Harris. It is full with lots of valuable advice on the supplies you need, the whelping, and afterwards.

Be sure to speak with your vet. Will they be available 24 hours a day or will you need to take her to an ER hospital if necessary.

This doesn't really seem like an "oopsie" to me... considering you did not get your female spayed and if you decided to wait on that, clearly the female was not kept away from the male and on top of it, you've got "family members" all lined up to keep the puppies... that is always the classic line from people who breed "oh we already have homes lined up!" and then generally speaking, they all or most of them fall through. It almost seems like something you kind of wanted to happen...

My assumptions could be totally wrong but I felt the need to say it. I will just never understand why people don't understand the importance of spaying and neutering OR keeping intact dogs under extremely close watch as that is the responsibility that comes along with an intact dog. I respect people's decisions to not neuter or spay their dog as sometimes people have done thorough research in their health benefits, but I do think it takes diligence to own an unaltered dog.

Anyways I am glad to see that at least you are being pretty honest and not making a ton of excuses and looking for good advice, which I know you will find here. I wish you luck in whatever you decide to do and will hope your girl does okay with the pregnancy if she is indeed pregnant.

So is she pregnant

Praying everything goes well. I can relate to how this happened, Sassy went into heat at 7 months, never expected it that soon. She only weighed about 5 lbs then so I was waiting for her to gain weight before I have her spayed. Fortunately both of my males are neutered and my other female spayed. Sassy will be spayed in June.

Well it sounds like you are off to a good start and have really done your research. Although she is young atleast she is over a year old. I hate to see ones that get pregnant at 7 months old before they even officially become an adult.

Ultra sounds aren't very accurate and will only tell you how many pups there may be which is why most don't do them.
I would wait and do the xray. This not only gives you an idea of how many pups but also the size of them and whether or not she should be able to pass them through.
Always prepare for the worst so you are well prepared if something does go wrong. Do you have a breeder nearby that can assist you with the whelp?

A couple of things to keep in mind when the pups do come...
Make sure all placentas are accounted for
Cut the umbilical cord yourself, many moms will try chewing it too short or rip it completely off accidentally
After all pups are born take mom in the next day for an oxytocin shot, this will make sure she is cleaned out, it is always better to be safe than sorry


Oh and 1 tie doesn't mean one puppy. They can have several pups with only one tie. My one girl had 4 pups with one tie that was very late in her heat cycle.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Good luck to you, and I hope everything turns out simple, easy, and you can enjoy your pups.

Regarding your motives, as you said yourself, it is a moot point and you came asking for help, not a psychiatric analysis of your conscious and unconscious desires based on a simple post that will logically not include every single detail of the situation and every single listing of the things you did to prevent what has happened. I also kind of took a step back when I saw your comment about seeing the tie and just letting it go, but stopped myself. Why? Because of common sense. I know that if I had been taking all the steps I knew to prevent them being together, AND I had come upon an inexperienced male and female already IN a tie as you described, I know that attempting to break that tie could cause severe injury to both dogs. So no, I would not have tried to stop it either at that point.

Regarding the judgments you've received on having them tie again due to the information you researched on having just one pup, it sounds like you did what you thought was best, now that the barn door was shut after the horse got out. Bravo to you for your honesty and attempt to prepare for what will happen. We all weren't born with an encyclopedia of knowledge for the dog, and I would like to gently remind others of that...we learned it through mistakes, trial and error, and research. Several posts here have given very good info for you to check out, which it sounds like you are doing.

Please keep us updated on how this works out. And be prepared, as another post pointed out, that sometimes family adoptions DO fall through, so do what you can to be prepared and have the pups tested as needed if you DO have to make an outside adoption for some of them. Hopefully it will be a small, healthy litter and your percentages of having to do so will decrease.

Best of luck...you definitely are about to get a learning experience :)

~Twitterpate

Very nice post

I wanted to thank everyone for their kind and wonderful information and well wishes! BELLA IS NOT PREGNANT!!!! We took her to the vet and had the Relaxin PG test done, and it was negative.

I have had so many very kind and wonderful people PM me, offering help and advice and it was sooooo appreciated!!! Thanks again to all!

YAY!!! One bullet dodged and look at everything you've learned without the mess :D
~Twitterpate

:aimeeyork Sometimes I think we are too quick to judge people's motives and actions. When they have a problem and are appealing for our advice and help, perhaps we should remember, when we didn't know as much, as we do now.

This is true especially for me who has learned so much from YT.