2-Year-Old Chihuahua Mix Delivers Puppies!
Where are you taking my puppy?
The Story of Virginia, the Pregnant Chihuahua
Virginia looked at Doc Truli with those big, watery, teary Chihuahua eyes. A squirmy black puppy with a brown mask nuzzled under her mom’s warm thigh.
“Doc, this one was there when we got up this morning. Then, I went to take a shower, and when I came out, there were two more, but they weren’t moving,” said Virginia’s dad.
“Let’s take x-rays and see how many more are in there,” said the Doc.
(See if you can count the puppy skulls by enlarging the x-ray image below. Can you see where there are three more puppies?)
Virginia had gotten out and run the neighborhood. No one was sure who the papa dog was. But surely, the little Chihuahua mix had three puppies born by 7 am (two stillborn and 1 live), and there were three more on their way! A quick sonogram of the abdomen revealed at least one puppy had a beating heart. The other two were less of a certainty.
“Doc, we looked at You-tube videos of the birthing process, and we even got a hand towel and massaged the pup that wasn’t breathing, and held it in the palm of our hands and tried to get the mucous out of the nose so it could breathe,” said one of Virginia’s humans.
The Most Important Tip When Your Dog is Giving Birth
“Okay guys, but you missed THE MOST IMPORTANT TIP when helping any dog give birth,” said Doc Truli. Do you know what the most important tip is when a dog is whelping (doctor word for giving birth for dogs?)
“Do not turn your back or leave for even a minute!”
Virginia’s people didn’t realize how fast a dog can give birth. They took a shower, ran an errand, and had breakfast. Instead, one person should have kept watch to help out while the other ran the errands. Take turns to get your dog through.
In the end, they lost 4 puppies, and had 2 live pups to celebrate!
8 hours old!
One Day Old Chihuahua Puppy!
How Do I Know If My Chihuahua is Pregnant?
Chihuahua Pregnancy Checklist
- Female?
- Unspayed?
- Been with a make or out of the house?
- Probably pregnant!
- Big belly? Milk? Making a nest on your pillow?
- Might not be pregnant!
3 Tests the Vet Can do and When
Can You Count the Puppies?
Keep track of when your Chihuahua mated/escaped.
- At 32-34 days: Pregnancy blood test. Call ahead, not all veterinarians stock this test.
- At 30-34 days: Ultrasound (Sonogram). Good for: confirming live pregnancies. Bad for: Counting puppies accurately by ultrasound is impossible!
- At 50-55 days: Radiographs (X-Ray). Good for: Counting Puppies so you know how many to expect. Bad for: Determining if the pups are live or stillborn.
This Chihuahua Mix mom delivered 3 puppies just after this picture was taken!
Signs That May NOT Mean Your Chihuahua is Pregnant
- Nesting behavior
- Getting fat
- Getting milk
“False pregnancy can look just like a real pregnancy, with mammary gland development, an enlarged belly, and nesting behavior. But there are no puppies!” says Doc Truli, “I even knew an American Pit Bull Terrier who would make a nest out of towels and pillows and then collect all the family’s cell phones and guard them like they were her puppies! She would whine and lick the phones when they rang because she thought the phones were puppies in distress!”
That’s so sad about the stillborn puppies. And I didn’t know that rule about when a dog is whelping, though I’ve never had a non-fixed dog, so it hasn’t come up much. But I love the dog w/the cell phone babies – though it would be so hard to take your phone back!
The cell phone babies were not taken back! She tried to bite anyone who came near her “babies!” It was a very expensive human-dog misunderstanding. After she was spayed, she stopped hoarding cell phones in piles of towels!
Wow! This really is 1 of the most beneficial blogs I’ve ever occur across on this subject. Merely Amazing