Please help! My GSD may be pregnant after first litter... - Page 3

I hear groveling apologies all the time about "accidental" breedings where "I was only gone five minutes". Kind of like leaving your dog in a locked car on a 100 degree day. After it happened already once the excuse doesn't hold water when another "accidental" breeding takes place with an animal that was not intended to be bred even once. BUT, now that it's already happened again...remember that a bitch usually ovulates between 9-14 days after she first starts spotting. Many times a dog might have tied before or after this window without resulting in a pregnancy. With that in mind, you may have possibly dodged a bullet so now is not the time to throw your arms in the air and say, "It's too late now so I'll just let them just go at it all they want becuase it's easier than separating them". NO! That would continue to be irresponsible. Keep them totally apart till she is completely done with her heat just in case she may have not been ovulating yet if you're lucky. When you say that you have done "research" saying that it's not so bad to have back-to-back litters, that just sounds like justification for irresponsible behavior. It may not be *dangerous* for the bitch but it is undoubtably not good for her if you ask ANY vet. When you see some bitches where this is allowed to happen, they have blown their coat which is now dull from being depleted, they are scrubby and have lost weight. They need the time to recover and get back on track. Breeding, pregnancy, whelping, raising & weaning a litter of pups is very hard on the system of any bitch. A responsible breeder will only allow a bitch in prime condition to breed or will wait. You said that this dog was never meant to be bred at all in the first place so have her ultra-sounded in a month and if she hasn't been bred then spay her ASAP. Everyone can have a mistake once but after it happens a couple of times....No sympathy or support.

If it was a female I had no intention of breeding (and/or who was not "qualified" for breeding), I would either spay or do the prostaglandin shots at 35 days if she was pregnant -- that does not hold much danger for the female (less than spay surgery; less than having a litter of pups).

Christine

Thank you RMA however i am not grovelling, or apologising, yes i made the mistake! And i am not a complete idiot i know how to look after my dog, yes she wasnt meant to be bred but in my opinion she gets looked after a hell of a lot better then most 'responsible' breeders, reason being she is my pet, she is part of my family she isnt my 'job' .... She is in perfect health, as is my male. I was worried about her being pregnant so soon after her first heat and my 'research' also included calling multiple vets for opinions which all advised to go ahead with the pregnancy, but thank you for your irrelevent comment :)

Yoko... if most responsible breeders are honest, they also have had an accidental breeding at one time or another. Sometimes a dog clears a fence, or opens a gate or door they never ever did... orrrrr like in my case I went away for a weekend telling my housemate to walk the dog in the kennel inside, put him in the bedroom, then take the female who was in heat out once he was secure... they called me the next day all excited.... "I tied Peri (the male) across the yard and let Tiki (the female) out to pee... and DO YOU KNOW SHE WENT RIGHT ACROSS THE YARD AND LET HIM BREED HER???? !!" Aside from wanting to kill them for creating a February litter I hadn't planned on I had to laugh at their absolute outrage. LOL

Shit happens... the question you wisely put to the forum was what do I do now. Rehashing the past does nothing for anyone. Go with the advice portion and flush the rest.

Windwalker, that's the very reason I boarded my in-heat female at the vet's when I had to go away for the weekend. No way did I trust my idiot landlady to keep her virtue intact!

She was a rescue, so the vet told me the only way I'd know if she'd been spayed was to wait and see if she came in heat. Yup, no surprise, that's exactly what she did about 2 weeks after I adopted her. I had her spayed as soon as she was out of heat, and we had 14 wonderful years together!

I stick by what I said. Having an unplanned breeding of a dog you had not intended to have any pregnancies from ONCE is an "accident", but if the bitch was not spayed or safely separated during her next estrus after that first mistake, then it appears that no lesson was learned and yet another "mistake" was made. I totally understand and am sympathetic with it happening the first time but the second time?, not so much. Just curious, how many times do YOU think is acceptable to have "accidental" breedings from this same bitch? Once is OK, now two is OK. Three? Four? I may not sound very sympathetic for a pretty good reason. You see, one of our first dogs came from a second accidental breeding by a breeder in Indiana back in 2001. The breeder claimed the very same thing,.."I was only gone for five minutes". After purchasing our pup from her I continued to follow this breeders posts as she had my dogs parents. Over the next three years this breeder had six more "accidental" breedings of the very same female. She continued to allow her to "accidentally" breed back to back then sold her at four and a half years old after a total of eight pregnancies and producing around 40 pups. She was asking roughly $800 a pup. Do the math. You can't help but see her true motivation and be disgusted with her excuses of it being yet another "accident" every 6 months. What exactly is the learning curve? You want to go ahead with this pregnancy and that is fine. What you actually do to prevent *further* "accidents" from happening with this bitch is the true proving ground about walking the walk about wanting to do the right and responsible thing. No you don't need to be taking a beating over this but how you handle it from here is what is important. I just don't believe in condoning repeated accidental breedings. This is a forum where old timers often hand down advice to newbies and writing that repeated back-to-back breedings is acceptable and forgivable is not the right message to put out there. The sooner the smack down the sooner the message gets through.

Ruger

yoko16, before you decide to go ahead and let her have this litter, too, do me and everyone else who has ties to breed rescues and shelters a HUGE favor, and go to the Petfinder page, and take a look at how many German Shepherd and GSD-crosses are looking for good, forever homes to adopt them...a quick glance at it just a minute ago showed me 4500 such dogs, of all ages, on that website alone--and not all animal shelters make the effort to post the dogs they have on there, because they can't hold an animal long enough for someone to see the dog on the interwebs before they need to free up the cage space.  

Take a good long look at the dogs listed there--even if you discard all of the obvious crosses that have zero GSD traits save for being black and tan, or having erect ears, you'll still find a hell of a lot of dogs in need of homes, and many of them came from 'breeders' such as yourself. You can say you're NOT a breeder all you want--you've got an intact male and an intact female, both of breeding age, and you've already shifted one litter out and the door and there's likely another on the way: you ARE a breeder. You can STOP being one by calling your vet first thing tomorrow morning and making an appointment to have her spayed two weeks from today.

I don't doubt the vets you called said it's OK to let her have the litter, because that is true--it's not likely to do your female any damage--and I'm sure that's what you asked them.  You've already gotten enough money out of your female's uterus to pay for the surgery, so there's no justification for making her work another shift, unless it's greed. And nobody can argue someone else out of making a decision based on greed.

My apologies if I missed that you x-rayed them somewhere but if not, I would definitely do it. That way if you for some reason go through with the litter, you can give the buyers a heads up as to what they may be getting into. Just because a dog appears healthy on the outside and is active does not mean they really are. I've know of a Pit Bull who achieved very high weight pulling titles and was extremely atheltic, he was x-rayed later in life for something else was found out to have terrible hips. Dogs are amazing creatures that will work through pain.

Hexe..... Just a reply to your comment 'i have gotten enough money from her uterus' i have to laugh at this because the cost to feed her a healthy diet + regular vet checks, meds etc throughout it all and to take the time off work and raise the litter actually put me out of pocket so NO it isnt a money making thing! Yes yes yes i am WELL AWARE of 2 mistakes happening and yes of course i know how bad it is.... However it has happened and unfortunately i cannot rewind time. You are all wasting your time with your snidey comments, i posted about the safety of her being pregnant so soon everything else is irrelevent, NO i wont be breeding her anymore and they will both be getting spayed/neutured!

As for the dogs in kennels etc they do not ALL come from 'people like me' they come from ALL breeders, whether this is a professional breeder or someone like me, once that pup leaves it is in the fate of the new owners, where the pup came from is irrelevent!

My last litter all went to amazing family homes, i chose very carefully who they went to and i am in regular contact with every one of them!