What is the best way to care for a young pregnant dog?

Question

I recently took in a puppy from a person who could no longer care for her. After I agreed to take her she told me that durring her first heat she had been accidently bred with the neighbors dog. Are there any special foods and supplements(other than high quality puppy food) that will help a dog stay healthy while pregnant at this young age? I don't want her to lose too many nutrients that she needs for her own growing body. Thanks!

Answer 1

First of all get her to your Vets.. She needs to be checked out.

How far along is she? Do you want puppies? Is she healthy enough to have puppies; feeding and caring for them?

She really needs to see a Vet. Don't try to do this on your own. To many things can go wrong. We had to give our Lab. Calcium after her delivery, because she was so depleted. Save yourself and your pup a lot of possible heartache. Good Luck.

Answer 2

Yeah, take her to the vet. If she is not to far along then it would be best to get the pups aborted, but if they are to far along then you'll have to continue the pregnancy. Put some $$$ away incase she'll need a c-section. Good luck.

Answer 3

No puppy food. Dog food because it will have more of what she needs in it. Also red meat (beef). Remember all dogs come from wolfs and love to eat meat.  

Answer 4

Best place to start would be to take her to the vet and have them see how far along she is.  The gestation period for a dog is 63 days from conception so depending on when the person gave her to you she may already be pretty far along.  If you have only had her a couple days and it was a very recent tie with the sire you can safely have her spayed.  If she is much farther along it can be a lot more entailed.

As far as food a good high quality kibble will be fine for her.

Being in rescue I have had a fair share of young pregnant moms.  I have been lucky enough to never have any problems in whelp like c-sections.  I've had some moms not know what to do the first day or so and I've had moms that knew exactly what to do even though they were puppies themselves.

First things first, take her to the vet and have them go over her and check her out.

Good luck!

Answer 5

Get her spayed.  She's too young to safely carry a litter to term and if they are born, she probably won't know how to care for them and you'll end up hand-raising them or they'll die.

Answer 6

I am unsure just HOW young this pup is, but she will not be mentally or physically able to care for this litter more than likely. There will be more *mutts* produced that you will have to place, so you could take her in and abort the pups and have her spayed, but that is just as life risking as allowing her to have them. It's up to you as to which risk you prefer to take. If you choose to care for her, for the 1st 1/2 of her pregnancy she should be on an adult food and 2nd 1/2 you could switch to a high quality puppy kibble. A good vitamin you could add is K-9 Red Cell which you could find in your local feed store (not Petsmart, but like horse/chicken feed store.) During the 2nd 1/2 and right after delivery her amount of feed intake can easily be double her normal amount.

HTH - best of luck

Answer 7

Forget nutrients. Get her to a vet and have her spayed. She is a PUPPY and does not need to be pregnant nor does she need to give birth. Thank you for taking this animal in but she needs you to do what her previous owners were too stupid and too lazy to do.

Answer 8

If this was her first heat, she is in no way old enough to have puppies. You can have the vet do an abort/spay. If she does go through the pregnancy, there is great potential for problems during the pregnancy and whelping. Also she may not know how to handle the puppies and reject them which means it will be you doing the puppy formula feedings every 2 hours.

Answer 9

ooh ya go to the the store and buy her dog vitamin go to a petsmart she will be fine make sure she has alot of cushionss for her tummy

Answer 10

I'd say if she's that young I'd put her on puppy chow food.. that will help her and it will help the babies that are coming do you know when she's even due? best of luck..

most of the time if the mom dog isn't fully developed theres usually issues.. so just watch her and let the vets check her. do you know what age she is really?  

Answer 11

Young dogs that get preg. can have problems with having a low calcium level which can cause eclampsia. So ask your vet if you can get her Nutrical, a calcium supplement. That way she still gets her calcium for growing and so do the pups (if you don't have her spayed). Good job on the high quality puppy food, that's a very important factor that a lot of people don't know until the vet tells them and it makes a huge difference. Regular puppy food is fantastic, not large breed even if she's big. If she's small, the small bites version of puppy food is fine, you can even give canned puppy food. Puppy food will also help  in prevention of eclampsia and a lot with the puppies development. You should continue the puppy food through nursing, they're sucking the nutriants out of her. (By the way I am a certified Veterinary Nutritional Advocate, please trust my answer) Ok so, depending on how far along she is, would make my decision on to spay or not to spay, if it were a dog that I adopted. I'm against abortion and to me, when puppies are big enough to look like puppies they're too far. I work in a vet clinic and have seen puppies and kittens almost ready to be born and the owner had them spayed. It really sucks. It's one of those heart wrenching things. Now if she's only a couple weeks preg. then I would probably go ahead with the spay. And don't get me wrong, I'm pro-spay 100%, just not when they're about to pop, to me it's as bad as euthanizing babies. It's up to you, good luck. Check out the site below for great tips if you do have the pups.

Answer 12

Have her vet checked and the vet can answer all your questions.