A lot of times we like to start with exams. On Mr. Dwight here, I want to look at their eyes. I look to look at their ears. I like to open up and look in their mouths, make sure that their teeth look healthy and their gums look healthy, and we do not see any concerns. And then we work our way through the body from the tip of their nose, all the way to the tip of their tail, and just look at every single little body part—their legs, belly, all of that good stuff. And then, as cats get older, we'll recommend some wellness blood work just to make sure that we do not see things like kidney disease or liver disease, or perhaps something like an overactive thyroid or diabetes. We want to rule out those kinds of common older cat diseases.

It means that everything that you're dealing with provides your cat with a long, healthy life, and that ranges from the food that you feed your cat to housing and enrichment. Preventative care also means bringing the cat to the vet every year when they're older or this size, every couple of weeks to get their kitten boosters series. It also covers those annual checkups and following the recommendations of your veterinarian, and keeping them up to date on preventatives against fleas and ticks, ear mites, and intestinal parasites. There's a whole lot that goes into cat preventive care.

So once your dog has given birth and you make sure that mom's healthy and the puppies are healthy, the biggest thing you're going to want to do is make sure mom has plenty of puppy food available because she's going to be producing a lot of milk for a lot of puppies. And that will take a lot of energy. And you'll want to take each of the puppies and weigh them on a little kitchen scale so that you know how they're gaining weight. So at least once a day, preferably twice a day, you can keep track of which puppy and how they're gaining weight so that if there's a problem, or if you suspect a problem, we can track it that way.

It depends on the dog and her experience level, but many of them will take care of everything themselves. They'll open the sack; they’ll lick the puppy and stimulate it and tear the umbilical cord. So they'll do all the work for you. Some newer moms or nervous moms may need a little bit of extra help. And so that's when you want to ride the line between being helpful but also giving her space so that you're not all up in her space at the time. But, if you're concerned that she might not know what she's doing, that's when you keep a close eye, and you might have to intervene.

So ultrasound is only about 30% accurate for determining the number of puppies that she'll have. So when you ultrasound, it's more to determine if she's pregnant and if you need to start changing plans. And if you only see a couple, it might put on your radar that there may be fewer, and that can cause problems down the road. But the proper way to count puppies is to do an x-ray around the last week of her pregnancy when all the puppies’ bones have formed so they'll show up on the x-ray. And that's the best way to count all the tiny skeletons and see how many puppies to expect.

With smaller litters, the signal for the body to go and start delivering puppies depends on something produced by the puppies. And so, when there aren't as many puppies, they may not produce enough. And so, the mom might not start labor on her own. So that's more something to watch out for. But, it's something we just keep on our radar. It's not guaranteed there'll be issues.

It depends. So dogs do very well on their own, and that's fine. And that's plan A. But, some dogs, some breeds, especially our little smooshed-face or brachycephalic breeds, tend to need a C-section. And so we can plan for that. And then, as complications arrive, they might need some intervention there, whether it's medical management or if we need to go to surgery. Those are things that we can discuss based on the case.

During labor. The big four categories. If it's been more than two hours between a puppy. So she's had one, and it's been more than two hours; you need to put it on your radar that there might be a complication. If she's actively been pushing and it's been more than 30 minutes and a puppy hasn't come out. So that's not just laying there and hanging out—that's actively pushing. She should produce a puppy within 30 minutes of that; otherwise, again, it could be a complication. Black discharge at any point is concerning. Green discharge before the first puppy, or if it's excessive, can be concerning. And then blood. Birthing in dogs is actually not a bloody process. So if you see just straight blood, then that should be something you're watching out for.

Yeah. So if you set up a whelping box, then it's best to do it about a week or so before so they can start getting used to it. You can put food in there and make it a happy place so that they take advantage of your efforts instead of setting up their own shop.