Only if there's a problem. She knows what she’s doing. Even if the dog has never given birth before, it's called genetics; they're going to figure it out. So I try not to intervene unless I have to. And again, I kind of briefly touched upon it earlier, pushing for 30 minutes with no puppy, and those kinds of things might require intervention. If things like that are happening, then absolutely get on the phone, call me and let me know, or, better yet, bring the dog in, and we'll do what we have to do. But other than that, stay out of the way and let her do her thing. She's going to eat the placenta. She's going to lick the puppy clean.

She's going to lick the puppies to make them go to the bathroom for the first time. They need to nurse on her immediately to cause not only for milk letdown but it also causes a release of oxytocin. This release helps the uterine to involute and start to either contract more, or when pregnancy is done, it makes the uterus collapse and empty blood clots and extra placental tissue. And just the simple act of a puppy nursing does that. So again, stay out of the way as much as possible. Call me if you need to, but otherwise, let the pups do their thing.

In a whelping box. So what does that look like? What's a whelping box? It's a quiet, dark, and comfortable spot—preferably one that the dog is comfortable with because they don't want to have puppies in the middle of your living room floor. You might want them to because, "Oh, look how neat. There's one, there's two." She doesn't want to be around all that. She wants to be in the dark where it's quiet, and you have no idea what's happening. So prepare that spot for her. And if you have that spot prepared, show it to her before, let her sleep in it before, and get her comfortable with it. That should be her safe haven. That should be where she knows she can go, and she's going to be left alone, quiet, and nobody's in her way. Show it to her for a couple of weeks leading up to birthing, if possible.

Absolutely. Where else is she going to have it? Unless there is a veterinary situation such as dystocia, preeclampsia, or another kind of medical condition that would warrant a veterinarian getting involved, then there's no reason for me to get involved. Assuming you have the proper preparations at home—a whelping box, towels, a good dark, and a quiet spot for the dog to go. We covered the preparations in the previous video, so if you didn't, go back and watch it. But if you have those things ready, a dog can have their puppies at home. You're just looking for any abnormalities. If the dog is in active labor, contracting for 30 minutes or more, and no puppy, I need to know about it.

If they're going multiple hours between puppies, I probably ought to know about that too. One of the things that helps is how to know when they’re finished. How do you know if they're finished? Well, that's when x-rays come in, and you can do x-rays after about day 50 of pregnancy and get a good idea of how many puppies that she has to deliver because otherwise, you're just kind of guessing. So maybe she has four, and she stops—are you going to know if that's all she has? If you didn't do x-rays, you are not going to know. That's one of the benefits of checking x-rays before they go into labor.

Number one, pregnancy duration is 63 days, give or take. It's a huge help if you know when your dog was bred, and so that whelping date can be established that way. So that's number one. Number two, on the assumption that you've done some of the other preliminary testing (you've had x-rays and a pregnancy test and all these other things to confirm pregnancy done), the best way to know when they're going into labor is to regularly check their body temperature.

For about a week to five days before the expected due date, start taking their temperature at least once daily, and you would typically see a temperature drop to anywhere between 97 to 99 degrees. And that typically happens roughly 24 hours before they go into labor. If their temperature is low, retake it in a couple of hours. If you get to back-to-back low temperatures in that range I just mentioned, there's an excellent chance that you're going to have puppies in the next 24 hours. So that's probably the most accurate indicator that I can think of as to when your dog's going to go into labor.

They really should be. It'd be necessary if you're looking for an acupuncturist to see if they are boarded in veterinary acupuncture, the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society. It requires a good deal of schooling to know where these points are, how to use them appropriately with additional Western medicine versus a holistic Chinese medicine approach. So it's good to look at the credentials.