Part 2 of 6
Explore dog pregnancy x-ray tips in Dr. Andrea Hesser's 6 Part Breeding Masterclass with Pro Club—learn puppy counts, fetal health, and delivery prep and more.
Transcript
0:00
Thanks everybody for joining us.
0:02
So we're going to give a little update just kind of like what we did last time, just updating you on things that have gone on for the last couple weeks.
0:08
And then we'll get on to doing some kind of late gestational ultrasounds here.
0:14
So just as a reminder, so this was kind of the forecast of what we're expecting to do.
0:19
So we're going to do late ultrasound, late pregnancy ultrasound today, as well as an X-ray that I took yesterday for her and some odds and ends about her care in the last two weeks.
0:31
She is due on March 13th, just as a reminder.
0:34
So she's due next Thursday and that's a range.
0:38
Of course.
0:39
We're going to start doing checks on her on Tuesday and I'll see if I can, it'll probably just be a recap when we see you in two weeks because obviously they'll be out by then.
0:48
But we'll see if I can get some video and things for you guys so that you can kind of have been there for the C-section part.
0:55
So March 19th we'll be doing first week and then, you know, you can go through the process here.
1:01
But basically we'll just try to do some different updates based on kind of their milestones and their age.
1:07
So again, she is due next Thursday.
1:11
I apologize.
1:11
She is a ham.
1:12
So every time I do one of these, she's in a trough already next to me.
1:15
But she is actively trying to get my attention.
1:21
So today is -9 days from her due date.
1:25
So she is due next Thursday or so -8 actually so we are planning our first assessment on Tuesday next week.
1:34
So that would be -2 from her due date.
1:36
Her litter size does not warrant me to want to check her -3 there are some giant litters that we might check a day earlier than that.
1:49
All right, so just some pivotal changes to see you guys can kind of see.
1:51
So she's a giant dog, right?
1:54
Like she's 115 LB bitch.
1:55
When she's in show weight, she has gained probably 10 lbs or so.
2:01
She was 125 when we weighed her just walking in the door here.
2:04
You can't see a whole lot of definition and change in her because she's a good enough sized girl as well as being a maiden.
2:11
So the fact that she hasn't had a litter before, she's going to have a lot tighter abdominal musculature.
2:16
Her vulva has definitely softened.
2:18
She kind of is that way as a dog already.
2:21
So it started to get a lot more pronounced here lately.
2:24
You certainly got some mammary development.
2:26
I think that's a lot of the body weight change that she's had.
2:29
She is lactating actively.
2:31
If I express most of those glands, I try to leave them alone because I think, you know, you're just opening the ducts up to get postpartum complications.
2:41
Dr. Barstow may mention later, I don't know if she's going to cover mastitis, but certainly don't want to be fussing too much with things down there if they don't need to be fussed with.
2:52
All right, So just an update on her kind of care during pregnancy.
2:56
I did opt to do some progesterone testing for her.
2:59
She has a…I think it's a great aunt that had luteal failure or had a decrease in her progesterone ahead of her due date, had lost a litter due to that.
3:11
So, and she has some familial history that actually is something she's line bred on as far as like her background.
3:19
It's kind of tying that same line in into her pedigree twice.
3:23
So I went ahead and just checked some progesterone on her periodically.
3:27
So February 18th, which was a little over two weeks ago, she was a little lower than I wanted to see, but I mean, not a problem for her.
3:36
So we don't worry about a 10.6 being like a huge red flag.
3:40
But mid pregnancy, that was about six weeks pregnancy, right?
3:44
So like mid-pregnancy, she's going to hang on to those numbers until term.
3:49
So sometimes we see some dogs that are 10.6 right now or 10.6 early next week when we start doing their finding.
3:57
So I think, you know, it was something I definitely was watching her closely for physical changes.
4:03
So was she starting to show lactation early?
4:06
Was she bagging up and having extra mammary glands early?
4:09
She was not.
4:10
So I continue to check her weekly.
4:12
She hasn't done anything kind of out of the ordinary, no labor signs, no panting, no sudden discharge, anything like that.
4:20
But we've been been on a good trend so far.
4:24
So other kind of just odds and ends that I think are good to keep in mind and don't forget to be current on.
4:30
So she had a heart guard last week on the well, I guess a few days ago on the 1st.
4:37
Remember you got a dose based on their pregnant weight.
4:40
So make sure if you have a bitch like this, it did kind of push her into another weight class as far as how I would dose her from where she was.
4:47
So make sure that that you're doing though you can see.
4:51
So she's on Bravecto in her case.
4:54
I could see a flea outbreak in her case because she is technically on a product that's not labeled all the way up to the weight that she's going to be when she's term.
5:02
I've had dogs that are on Bravecto, so that ended up exceeding their weight range and getting fleas and late pregnancies.
5:09
So just be very careful of that.
5:11
You might have to adjust what you do, but I like Bravecto for pregnancy just for a couple of reasons, one being it's simple.
5:19
You can give it when they're kind of at in their early like when they're in their heat cycle or kind of early in their gestational timeline.
5:29
And then that is safe for pregnancy per the the label instructions.
5:34
I know there's the date on that and that's probably like a whole 10 minutes that we could discuss that.
5:38
But I would say it's a big bag.
5:41
As far as reproductive veterinarians who likes it and who doesn't?
5:44
I've had really good success with Bravecto.
5:46
I live in an area where ticks are a serious problem for general health.
5:50
So I think it's a very good idea.
5:52
If you are in an area that needs land tick, make sure that you're kind of on top of that.
5:55
But Bravecto, just for those who aren't familiar, it's a three month product.
5:59
So she is still currently within her timeline for Bravecto.
6:04
So Panacur.
6:07
I treated her again at 7 weeks.
6:09
That is for certain types of parasites that try to travel from the the bitch’s intestinal lining across into the uterus so they can have kind of transuterine migration during the last few weeks of pregnancy.
6:27
That's the thought on the treatment this time.
6:28
I do plan on treating her again when she's kind of early in her lactation when they have been delivered and then a few weeks out after she's whelped her litter.
6:41
I am going to put on an Adaptil collar today.
6:43
So an Adaptil collar is it's a collar that's actually usually used for behavioral treatments that have nothing to do with pregnancy but the pheromone that they exude.
6:55
So those collars exude something called dog appeasing pheromone, which was actually developed from the hormones that the bitch includes in the whelping box to make her litter quiet and settled.
7:07
So even though you're you would think she has enough that she'd be treating her own self in the whelping box, right?
7:13
It actually has that effect on her as an adult to kind of be settled, not a huge, you know, thing that you have to do.
7:21
I just find it to be if I have a either a more nervous dog, a new mom.
7:28
This breed is not classically super maternal.
7:33
So I think anything that I can do to help kind of keep her settled is going to help me.
7:38
Some people, with bull mastiffs have very good luck and some people have bitches that do not want their puppies and they do not know what they are and they never really care about their puppies.
7:47
So I don't know what I'm going to get.
7:50
And then of course, whelping box organization.
7:54
So she's not going to be free whelping, but I still have a box set up for her with kind of the same intentions.
7:59
It is possible she could go into labor.
8:01
Weird things happen.
8:02
I want to make sure I've got all my ducks in a row.
8:04
So I've got, you know, the same medications and kind of supplies at my house as though I could be free whelping her.
8:13
I don't plan it and I would like to avoid it for her.
8:16
But that's just like I had mentioned in the last class.
8:20
My plan for that is simply because I want to optimize the survival of these puppies.
8:27
In this particular scenario.
8:28
This is frozen semen from a dog I cannot replace.
8:31
And I think with natural whelping, free whelping can result in stillbirth.
8:36
That could be very normal.
8:38
It is kind of one of those pros and cons scenarios.
8:41
It's not totally within, you know, the best risk for her to have a C section if she doesn't need one necessarily.
8:50
So there's plenty of owners who might opt not to do so and that's perfectly fine.
8:54
But that that's what I've opted to do in this scenario.
8:59
Alright, so just to mention I did some pregnancy X-rays on her just so you guys could see them.
9:04
These were -9 from her due date.
9:06
So these are earlier than what I would recommend.
9:08
Usually I'll do X-rays within a week of their due date.
9:12
Three to five days is my favorite before they're due.
9:14
Three is pushing it.
9:15
Obviously if you have a large litter, she could already be in pre labor, but that's going to give you the best, highest quality, extra in depth contrast, especially in a giant dog.
9:26
You'll see she's got some contrast you can definitely see them, but she doesn't have as much.
9:32
I took another X-ray on a similarly gestational dog yesterday that was like bright as you know, contrasted and awesome as could be like the ones that you see online and you're like, I wish my X-ray looked like that.
9:42
I had one of those yesterday. First did not come out so crisp, I think because she's such a big girl.
9:49
Alright, so would I usually do that for C-section?
9:51
No, I wouldn't personally, though, I don't feel like it changes my plans for my clients or for my own, you know, like for my staff management, because we usually have an idea of how many puppies she has.
10:04
I estimated that I thought she had four.
10:06
I ultrasounded her a few times.
10:07
So I mean, I definitely had more accuracy just because I ultrasounded her more than once and she was earlier pregnant. And because this was a, a smaller litter, I mean, I, I could pretty well repeat and repeat and repeat four as I went across.
10:20
And sure enough, she has four.
10:23
So she is a good example of a dog that we might have sent outside, to walk to go to the bathroom.
10:30
So you can see right in the center of the X-ray, there's a big kind of tubular structure that it looks like he needs to go to the bathroom, and that is her: full of poop.
10:40
And guess what?
10:41
After we did this X-ray, she went outside and pooped.
10:43
And then we took her home over lunch and she pooped more.
10:46
So she probably would have had a much more brilliant X-ray had she done that.
10:49
But I think it illustrates a good example of how that could hide a puppy.
10:54
So in this case, if you look kind of if you start on the top right corner and kind of go that three vertebrae over come down, you'll see a skull above the colon there.
11:07
The body of that puppy gets lost behind the colon.
11:10
So the spine and the and the thorax or the rib cage on that puppy, you can't see at all, right?
11:15
You can barely make it out, but it's there.
11:18
The guys on the bottom aspect you can see a lot better.
11:21
So the one that's kind of straight underneath him on the bottom kind of towards the right, that puppy, you can see its head.
11:28
You can see its front legs.
11:29
You can see its full rib cage.
11:30
You can see it's fine all the way down up to where that colon kind of starts on that aspect.
11:37
There is one puppy, which I'll show you and it's a little hard to explain it.
11:41
So there's those two that we just talked about.
11:45
And then you can see the two that are kind of crowded towards the left side of the screen.
11:50
Those puppies that you can actually really see where they are and how they're laid out.
11:55
But one of them is kind of flexed back on himself.
11:58
So you have to kind of stare at it for a minute before you figure out where that puppy is.
12:02
So just going back and forth between these just so you can see where those kind of sit.
12:07
But the puppy that's the farthest to the left is pretty, he's pretty like laid out straight.
12:12
The one that's like right next to him is kind of flexed in a kind of like a state position.
12:17
If that makes sense is how that how that looks?
12:23
OK, so just a reminder.
12:24
So we're ultrasounding 8 week gestation today.
12:27
So it'll look very different from the last time that we looked at her.
12:31
She doesn't need to have an ultrasound right now.
12:34
This is just for you guys, just for fun.
12:36
So things that I might be looking for though, if I had a client had brought a dog and wanted to do an ultrasound at the stage -
12:42
I think the number one thing for like this breed that I'm looking around for, sometimes we can see evidence and suspicion of water puppies or Anasarca puppies at the stage for bully type breeds.
12:53
That is not uncommon.
12:56
We can start to see fetal sex at this age.
12:59
It's not something we like, advocate or do generally because we usually have litters of puppies.
13:04
So we don't think too much about like do we have boys?
13:06
Do we have girls?
13:07
But if, if I'm doing fetal sexing, it's usually when we're like -3 -, 2 when we start to do the ultrasounds, when they're preparing for C-section, it's just because I'm already there, not because I actually really need to know.
13:23
But I think for some owners, it's really exciting.
13:26
If we see that there's a vulva, we see a girl, there's a girl in there and they were hoping to get a girl and they just puppies and planning an elective and thing like that.
13:35
But yeah, I wouldn't say it's every veterinarian, definitely just something that I, you know, I had a mentor that kind of taught me how to approach it.
13:43
And then the pros and cons of it is we can see if they're girls, but the boys, we say it's a negative girl, meaning we don't see a vulva.
13:55
Well, did you not see a vulva because you didn't see it?
13:58
Because it was there, but you missed it in the shot and you didn't have the right angle?
14:02
That's possible.
14:04
I think, you know, when you see a girl and you see a vulva you can see it clearly.
14:07
So spoiler alert, I do not think that I can see things clearly enough, especially with the projection that we're going to be able to show you that.
14:16
But I just wanted to let you know it is kind of a fun thing that you can see sometimes at this stage.
14:22
So alright, without further ado, let me see if I can get out of here and get so that we can broadcast the image instead.
14:58
If anybody is wondering.
14:59
So the reason why I do not have to start holding her right now, if I do that for her, what happens is she will constantly move because she's so happy.
15:13
She's just the happiest dog in the whole wide world.
15:15
So sometimes her happiness is a little bit accepted.
15:27
Hang tight guys.
15:32
It disconnected from my probe. Just a second while we reconnect it.
15:35
I'm going to make this so that I don't have any glares.
15:49
There we go.
16:00
OK, second Cabana.
16:03
Alright, so let's see if we can figure out where we are here.
16:05
So this is a puppy.
16:07
This is a puppy in in a transected section.
16:10
So this is basically you can see there's a bright white light or white kind of outline of ribs.
16:17
So this is basically, I know it sounds terrible, but basically like if you put the cut straight through like and made the like the chest and the abdomen in two pieces, that's the view that you're currently looking at.
16:31
If I turn my probe to the side, then we're going to see the puppy from the side instead, see your guy so you can see rib shadows.
16:43
We go up to, there's the heart, get that glare out of here. And we keep going forward.
16:57
Start going forward into here's this puppy's little head up here and if we keep going back down, then we can come back down.
17:11
Look at the spine again, we can see all those rib shadows, see the abdomen from the side.
17:18
At this stage, they're going to look a lot different than they will when you guys are looking at term.
17:24
So Doctor Barstow may cover that a little bit with the dystocia discussion, but she might not.
17:29
I know there's a lot of things to cover.
17:31
So it might not be that she has that material.
17:33
If we get some later shots whenever she's prepping for her C-section, I will certainly let you guys see those. Trying to get that little glare out of there, sorry guys.
17:46
Alright, so this little puppy, this is another puppy from the side.
17:50
So there's a little heartbeat in the center.
17:52
You can actually start to see a lot.
17:53
So you can see chambers of the heart at this stage.
17:55
You can see a lot of the great vessels, so like the aorta, the vena cava, you can see some of the vessels kind of pre trunking in the liver sometimes.
18:04
We are again, you know, we're still about a week out from where we would typically be looking at these guys at term. Little more gel.
18:15
All right, and then if we go up here, so there's the neck of that puppy, you can see his little just moving his little legs.
18:23
So there's the skull on the left, there is his neck and then a little bit of his thorax there, his belly.
18:32
And then if we were fetal sexing, we’d go down here to his booty and we just start to kind of roll back and forth, right where the hips kind of come together and the two little thighs come together.
18:43
And sometimes we can see that little hint of a vulva like I said.
18:48
But these puppies all look OK.
18:49
So if we had a water puppy say, we might see fluid or black inside the chest that shouldn't be there.
18:55
We might see it around the puppy.
18:58
I've also seen like if we have every once in a while, we'll catch like if you have a puppy that had intestines on the outside, you could actually catch that sometimes on these types of ultrasounds even at this stage.
19:11
Alright, so let me go ahead.
19:12
I'm going to go ahead and disconnect.
19:17
Alright.
19:20
I'm happy if there's any questions.
19:21
I know we're probably out of time on my end.
19:23
That's almost 15 minutes for my clock.
19:25
Nicole, do you know if anybody has any questions or clarifications?
19:29
I know Doctor Barstow had mentioned one.
19:31
Just so you guys know, Doctor Barstow was asking about the timing of her breeding.
19:35
She was bred approximately 5 and 6 days post OH or three and four days post ovulation.
19:41
Just so you're clear, she was bred with good time.
19:45
Amazing.
19:46
Beyond that, we just have two very quick questions.
19:50
Robin is wondering if you can do a natural birth with the same dog after you do a C section or do you need to always do C sections going forward?
20:00
Great question.
20:01
And I would say it depends on the reason.
20:05
Maybe for the C-section, but if it's an elective C-section, I have no problem.
20:10
If it's a emergency C-section, it could be the reason she needed an emergency C-section will happen again.
20:18
But as far as the uterine integrity, I have no concerns.
20:21
It's amazing.
20:21
Some of these girls, we open them back up, you would never know that we can't even find where their incision was if it's done well.
20:27
Wow, very interesting.
20:29
We just have one more question for you about some of your equipment.
20:33
So somebody was curious with the ultrasound device you're using, is that something that breeders themselves can get or is that something only available to you because you're also a vet?
20:42
Yes, good question.
20:43
So those butterfly ultrasounds I think are available for owners, they come in different.
20:48
So I actually had a client of mine that is a good dog person that had asked about that.
20:54
And it looks like the model that I have might be might not be something they still sell.
20:59
The ones that she was finding were things that connected like this probe, this probe has two different types of imaging.
21:11
So this is a curvilinear probe, which is what I use for the ultrasound.
21:14
This one is a linear probe, which is going to be used for different types of approaches for ultrasound, for pregnancy ultrasound, we're always using their fine.
21:22
At least that's, you know, the kind that I've always been used to and had been trained on.
21:27
So like this probe, I don't use this side at all for what I'm doing.
21:30
So like if I bought this for my own use, then I would want something that had a connector piece here that connected directly to my computer or to my laptop or you know, or iPad.
21:43
So our system connects via Bluetooth to the iPad that's at this hospital.
21:50
So I think the models that she was finding were more the ones that connect like that.
21:55
I think if you do get something like that, that curvilinear probe is what it's called, it's going to help you the most.
22:01
If you're like wanting to have something on hand to check puppy heart rates or something like that, it is something you probably need some counsel from your regular vet to figure out how to use.
22:12
I was realizing that even just talking to her about the machine, there's a lot of detail and information on how the ultrasounds work and how the images are produced that I think if you get the like machine calibrated wrong, you can't even see an image sometimes.
22:26
So like I think how far away you need to be, what kind of details you're looking at, it might be helpful for some scenarios.
22:34
I think for real experienced readers that are looking for another tool.
22:37
Awesome, thank you for answering that.
22:39
I think those are all the questions we have for you so far.
22:43
So thank you again for bringing us through this pregnancy.
22:47
We're so excited to have you back.
22:48
I believe it's on March 19th for our next check in and I imagine things are going to be very different by then so we can be back then.
22:56
Awesome.
22:57
Thank you again, Doctor Hesser.
