There are many signs your German Shepherd or any other dog will give you when they are going to soon be whelping.
Aura is in labor right now! (No contractions yet)
Tuesday night, she wouldn’t eat. Then Wednesday, she wouldn’t eat. We took her temperature and it started dropping. She is normally a 101.5 degree dog. Wednesday morning we took her temp and it was 101.4. A few hours later it was 100.6. A few hours later it was 99.6. Towards 6pm it was 98.7. We stopped taking it at this point, anything under 99 pretty much means she’ll be giving birth in the next 12-24hrs.
It is important that she eats but we did not want to upset her stomach. Instead of her current puppy food diet which she was refusing we cooked rice and boiled chicken breast. Boneless, skinless chicken breast of course, you do not want a dog eating too much fat, especially at a critical moment like this (read up on pancreatitis for more info on dogs eating fat).
She started panting. Several short breaths by mouth, a few heavy pants via nose. She is uncomfortable. She is an indoor dog. During the night she went under the bed and pulled everything out to create a nest of sorts! But we have a giant whelping box for her (4′ x 6′) and asked her to come back to it and she did. When we let her out to go potty she starts digging at the ground to nest. She is not a digger but today she is.
Then we have the stretch. We’ve read a lot of various stories but Aura seems to stretch out the night before or the night of whelping. A picture below shows her famous stretch. Note that she is on her side and the rear legs are extended. If you’d like to know more about why they stretch like this, please google it, we’re a little pressed for time today.
We stayed up with her til 3AM Thursday and fell asleep on the couch. It does look like tonight is the night though. Hopefully all goes well and we’ll have puppy pics up very soon!
