Expecting Puppies: A Guide to Recognizing Labor in Your Dog

Well, so a couple things. Number one, pregnancy duration is 63 days, give or take. So it's a very big 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, like if you've had x-rays and a pregnancy test and all these other things to confirm pregnancy done, probably the best way to know when they're going into labor is to regularly check their body temperature. I would say maybe for about a week to five days before the expected due date, I would start taking their temperature at least once daily. You will typically, and again I'll use the word typically, some dogs don't read the books that we learn from, but you will typically see a temperature drop to anywhere between 97 to 99 degrees. And that typically happens roughly 24 hours before they go into labor again. So you take a temperature, if it's low, take it again in a couple of hours. If you get too back-to-back low temperatures in that range I just mentioned, there's a very good 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.