Story of a false pregnancy (boxer, vet, toy, barking)

[1phwalls]

I started to type this in another thread and decided it was worthy of it's own thread. I just wanted to bring to light a situation that some people of unaltered female dogs may have to deal with.

I rescued my female boxer in October. The vet I took her to said she could feel a scar and that her previous owner had already spayed her. So then much to my surprise, on May 28th she went into heat! That was 3 weeks of fun. I live in an apt with very light beige carpets, so I bought some diapers. Surprisingly she did not mess with them, but they didn't fit vey well and slid off eventually. I have no fenced in backyard and must walk my baby on a leash so there was 0% chance of her getting pregnant without my knowledge. As in, only if I was attacked by a male dog who was then able to get to her could she get pregnant. This never happened thank god!

So then one weekend she keeps randomly going into her crate and laying down for a few minutes - which she had never done before. Or she goes in there to relentlessly fluff her blanket. How odd I thought to myself. I thought she might have been stressed out because I had taken her out of town for that weekend when the "fluffing" started.

Her ***** started swelling. This is when I realized it might be a false pregnancy, and calculated her dates. We were right at the 63 days later mark, which is the gestational period for dogs. I noticed last night before I gave her a bath, that she had thick yellow discharge on her nipples.

After a few days, she started collecting her stuffed toys. Pacing around and whining with them in her mouth. Trying to hide them. Trying to lay just perfectly so they are right by her belly, but so as to not lay on them. And she always had to be laying so she was touching me, with her "puppies" alongside. Which was very annoying for me because if I get up, so does she, and the cycle of refluffing and placing the toys starts over again.

( I find it odd that she would need to be touching me with her puppies. Wouldn't you think she would want to be alone with them? And I mean she must be smashed into me as much as possible! She is a velcro dog normally, but not to the point she had to be touching me, just in the same room.)

And because she thinks she has puppies in my house, she has become aggressive. Not to me, I can take her toys with no problem, she just watches me and then sniffs the toy when I give it back to make sure it is OK. But when I walk her I can not let anyone else approach us if they have a dog. Even if she knew and liked the dog previously. And when I do go to take her out, she doesn't want to leave her toys behind. Especially the loofa. I have to take it from her and drag her out the door. Then she proceeds to drag me on our once casual walk! I mean we used to lolly gag. I fealt like we were walking backwards she would walk so slow and smell every inch of the ground. Now it is like a race to get back, where she then drags me up the stairs to the 3rd floor where we live. She charges through the door and checks all her babies, and then the fluffing routine can begin again.

Normally she was a mute, not barking at anything. She could walk past dogs going nuts, see people in the yard outside my window, hear all the noise in the hall and even have people knock on the door. She would just stand there and watch. Now she has started growling and charging towards my door with hackles raised when she hears noise in the hallway. So she truly believes she has something to protect.

And in the end, the only way to stop this from happening, is to get her spayed. Because it is going into the heat cycle in the first place that throws her hormones out of whack.

And it is obviously very stressful for her.

[Arrowette]

She probably had a C-section, 1phwalls. Sorry this happened. False pregnancies are no fun.

Thanks for adopting her.