How to prevent breeding in puppies
Unless you are a breeder, your dog having puppies could be expensive and potentially dangerous for your dog if she runs into health problems. Once she has her pups, you will then be responsible for their care until you can find good homes for them.
If puppies are not on your agenda, it is easier to prevent your dog from having puppies than it is to handle the responsibility of having an unwanted litter.
Sterilization
Dogs, both male and female, are ready to mate and create their own puppies before they are even a year old. Your veterinarian may recommend spaying and neutering your dogs, however with some large breeds, you may want your female dog to go into one or two heat cycles before you have her spayed. If you have a male dog and you have no intent to breed him, your veterinarian can tell you the ideal time to have him neutered. For many breeds, your dog can be as early as five months of age, and for some tiny breeds, it may even be earlier. Spaying and neutering your dogs is the best way to keep them from making puppies. There are health benefits for your dogs outside of not having puppies for spaying and neutering your dogs as well. Until they are spayed and neutered, you will want to keep a close eye on them to ensure they are not mating. Your female dog will be able to have puppies before you may realize she is in season.
Segregation
However, there may be times when your dog needs to go through heat cycles and cannot be spayed right away. In these cases, be sure to keep your in-season female dog inside your home and away from intact male dogs. If you have a male dog who lives in your house with your female dog, you may want to separate them all together into separate homes while your female dog goes through her season of heat. Sometimes, even keeping dogs in separate crates or separate rooms is often not enough to keep an intact male dog away from your female dog. However, keeping them separated will typically keep them from mating, which means you should not have puppies in the near future. This is not a time to take your female dog to a local dog park, for a walk around the neighborhood, or even into a pet store. Intact male dogs will do and go through just about anything to reach your female dog in heat. So, unless you’re hoping for puppies, keep her away from male dogs. If female dogs and male dogs are separated, they will not have a chance to make puppies.
Deterrence
The trick to not having puppies, of course, is to keep your dogs from mating. If you are unable to spay or neuter your dogs, which is probably the best option available for preventing unwanted pregnancies in animals, you can purchase products to keep your female dogs scent while in heat away from the male dogs, who are incredibly attracted to those pheromones. You can talk to your veterinarian or your local pet food store about products such as chlorophyll or sprays you can spritz onto your female dog to mask the attractive scent of heat that male dogs will be searching for. Some owners, if they have an intact female and an intact male dog within their house, will put britches, pants, or even diapers on one or both dogs to prevent them from connecting. This is not a surefire way of preventing puppies and pregnancy. However, if your dogs are supervised it will certainly give you a few minutes to get them separated before your aggressive testosterone-driven male dog chews off the britches to get to the highly attractive female dog in your house.
If she is showing signs of aggression towards them, remove them immediately as this could lead to a very sad scenario. You will then need to care for the puppies and if you’re at all uncertain most vets will provide free support and information over the phone.
To be certain your dog has rejected her puppies, it’s important to look for some or all of the following signs.
Although domesticated, dogs still possess many instinctual survival traits from their wild ancestors. As a result, if a puppy is sick or weak your dog may instinctively abandon or even kill it. The theory is that a wild puppy that is sick or defective is unlikely to survive long so the mother will prioritise her food and attention to the strongest and healthiest in the litter.
If your dog is with the pups but you’re not sure if she is being as attentive as she should be, if haven’t already, ensure the whelping area is located is a quite area and stay with her to assess and monitor the situation. If the all the pups are feeding, this is a good sign.
Another clear sign of potential rejection is if you hear excessive cries from the litter. Newborn puppies only tend to cry when they’re hungry and if your dog is tending to and feeding them, they will be fairly quiet most of the time – at least in the early stages.
Prevention of pregnancy
One of the main aims of neutering is to prevent your pet from getting pregnant. This is especially important if you have any entire male dogs in the house, but also can prevent unwanted pregnancies from other dogs. Pregnancies are risky for dogs and the cost of emergency procedures, like caesareans, is high. In many cases owners expect to make money from the pregnancy by selling the puppies, but tragic circumstances, such as abortions or still-borns, can result in a loss of profits. Not only can pregnancies be risky for your pets, not to mention costly, but they also contribute to the overcrowding of the puppy market, making people less likely to adopt the hundreds of dogs in shelters looking for homes.