Pseudo-Pregnant Girl

Her mind is telling her body she got lucky during her last heat. (she was not bred!) It's one day short of two months since her heat and she is in the throws of a false pregnancy. She is trying her best to eat for forty. She has spent the last week roaming around the house in her quest for the perfect site to have her phantom puppies. As I write this, she's had two of them-it's a small litter for a Great Dane...one is a muskrat and the other is a lamb.

The muskrat stuffy is in between my pillows at the head of my bed-the lamb has been relegated to the laundry basket in my bedroom closet. (with the door kept open at all times of course!)

She seems to be an attentive mother, going into the bedroom after every meal to carefully arrange my bedclothes into a pile in the center. Once satisfied with this endeavor, she goes over to her muskrat and gives it a few licks, desperately trying to get it to 'do something.' (like breathe I guess!!) When there's no response, she doesn't show signs of despondency, she just carries on. She then turns her attention to the closet and checks on the progress of the lamb in the laundry basket...sniffs at it, (no licks for the lamb) checks out the closet for the umteenth time and when she's satisfied there are no lurking menaces, she returns to the bed to lay quietly for about half an hour.

When we go for walks, there's only one focus---seek out the perfect den outdoors...just in case-dragging me into neighbours' bushes or any corner that has good cover. Old leaves from last fall seem to be a fave, especially if they're piled into a corner. When I stopped to speak with a neighbour on our evening walk, she spotted a crawlspace under the front steps and was through the garden, exhibiting such delight with the thought of finding a possible 'new' spot along our path with such a compulsion to investigate it fully!

This hormone-induced state will hopefully come to an end in another week. She'll tire of the muskrat and the lamb--they'll become stuffed animals once again. I will be able to reclaim my bedclothes and start making my bed in the morning and know it will still look the same way at night. Our walks will be about running and playing with her friends on the beach and checking out the 'pee-mail' in the neighbourhood.

Every female I have ever owned has exhibited the same behavior....has gone into a pseudo- pregnancy after every heat, until the time she is spayed. Going so far as to generations digging under the same bushes, follwing the same paths, preferring the same places.

It's been suggested the reason all my females experience this phenomenon is due to my nurturing, my mothering of them from a young age.


Whatever the reasons, it's a frustrating period for the female and can be exasperating for the owner, so a little extra compassion and understanding helps.

Next spring, if all goes according to plan and I breed her, she'll be an old pro at mothering!