Ever have a mama dog dig at her puppies before she will lay down and nurse them?

ugh ugh ugh...
our mama seems to think she needs to dig at the bedding in her whelping box before she lays down with her babies.(in the process she digs her pups around).. ever have a mama do that? I know that you cannot possibly know what is going on in her head but it drives me crazy... the babies are not overly fond of it either... We now wait for her to finish her little ritual before we put the babies in with her again.

our solution is to get a carpet piece and put it in the box instead of her current bedding....
any other clever ideas?

I had wondered if she just did not want anything in there..that is why we are getting the carpet piece..close to nothing but will keep the puppies comfy

Yeah, some of them do that.. Drives you mad cause you have to keep such a close watch almost constantly..

Here is the thing.. If you put down carpet.. It makes it a little harder to housetrain them later.. Dogs love to pee on something that soaks up pee.. Grass, dirt, and OMG CARPET.. If you put carpet in the whelping box where they are going to be learning to pee on their own.. They will naturally thing that peeing on carpet is fine. I have tried carpet in the whelping box.. even just under the blankets so that they can't move them around so much.. Does hold blankets still well... but puppies seem to be much harder to housetrain.

What I have found works best. is to use blankets just bigger than the whelping box.. then you can lift the whelping box edge, tuck blanket under the edge and put the box back down. Then she has a much harder time digging and pulling the blankets up and covering the pups.

i have never seen a dog do that before. maybe she want sto have nothing there. maybe the bedding is agravating her. do abunch of diffrent ideas.

She's trying to get comfortable maybe try cedar chips. usually found at petco or petsmart, even walmart. they usually start doing it when they feel like they need more space or if they aren't satisfied with the bedding. animals are weird sometimes!! Good luck and I hope whatever you try using works. Cedar chips are also a good absorbant that way if the puppies go potty in the box that they are feeding in the cedars will absorb and make the bad scent go away. two in one comfortable and a bathroom LOL

Yes, my Berner girl did the same thing... and I did exactly what DP said (lifting the box and putting down a BIG blanket that was pulled tight when the box was set down). Good news is that after about a week we were able to lay towels and other blankets over the BIG blanket (made washing bedding easier as we could just wash what needed it and then re-layer).

Yes, I went weeks without sleep. Miss Dora's mother had 3 litters of 13 and usually SQUISHED 3 of them (*I* did not have her) so I was really afraid Miss Dora might squish one and if she even shifted I was immediately AWAKE (years of being a personal nurse and mother leave me with an ability to do some strange half sleep).

Good luck with the babies. I'll say a prayer someone will watch pups and let you nap!

Questions you should ask your self. Is it warm or cool where she is whelping the pups? It is her natural instinct to make the pups comfortable. Take out all the bedding.

with one of our doxie b*itches she would do that, but was a litle genlter.. so we really didnt worry about the puppies... though now that i think about it, she only did it while we had a blanket that could be moved around in there.. when we switched to just a HUGE dog bed, she stopped... mabye the carpet might work...