Today’s question is about resorption of pregnancies and the advisability of using antibiotics to prevent future resorptions: "We had a girl who was pregnant with at least 1 puppy at 28 day ultrasound and 0 puppies on x-ray at 50 days...I'm curious what other people would check with the girl who absorbed before breeding again."
In this episode we discuss:
- Things to check/do when your dam resorbs a pregnancy
- How the vaginal microbiome affects fertility and prevents disease
- The most recent studies on the prophylactic use of antibiotics in breeding bitches
Visit our website madcapradio.com for further reading.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.
And this is a Puppy Culturepotluck podcast.
You bring the topics,
we bring the conversation.
(00:20):
This episode is a discussionabout the routine
use of antibiotics in breeding bitches.
And the question came in
on our Facebookdiscussion group for our breeder course.
That's the Newborn to New Home course.
Here's the question.
We had a girl who was pregnantwith at least one puppy at 28 day
(00:45):
ultrasound, and zeropuppies on xray at 50 days.
I'm curiouswhat other people would check with a girl
who absorbed before breeding her again.
She's a maiden.
We did side by side on days three
and four postLH surge, but did not confirm ovulation
(01:08):
because of travel, job,weather in the mountains.
Semen was goodat last check, boy was keen.
AI was done by a friend
who is a third generation breeder.
Okay me again.
First of all, it'sjust a bummer when you lose a litter
(01:31):
and I'm sorry about that.
Then I just want to say I'm
going to address the exact questionthat the querent submitted,
which is,What should she check with her Dam.
Because there are obvious
questions here about the timing,the semen quality.
(01:54):
There are other reasonswhy this could have been a miss
and wound up with one puppy.
But let's just talkabout the question on the table,
which is what would you check on a bitch
that showed a pregnancy at day
28 and then at day 50there were no puppies.
(02:16):
I am going to go down a list of things,
but I also want to say
I would not be overly alarmedin this particular situation
because you saw one puppyand then no puppies.
Okay, so it's very likely
(02:37):
that there was something
genetically wrong with that puppy and itit was resorbed.
I mean, that that the puppy wasjust not meant to be.
It didn't develop correctly.
This happens.
Okay, so
one puppy to zero puppiesnot as concerning
as if you had eight puppiesand then zero puppies.
(03:00):
That's a different profile.
So that having been
said, hereare the things that I would start with.
First of all, didshe have a brucellosis test?
It's rare, but it's possible.
And brucellosis is somethingthat can cause resorption and infertility.
(03:21):
So I would check thatif you haven't had that done already.
If you do get your bitch and whelp again,
you might want to check herprogesterone levels
throughout the pregnancybecause progesterone has to stay
at about two in orderfor her to maintain her pregnancy.
(03:42):
And some bitchesdon't maintain that level.
And if that is the case,you can supplement
with progesterone to maintain pregnancy.
Now, depending on the dam's age
and family history,this is a case where I might consider
doing a surgical inseminationthe next time,
(04:03):
just so the vet can visually inspectthe uterus.
There could be cysts or a brewing pyometra
that you don't know about,that would only be visible
if you go in thereand do a surgical insemination.
I don't have enough information
in this case to say,if I were the breeder of this bitch,
(04:27):
if I would do this,but it's on the table for me.
Okay.
If I really have checked off all the boxesas far as timing, semen quality,
and I've had the semen evaluated by athorough genealogist with good equipment,
timing, I've really done my timingstraight through.
I'm sure that everything went well there
(04:50):
and then I have a complete miss.
I might want to have a look
and see what's going on in there.
I'm not saying that I'm recommending
that to this particular personin this case, but
it's on my list. Okay.
If I have a especially if I havea complete mis or a really small litter
(05:12):
and there's no other explanation for itin this case, I can't really say
that she's checked off all the boxes,
so I might not jump to goingto a surgical, but it's on the table.
Okay.
If I have an unexplained very small litteror no puppies,
surgical is on the table just to visualizewhat's going on with the uterus.
(05:32):
So thoseare just my first few quick thoughts.
When I have a bitch that missesor has only like one puppy
and everything else is good.
Now, if you went to a good repro vet, theyprobably would have other suggestions.
I didn't mention thyroidand blood workups, which
(05:56):
is always a good idea and I would hopethat you would be doing routinely anyway.
But if you haven't donethat, that's important.
And as I say, a thorough genealogist,it's a constantly evolving field,
so they may havesomething else to suggest,
but these are my triedand true punch list of things
when I have unexplained infertility
(06:19):
or low fertility in a bitch.
But now we come to the reason why I felt
I needed to do a podcast about this.
Because somebody wrote in and suggestedgiving a prophylactic course
of antibiotics to flush out thebitch's reproductive tract.
(06:42):
I mean, this is something
that was really hot, like 20 years ago.
You if you went to a repro vet,they were going to give you antibiotics to
cleanse out.
So you would basically have a clean mediumfor reproduction.
I'm going to talk a little bitabout the most recent studies on this.
(07:02):
But the overview is this.
There really is no correlation
between bacteria in the vaginal tract
and conception.
Bacteria naturally lives there.
Okay.
I mean, all the thingsthat they would culture and say,
(07:23):
you see they have E.coli,they have this, they have that.
No, that's there all naturally.
Anyway,
there's no study
that shows any higher conception ratewith the use of antibiotics.
So there's no it's just not indicated.
There's no support for this practice.
And not only can it not help conception,
(07:48):
it can really
have an adverse effect on the dam
and her puppies.
First of all, the gut biome.
If there is one thing that is correlatedwith fertility
and also health in offspring,
it is a robust and diversegut biome in the dam
(08:12):
and giving a course of antibioticsright before breeding just decimates that.
It just decimates her gut biome.
And although she may be able to recoverfrom that with time,
you're decimating it right at the timethat those puppies are being conceived
and she's seeding the puppies gut biome.
(08:36):
So now you have puppies being seeded
with a decimated gut biome,so they're going to have less diversity.
Their gut biome is going to be less robustwhen they're born.
Yes. I mean, through good weaningpractices, we're going
to increasethat gut biome in diversity and health.
But why would you do this?
This is not it's not helpingyou get your bitch pregnant.
(08:59):
And it potentially is really harmingyour puppies.
You know, in humans, things like H
pylori overgrowth,which they used to treat with antibiotics,
they now say it's
associated with lack of diversityin the gut biome
and actually may beexacerbated by antibiotics.
(09:23):
So this is this sort of new
realization in the medical community that
when you hit something with antibiotic,
it's an equal opportunity destroyer.
So it just it hits everything, right?
So let's say you do a swab on your bitchand you're like, oh, you know,
(09:43):
she's got an imbalance of, picksomething, E.coli.
So you hit it with antibiotics.
But the problem is that when you level
the playing field in this wayand you take away all the good flora,
it can create an openingfor opportunistic infection
(10:05):
because you don't have those competing
organismsto crowd out the really bad pathogens.
And sometimeseven something that on a smear
might look bad like streptococcus,
can be protective
against a worse pathogen.
(10:27):
So I'm looking at this paper from 2012,
vaginal bacterial Floraand cytology in pro
estrus bitches role in fertility.
And very interestingly,
they said vaginal presence
of streptococcus in pro estrus was instead
(10:49):
negatively associated with the developmentof uterine infections.
Therefore, streptococcuscould have a protective competitive role
against more dangerous pathogensaffecting fertility
in the bitch.
So again, take out the strep.
(11:10):
Sure, but you're just opening the door
for somethingthat potentially could be worse.
This, again was studied in 2025.
The canine vaginal microbiome
during heat and fertilityin healthy breeding dogs.
Now they said a lot of things in this.
(11:30):
I'm going to put up the study on the showpage.
It's worth a readif you're interested in this topic.
First of all,they said this has been often postulated,
but scarcely investigated and not proventhat antibiotics might be helpful,
or that bacteria present in the vaginaltract is in any way harmful.
(11:51):
However, they did say,
It is undeniable
that gynecological diseasemight be associated
with bacteriological cultureof specific bacteria, such as E.coli.
The present data emphasize once morethe opportunistic character
of these organisms, as the genus
(12:13):
E.coli was detectedin all samples in the study,
none of the genera could be identifiedas a marker
for suspected sub fertilityor infertility.
Moreover, underlying
causes for the opportunisticallypathogenic action
of the vaginal microbiotashould be investigated further.
(12:36):
These might be the overgrowthin the absence
of competing commensal bacteria.
It's another way of saying that
if you take everything out,
yes, you may get somethingthat you perceive as being
a bad bacteria,like E.coli out of the vaginal tract,
(12:59):
but it opens it up to other opportunisticinfection, which could in fact
be detrimental to your bitch's fertility.
I think the
concept here that you have to wrapyour arms around is that it's
a very analog situation in the animals
(13:19):
microbiota, meaning to say physically
there are X number of spacesfor things to live.
I mean, that X happens to be billionsand billions and billions, but
literally there's finite spacefor things to live
in your animal's microbiota.
And if you take something outor a lot out, it just leaves a hole.
(13:44):
Like the way that an animal maintainshealth
is literally by crowding out pathogens,like there's just no place
for the pathogens to go,so they just pass through the animal.
It's when you have cracks in that,when you have space,
and then the pathogens can comein, that's when you get into trouble.
(14:05):
And that's the situation that you're in
when you strip thingsout with routine antibiotics.
The vaginal tract, I mean, it's downthere.
It's meant to have all this kindof, bacteria.
It's a microbiota that's a naturalmicrobiota for a vaginal tract.
(14:26):
Trying to stripthat out is just dangerous.
Quite frankly,
I'm sort of aghast, in fact,
that it's even still a meme out therethat just giving a routine
dose of antibioticsis in any way beneficial or advisable.
In these cases.
(14:49):
Now, there are some vets that
will say, well, yes,but you know, you're way out of balance
with something like there's
an overgrowth of one kind of bacteriathat they perceive as being bad.
And I'm just going to say right now,if that were the case with my bitch,
I would address it with diet.
(15:10):
I would address trying to fix up hergut biome
and her vaginal microbiota with diet,with adding some fermented foods.
She's probably in dysbiosisif this is the case.
And again,I would not go the route of antibiotics.
I just wouldn't do it.
A, it hasn't been proven to help
and B it has the potentialfor doing a lot of harm,
(15:33):
especially when you consider thatwhat has been shown to be connected
to fertility and health in puppies
is a diverse microbiota
in the bitchand antibiotics are going to kill that.
Now, before I
close out this topic,I'm going to hasten to add
(15:54):
that if antibiotics are medicallyindicated, if if your bitch is sick
or has some profound infection andshe needs antibiotics, do not hesitate.
Give her the antibiotics.
It would be irresponsible
not to give her the antibioticsin that case.
Are you going to have some falloutwith her gut
(16:17):
biome and fertility and other things?
Yeah you are, but listen,we can deal with that.
You can support her in other ways.
My only point here
is that routine, just prophylactic
giving of antibiotics, number one, never.
(16:38):
Never indicated. Never good idea.
Number two, even if there is an overgrowthin the vaginal tract,
if she's clinically normaland not ill from it,
I would always treat thatwith diet and fermented food
and not antibioticsbased on the current science.
As I read it.
(17:00):
If you
liked thispodcast, you'll love our breeder course
from Newborn to New Home, availableat madcapuniversity.com.
Breeders, do you want to get
your puppyowners started out on the right foot?
Check out our bulkdiscounts of our puppy Course
available at madcapuniversity.com.
(17:25):
Well, that's it for this time.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.
And this is a Puppy Culturepotluck podcast.
You bring the topics,
we bring the conversation.
(00:20):
This episode is a discussionabout the routine
use of antibiotics in breeding bitches.
And the question came in
on our Facebookdiscussion group for our breeder course.
That's the Newborn to New Home course.
Here's the question.
We had a girl who was pregnantwith at least one puppy at 28 day
(00:45):
ultrasound, and zeropuppies on xray at 50 days.
I'm curiouswhat other people would check with a girl
who absorbed before breeding her again.
She's a maiden.
We did side by side on days three
and four postLH surge, but did not confirm ovulation
(01:08):
because of travel, job,weather in the mountains.
Semen was goodat last check, boy was keen.
AI was done by a friend
who is a third generation breeder.
Okay me again.
First of all, it'sjust a bummer when you lose a litter
(01:31):
and I'm sorry about that.
Then I just want to say I'm
going to address the exact questionthat the querent submitted,
which is,What should she check with her Dam.
Because there are obvious
questions here about the timing,the semen quality.
(01:54):
There are other reasonswhy this could have been a miss
and wound up with one puppy.
But let's just talkabout the question on the table,
which is what would you check on a bitch
that showed a pregnancy at day
28 and then at day 50there were no puppies.
(02:16):
I am going to go down a list of things,
but I also want to say
I would not be overly alarmedin this particular situation
because you saw one puppyand then no puppies.
Okay, so it's very likely
(02:37):
that there was something
genetically wrong with that puppy and itit was resorbed.
I mean, that that the puppy wasjust not meant to be.
It didn't develop correctly.
This happens.
Okay, so
one puppy to zero puppiesnot as concerning
as if you had eight puppiesand then zero puppies.
(03:00):
That's a different profile.
So that having been
said, hereare the things that I would start with.
First of all, didshe have a brucellosis test?
It's rare, but it's possible.
And brucellosis is somethingthat can cause resorption and infertility.
(03:21):
So I would check thatif you haven't had that done already.
If you do get your bitch and whelp again,
you might want to check herprogesterone levels
throughout the pregnancybecause progesterone has to stay
at about two in orderfor her to maintain her pregnancy.
(03:42):
And some bitchesdon't maintain that level.
And if that is the case,you can supplement
with progesterone to maintain pregnancy.
Now, depending on the dam's age
and family history,this is a case where I might consider
doing a surgical inseminationthe next time,
(04:03):
just so the vet can visually inspectthe uterus.
There could be cysts or a brewing pyometra
that you don't know about,that would only be visible
if you go in thereand do a surgical insemination.
I don't have enough information
in this case to say,if I were the breeder of this bitch,
(04:27):
if I would do this,but it's on the table for me.
Okay.
If I really have checked off all the boxesas far as timing, semen quality,
and I've had the semen evaluated by athorough genealogist with good equipment,
timing, I've really done my timingstraight through.
I'm sure that everything went well there
(04:50):
and then I have a complete miss.
I might want to have a look
and see what's going on in there.
I'm not saying that I'm recommending
that to this particular personin this case, but
it's on my list. Okay.
If I have a especially if I havea complete mis or a really small litter
(05:12):
and there's no other explanation for itin this case, I can't really say
that she's checked off all the boxes,
so I might not jump to goingto a surgical, but it's on the table.
Okay.
If I have an unexplained very small litteror no puppies,
surgical is on the table just to visualizewhat's going on with the uterus.
(05:32):
So thoseare just my first few quick thoughts.
When I have a bitch that missesor has only like one puppy
and everything else is good.
Now, if you went to a good repro vet, theyprobably would have other suggestions.
I didn't mention thyroidand blood workups, which
(05:56):
is always a good idea and I would hopethat you would be doing routinely anyway.
But if you haven't donethat, that's important.
And as I say, a thorough genealogist,it's a constantly evolving field,
so they may havesomething else to suggest,
but these are my triedand true punch list of things
when I have unexplained infertility
(06:19):
or low fertility in a bitch.
But now we come to the reason why I felt
I needed to do a podcast about this.
Because somebody wrote in and suggestedgiving a prophylactic course
of antibiotics to flush out thebitch's reproductive tract.
(06:42):
I mean, this is something
that was really hot, like 20 years ago.
You if you went to a repro vet,they were going to give you antibiotics to
cleanse out.
So you would basically have a clean mediumfor reproduction.
I'm going to talk a little bitabout the most recent studies on this.
(07:02):
But the overview is this.
There really is no correlation
between bacteria in the vaginal tract
and conception.
Bacteria naturally lives there.
Okay.
I mean, all the thingsthat they would culture and say,
(07:23):
you see they have E.coli,they have this, they have that.
No, that's there all naturally.
Anyway,
there's no study
that shows any higher conception ratewith the use of antibiotics.
So there's no it's just not indicated.
There's no support for this practice.
And not only can it not help conception,
(07:48):
it can really
have an adverse effect on the dam
and her puppies.
First of all, the gut biome.
If there is one thing that is correlatedwith fertility
and also health in offspring,
it is a robust and diversegut biome in the dam
(08:12):
and giving a course of antibioticsright before breeding just decimates that.
It just decimates her gut biome.
And although she may be able to recoverfrom that with time,
you're decimating it right at the timethat those puppies are being conceived
and she's seeding the puppies gut biome.
(08:36):
So now you have puppies being seeded
with a decimated gut biome,so they're going to have less diversity.
Their gut biome is going to be less robustwhen they're born.
Yes. I mean, through good weaningpractices, we're going
to increasethat gut biome in diversity and health.
But why would you do this?
This is not it's not helpingyou get your bitch pregnant.
(08:59):
And it potentially is really harmingyour puppies.
You know, in humans, things like H
pylori overgrowth,which they used to treat with antibiotics,
they now say it's
associated with lack of diversityin the gut biome
and actually may beexacerbated by antibiotics.
(09:23):
So this is this sort of new
realization in the medical community that
when you hit something with antibiotic,
it's an equal opportunity destroyer.
So it just it hits everything, right?
So let's say you do a swab on your bitchand you're like, oh, you know,
(09:43):
she's got an imbalance of, picksomething, E.coli.
So you hit it with antibiotics.
But the problem is that when you level
the playing field in this wayand you take away all the good flora,
it can create an openingfor opportunistic infection
(10:05):
because you don't have those competing
organismsto crowd out the really bad pathogens.
And sometimeseven something that on a smear
might look bad like streptococcus,
can be protective
against a worse pathogen.
(10:27):
So I'm looking at this paper from 2012,
vaginal bacterial Floraand cytology in pro
estrus bitches role in fertility.
And very interestingly,
they said vaginal presence
of streptococcus in pro estrus was instead
(10:49):
negatively associated with the developmentof uterine infections.
Therefore, streptococcuscould have a protective competitive role
against more dangerous pathogensaffecting fertility
in the bitch.
So again, take out the strep.
(11:10):
Sure, but you're just opening the door
for somethingthat potentially could be worse.
This, again was studied in 2025.
The canine vaginal microbiome
during heat and fertilityin healthy breeding dogs.
Now they said a lot of things in this.
(11:30):
I'm going to put up the study on the showpage.
It's worth a readif you're interested in this topic.
First of all,they said this has been often postulated,
but scarcely investigated and not proventhat antibiotics might be helpful,
or that bacteria present in the vaginaltract is in any way harmful.
(11:51):
However, they did say,
It is undeniable
that gynecological diseasemight be associated
with bacteriological cultureof specific bacteria, such as E.coli.
The present data emphasize once morethe opportunistic character
of these organisms, as the genus
(12:13):
E.coli was detectedin all samples in the study,
none of the genera could be identifiedas a marker
for suspected sub fertilityor infertility.
Moreover, underlying
causes for the opportunisticallypathogenic action
of the vaginal microbiotashould be investigated further.
(12:36):
These might be the overgrowthin the absence
of competing commensal bacteria.
It's another way of saying that
if you take everything out,
yes, you may get somethingthat you perceive as being
a bad bacteria,like E.coli out of the vaginal tract,
(12:59):
but it opens it up to other opportunisticinfection, which could in fact
be detrimental to your bitch's fertility.
I think the
concept here that you have to wrapyour arms around is that it's
a very analog situation in the animals
(13:19):
microbiota, meaning to say physically
there are X number of spacesfor things to live.
I mean, that X happens to be billionsand billions and billions, but
literally there's finite spacefor things to live
in your animal's microbiota.
And if you take something outor a lot out, it just leaves a hole.
(13:44):
Like the way that an animal maintainshealth
is literally by crowding out pathogens,like there's just no place
for the pathogens to go,so they just pass through the animal.
It's when you have cracks in that,when you have space,
and then the pathogens can comein, that's when you get into trouble.
(14:05):
And that's the situation that you're in
when you strip thingsout with routine antibiotics.
The vaginal tract, I mean, it's downthere.
It's meant to have all this kindof, bacteria.
It's a microbiota that's a naturalmicrobiota for a vaginal tract.
(14:26):
Trying to stripthat out is just dangerous.
Quite frankly,
I'm sort of aghast, in fact,
that it's even still a meme out therethat just giving a routine
dose of antibioticsis in any way beneficial or advisable.
In these cases.
(14:49):
Now, there are some vets that
will say, well, yes,but you know, you're way out of balance
with something like there's
an overgrowth of one kind of bacteriathat they perceive as being bad.
And I'm just going to say right now,if that were the case with my bitch,
I would address it with diet.
(15:10):
I would address trying to fix up hergut biome
and her vaginal microbiota with diet,with adding some fermented foods.
She's probably in dysbiosisif this is the case.
And again,I would not go the route of antibiotics.
I just wouldn't do it.
A, it hasn't been proven to help
and B it has the potentialfor doing a lot of harm,
(15:33):
especially when you consider thatwhat has been shown to be connected
to fertility and health in puppies
is a diverse microbiota
in the bitchand antibiotics are going to kill that.
Now, before I
close out this topic,I'm going to hasten to add
(15:54):
that if antibiotics are medicallyindicated, if if your bitch is sick
or has some profound infection andshe needs antibiotics, do not hesitate.
Give her the antibiotics.
It would be irresponsible
not to give her the antibioticsin that case.
Are you going to have some falloutwith her gut
(16:17):
biome and fertility and other things?
Yeah you are, but listen,we can deal with that.
You can support her in other ways.
My only point here
is that routine, just prophylactic
giving of antibiotics, number one, never.
(16:38):
Never indicated. Never good idea.
Number two, even if there is an overgrowthin the vaginal tract,
if she's clinically normaland not ill from it,
I would always treat thatwith diet and fermented food
and not antibioticsbased on the current science.
As I read it.
(17:00):
If you
liked thispodcast, you'll love our breeder course
from Newborn to New Home, availableat madcapuniversity.com.
Breeders, do you want to get
your puppyowners started out on the right foot?
Check out our bulkdiscounts of our puppy Course
available at madcapuniversity.com.
(17:25):
Well, that's it for this time.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
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