GREEN DISCHARGE IN A PREGNANT BITCH

Is this something to worry about?  Well no and yes. Let me explain

Puppies are each encased in little individual sacs of amniotic fluid. Each of them has a placenta that they wear around their mid-section like a tight, wide belt, over their umbilical cord site. The interior of that placenta is a murky shade of dark green. We rarely see the interior of the placenta; the part that is right next to the puppy because when the placentas come out they are encased in the tissues from the amniotic tissue and are kind of like an inside out latex glove that you have stripped off from your hand.

That little amniotic sac has two layers. The first layer breaks first and releases a green tinged fluid that is kind of liquid and also kind of mucus like. This green fluid is a bilirubin based green fluid from the placenta where puppy’s dead red blood cells were cleared out of his body as he matured. At this point, you would see a little green tinged fluid or a green tinged bubble of fluid at the vulva. Not a big deal. Your puppy is still encased in the second amniotic sac and safe and sound. The green colour is only from the interior portion of the placenta. As labour progresses, the puppies, who are ready now to be born will come out of that outer sacks and the green discharge will be there. Green is not meconium. In a canine delivery, the colour you would need to make note of is MUSTARD YELLOW, usually in the amniotic fluid itself and thick. This is meconium. When you see thick mustard yellow in the amniotic fluid the chance that this puppy will live past a few days is small and there was nothing you could have done to prevent it.

However, if you see discharge even up to 5-6 days prior to the delivery, the chances are very good that you have a dead puppy, or an impending premature delivery of the litter. Sometimes with the dead puppy, moms just dilates enough to pass the dead puppy and then goes on to hold on to the rest of her litter until closer to due date and other times, mom will proceed to deliver the entire litter because her body dictated that it was time for her to deliver the dead puppy and once she starts… she keeps on delivering the rest even if they are premature.

Text informed by Myra Savant