On heat again!!!!

[Sirchow]

Bramble is on heat (in season, depending on your continent ) again. I am a little worried as she had her first heat on 23rd May, second one 27th June and now yesterday she is back in full flow again. The second one was a lot lighter but still it is not normal. Has anyone had this sort of experience before. My daughters housemate is a vet and she says Bramble is perfectly healthy and that a split heat can happen but I had never heard of it before. I have found a few references to split heats with regard to breading and the difficulty of knowing when a bitch is ovulating and that is all.

I am so sick of mopping up behind her and I could not bring myself to go the pants on a chow rout. Too undignified.

[LEO's mum]

Tho a bit undignified, I used my DH's largest briefs for Leonora when she went on heat. She was 5.5m/s old and was attending puppy class.
We just put them on her the other way around so that her tail came out of the fly.
They were freebees from a hedge fund managers on which it said "Past Performance is Not Necessarily Indicative of Future Performance".

[summer_rose03]

There is a simple solution to this problem, have her spayed.It is a one time cost that has a lifetime of benefits. She is plenty old enough now. You won't have to clean up after her, worry about her getting pregnant and adding to an already pet overpopulated world, or be concerned with Ovarian Cancer or Breast Cancer. The earlier you have it done, the less chance of health problems when she is older.

[Grab]

Do keep an eye on her and if it continues you might consider having an ultrasound done. On another forum I go to, a dog who had very frequent heats similar to Bramble's ended up discovering her dog had ovarian cysts. She ended up having her spayed, as a monthly cycle is no fun for a dog

[GoHokiesGo]

Just out of curiosity, how often do chows go into heat?

[Coco Chow]

Poor Bramble!
Coco had weird cycles too, the first one was fine, but the second one was never ending, more than 2 months long and she had infections. The third heat came 1 or 2 months later and we had to spay her in a hurry, she had lots of kysts, we had to remove the ovaries and the uterus .

how often do chows go into heat?

Every 6 months, for around 3 or 4 weeks, usually...

[GoHokiesGo]

Thanks, I hadn't found too much info on the new about Chows in particular, and most dog sites said it varied between breeds.

Honey had puppies back at the end of April, so we want to be ready for when she next goes into heat. We're not breeding her (she was the breeding dam from the breeder we bought her from, but they retired her), but we haven't gotten her spayed since we are still deciding if we should show her. We will most likely spay her in the future to avoid any health problems, along with the chance of puppies, but we may try to see how she goes in a few shows first.

Does their behavior change when they're in heat? Or do they just need a bit of a diaper near their female parts?

Thanks!

[leisa75]

Just watch out for something called Pyo it can happen !

[Coco Chow]

Does their behavior change when they're in heat?

Yes the behavior change, Coco got in a really bad mood when in heat, she was growling sometimes, she's usually very playfull but she didn't play at all, etc... I don't know if it is the same for every chow girl, but Coco's personality when in heat was totally different, and in a bad way!

do they just need a bit of a diaper near their female parts?

Be careful, the area needs to breathe to avoid infections. I didn't used doggie diapers, I spent Coco's heat with tissue paper in one hand and a cleaning product in the other. Sweet memories ....

[Sirchow]

Bramble just becomes a little subdued and doesn't eat so well. Though she is less so this time than she was the other times. She is not really cranky just a bit sad looking.

[Coco Chow]

Oh yes I forgot, Coco didn't well either.
Poor little Brams , I hope it won't last too long.
Maybe a fresh carrott could cheer her up a little??

[lola chow]

oh siriol that sounds strange lola has still only had the one heat? you might need to get her looked at big hug for you and bramble x

[Luna's Mom]

I posted this on Chow Emergencies a few days ago. Because of my selfish stupidity, I almost lost my baby girl to a horrible death. I will NEVER fail to have my beloved Chows spayed again. I will attempt to add a photo (my first try) of what Luna looked like after her second surgery - and when she came home. She doesn't look very Chow-like, but she was barely 40 lbs. You can see her belly is still shaved and where the I.V. was in her leg. I guess those wrinkles on a Chow's face must be fat, 'cause now she is around 55 lbs., her face is fuller; her muff is fuller; her beautiful wrinkles are there and her nose looks shorter - Oh, how I love that girl.

The story:

I had barely survived the un-timely death of a young chow; I was NUTS with grief for about 3 months. So, when I got Luna, I made the decision to not have her spade in the hopes to have little Lunas around. In the beginning, Luna came into heat on Feb. 14th and exactly 6 months later for about 5 1/2 years. I noticed her flow demenished to nearly nothing, but had heard that chows are so clean, you hardly know it is happening. We offered her to a couple of gentleman callers in that time, but she would have nothing to do with them. The last time she was in heat, there was only about 2 days of the slightest spots, and she licked 24 hours a day.

One day, I was skinning a boiled chicken. Usually, I would have to stretch to reach the counter-top because Luna would be in between me and the possiblity of getting a chicken part. I always gave her some of the cooked cartilage and a bite of the prime, skinned meat. She laid on the floor 10 feet from me, barely noticing I was even in the room. I called her, "Treat, treat. Come." She didn't even wag her tail, and never got up. She had been getting very skinny. Big alarms went off in my head. I put her in the car and traveled the 84 miles to the best vet. She wanted to sedate her and take labs and x rays, and said I might as well go shopping for a while. About an hour later I got a call that Luna's white count was off the chart and that she had a large mass in her uterus. The vet said she needed immediate surgery. I was so stunned; it all felt like I was dreaming. I said, "Of course, do it". I went back to the clinic and waited on a bench outside for almost 3 hours - a good friend came and stayed with me....... it was horrible.

It turned out that Luna had pyometria - a puss-filled, infected uterus. Her cervix was basically sealed and she had built up more than 4-1/2 lbs of puss in her uterus. The vet said it would have ruptured at any second, meaning certain, sudden death. Luna went through the surgery just fine and I brought her home the next day. I tied a short string from my wrist to hers and stayed in bed with her as much as I could, to watch for her licking her wound or any other problem. Within 3 days the wound started doing something called "shelfing". The edges were curling outward and were very red and swollen. I called the vet and wanted to bring Luna in. The vet blamed me for letting her lick when I had done everything possible (cone-collar, sleeping with her) I knew she wasn't licking. But the vet said, no need to bring her in (84 miles). After thinking about it, I went anyway. The vet said the same thing. "If you can keep her from licking, we only have a few days until we are in the clear." I brought Luna home and got her a bigger, stiffer cone-collar.

I took her to work with me to watch her every move. I took photos of her incision and it was really ugly. On a Saturday, I had her with me at work and her belly burst ( total dehiscence). She was walking around dragging her intestines with her, unaware of anything being the matter. When I went into extreme panic, screaming, crying, shock mode - she began to start acting crazy, too. Thank God, two of our best friends came and saw an unbelievable emergency unfolding there. The woman took control of me and Luna, and the man left to search for my husband.

When I called the vet that did the surgery, I was told she was out of town for the weekend.............. I called a fairly famous vet in our area, but 125 miles away. I was out of my mind with the vision of my Luna dying/bleeding to death in transit. This vet first told me to be calm; "she is reacting to your excitement, and she is probably in relatively little pain". He said, "Do you have any duct tape?" I said, yes. He told me to push everything back in as much as I could and duct tape (generously) Luna's middle. I couldn't believe it, but I did what the doctor said to do. We put an oversized pillow in the front seat, lifted Luna up and hauled butt. She was in surgery again immediately, for the second time in 5 days. The doc said she would be kept under sedation all day Sunday, and we could come pick her up on Monday afternoon. She looked great, and knew that this vet had saved her life. She would sit and look at him like he was God and lick any part of him she could.

This vet told us that Luna was highly allergic to the inner sutures from the first surgery. That caused the shelving and the eventual dehisence. The outer stitches just held on as long as they could. In Luna's second surgery, she was bound with stainless steel wire, all the way down her belly. When you pet her belly, it feels like the spine of a spiral notebook. It doesn't seem to bother her; she runs, she plays, she fetches.

So, my hint for when a dog is in a serious wound situation, and body parts are coming out - Duct Tape ! And Spay, Spay, Spay !
Well, I had no luck with the photos. There is quite the learning curve on adding pics on this site....... much more complicated than other sites if frequent. I will keep trying.
Luna's Mom

[Luna's Mom]

OK - try number 3 on photos

The first 3 pics should be of a skinny Luna Azul, (less than 40 lb.) 1 week post -op from the emergency surgery(s) I wrote about on Chow Emergencies and On Heat Again.

[img][IMG]http://img4.glowfoto.com/images/2009/09/09-2121579917M.jpg[/img][/img][img][IMG]http://img4.glowfoto.com/images/2009/09/09-2121597348M.jpg[/img][/img][img][IMG]http://img4.glowfoto.com/images/2009/09/09-2122004780M.jpg[/img][/img]

The lone photo is Luna now - 3 1/2 years and 15 lbs. later and as big as a calf. She's being coy and aloof. She "allowed" me one picture after chasing her around for an hour.
[img][IMG]http://img4.glowfoto.com/images/2009/09/09-2122021469M.jpg[/img][/img]

[Luna's Mom]

I give up !

Luna's Mom

[Luna's Mom]

The photos came out in reverse order. The last 3 pics should be of a skinny Luna Azul, (less than 40 lb.) 1 week post -op from the emergency surgery(s) I wrote about on Chow Emergencies and On Heat Again.



The lone photo at the top is Luna yesterday - 3 1/2 years and 15 lbs. later and as big as a calf. She's being coy and aloof. She "allowed" me one picture after chasing her around for an hour. Then, she stopped, posed and smirked at me.


Whew ! - Will I ever get the hang of this image insertion stuff? I have other pics of my Chows who have gone over the Rainbo Bridge - I would really like to share.

Luna's Mom