Yes, in general it is safe. If you are prepared, have a suitable room that is warm in temperature, a clean, spacious whelping box set aside for her, and necessary supplies to assist with the whelping process, home is often the best place for the dog to give birth.

Normally, because we anticipated this labor and prepared for the breeding, we can provide you a due date. However, if the ovulation timing didn't happen, we can monitor progesterone levels towards the end of her pregnancy to define when the dog should be in labor. Also, in stage one labor, signs from the mother like listlessness, restlessness, excessive panting, and a temperature drop 24 hours before labor starts can be observed.

Follow-up lab work depends on what we find with the labs that we've done already. Sometimes, in perfectly healthy patients, as long as they're doing well, we'll recheck their lab work annually to make sure that everything still looks good at each annual wellness exam. There are some patients, however, where we might find new or ongoing illnesses that we might want to recheck every couple of months or every several weeks, if need be.

It depends on what we see with that individual patient. There are some patients where we might see some more concerning signs that might indicate that maybe we go a little bit more above and beyond than we would in a routine lab test or exam.

I highly recommend that all senior patients get at least routine lab work done. The reason is that our older patients aren't predisposed to lots of diseases like chronic kidney disease, diabetes, or any types of cancer, too. By having routine lab work done on our senior patients, it allows us for early detection and early intervention of diseases that can develop.