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Pseudopregnancy

Today I learned that pseudopregnancy1 occurs in humans too.

Our dog Iris2 started acting weird right after the holiday. The first indication that something was off was that she stopped eating as regularly and was occasionally whimpering. Because we had traveled around, our best guess was that she had eaten something like a Christmas ornament. We took her to the vet to have x-rays and they came back clean but we also mentioned that she'd been chewing up rugs and our vet explained that those would not show up very well. We started changing her kibble to rice and chicken and inspecting her 💩 poo.

I then noticed that she was only whimpering when around a new toy she had gotten as a gift from my dad. I would move the toy and she'd go back and find it. Then I noticed she was doing it to a second toy she had gotten as a gift. She'd line them up in her bed gently. And then I noticed that she had this odd habit when I'd put food in her bowl where she'd push it with her nose like she was prompting her new puppies to eat. A couple of internet searches later, I had an answer.

We read up on it, consulted our vet, and hid her babies away. We kept her busy, took a vacation, and by the time we returned all of the symptoms had disappeared. This happened about a month after her first heat and lasted about a week. It's relatively common... 87% of bitches show signs of false pregnancy two or more times in their life while intact3. It's believed to be part an important part of a pack raising pups.

It's also called Pseudocyesis in humans and one of the most famous cases was that of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, which was possibly related to her desperate attempts to prove her fertility even though ole' Henry was likely shooting duds. Henry's first daughter Mary Tudor also had them and believed it was because she didn't punish heretics even though she burned hundreds at the stake in her attempt to reverse the English Reformation4.

So now when we tell the story about it, it's that our dog Iris was 'taking one for the team' since the other dogs she'd visited were disabled... one was obese, one had a stroke recently, one has seizures, and one is blind. We think her hormones just went into overdrive thinking 'I gotta help these poor creatures'.

References​

Footnotes​

  1. Pseudopregnancy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudopregnancy ↩

  2. Iris - Notes/Dogs/Iris ↩

  3. Signs of False Pregnancy in Dogs - American Kennel Club ( 2023 ) - https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/dog-breeding/signs-false-pregnancy-dogs/ ↩

  4. False pregnancy- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_pregnancy#Society_and_culture ↩