5y/o female lab (not spayed)

Question
My female Lab has started whinning a lot. She has recently started carrying a small stuffed puppy around with her. She grooms it and makes "nests" in our laundry. During this same time she has dug a huge hole under my shed and lays under there(outside temp 65 degrees). Does she want to have puppies and is she too old to breed?

Answer
Hello, This seems a bit odd for her to only start doing this now since dogs are fertile once they are 6-10 months old. It is rather late in life for her to be having puppies but if you get her hips x rayed and checked out and they seem ok.. one litter and then Spaying her once the puppies are weaned and sold at 8 weeks old might be ok but I Wouldn't persoanly breed a 5 year old lab good hips or not. A simpler sulution would be to buy a new puppy it doenst even ahve to be a lab puppy just somesome she cna take care of and nuture because having a litter risks her health and life and if you would maybe only keep one puppy where are the other 10 going to go?!? There are jsut so many being killed daily in shelters, left for dead on the side of a highway or left behind after a move really if your not a top quaility breeder who screens every home before placing a puppy I dont reccomend breeding. I'm going to offer you up a some links to see what I'm talking about:    this is in regards to hurricane katrina but gets teh point accross: http://www.forpitssake.org/hurricane.html

http://www.forpitssake.org/go_home.html

http://www.vospca.org/archive/spayneut.html     

one quick look at any rescue in your area will show you why I'm not a big advacter on casual breeding of dogs...one peak into an SPCA will show that there are ten, twenty or more dogs offen purebreds looking for homes that these poor dogs will all be condemed to death in a few short days if noone wants them. I can offer some good insight on owning muliple dogs if you decideto go that route and also if you dont get your old dog spayed please dont get a male puppy!