This isn't advice, just a memory. When my Bailey was pregnant she was 3 years old. She had been an only dog and it was her job to get the paper in every morning. She took this job so seriously that she would listen for the car that delivered the paper to drive by and wake us up to let her out so she could do "her job". The night she had her puppies - 7 of them - had to be wearing on her and you could tell she was perplexed about where were these things coming from and what on earth was she going to do with them. That next morning the paper was delivered. We let her out and she went a quarter of the way and then turned around, looking back to the house where her puppies were. It went on like this for a while...what should I do...get the paper...go back to those puppies. We finally told her to come back in to the house. She didn't have to get the paper. That was the only day she missed "her job". She was a good mother to the puppies but as days went by, she started to leave them for short periods of time and then longer and longer. We always joked, she was a "working girl" and motherhood didn't come easy to her. The last of those 7 puppies died at the age of 17 years, 84 days just last week.