X-ray puppy count

Wondering how many puppies you see in this X-ray of our Boston Terrier? I can make out two skulls, but it looks there might be more spines..?  

Hello!  All vets love a good game of 'guess the number of the puppies in the dog' but with one common caveat; it is ONLY a game and I never tell the owners my guess.  This is because, over the years, I have noticed that the accuracy of my guesses is nowhere near good enough to offer to a client as fact.  If I get it right, the owner will think Im a genius but getting it wrong has been shown to be more likely. Indeed, science should be based on fact and not educated guesses. When it comes to something like the number of puppies, the significance of a descrepency of one to the client can also be extremely significant.  If you would like to play yourself however, look for skulls with spinal cords attached - and count only those. But remember that you can't see through all skulls.  

Sorry - that last sentence again - remember than not all skulls are so opaque on x-ray pictures at this age.  Best of luck and we hope that the delivery goes as well as can be expected.   Ps - please will you let us know? If your vet is happy to guess, it is worth asking about their previous record.  I find it safer to say 'a minimum of' based on the skulls.

Hi Liz! Thanks so much for your reply :) Our vet said he saw a minimum of two puppies, based on the skull count, and for similar reasons he doesn't like to guess beyond that. 2 skulls equals 2 puppies, lol. But we're pretty new to this and we're just nervous about not knowing when to expect her to be done birthing pups. Mainly because if she has for example 3 puppies in there and several hours go by after she's had the 2nd pup then there could be an issue with the delivery of the 3rd, but if we're only expecting 2 we might not realize that there's an issue? I'm not sure if that makes sense how I wrote it. I guess my real question is, off the record of course, do you see anything that *might* lead you to believe there's more than two pups? When I look at it I see what might be some 'extra' spines, but I have literally no education in your field so for all I know I could be seeing something completely unrelated. Thanks!

I can appreciate how badly you want to know this, but perhaps I didn't state firmly enough that I will not be drawn into speculating about the number of puppies.  The very purpose of this is the one you describe;  if owners have an idea in their heads, they might shut off to the idea that more puppies than they think are definitely possible.