Breeding isn't always a straightforward affair

We took Red down to McPherson’s on day 11 of her heat, the 14th of December, 2013 and she was quite excited about all the male dog attention in Josh’s house!  (Josh is also a trainer and on any given day will have not only his own dogs but several others which are in for training).  While all the other dogs (except one small neutered housedog) were in crates in the house, Red was broadcasting her readiness for breeding and she knew there were boys there.  

We left her for a week and Josh bred her 3 times while she was there.  We picked her up and brought her home on Dec. 20th.  On the 21st she started bleeding again as though she were at the start of a heat cycle.  Neither breeder whom I called, (Mark or Josh), had experienced this before and neither had my vet.  The general consensus was that she was having a ‘split heat’ but normally there is a greater lag time between the 2 heats (at least a couple of weeks).  A couple of trips to the vet to check the state of cell cornification and hormone levels indicated that she was again in heat and so I began another countdown with the 21st as day one which would make her receptive for breeding about Dec 30 (day 10).  

We took her back to Josh on the 26th (he preferred to keep her for as much of the heat cycle as possible so that he could observe her, since each bitch’s heat cycle can be different) and we picked her up again on Jan 4th.  She was bred 4 times while she was there and I calculated the earliest whelping date based on what I calculated to be her earliest possible conception day (day 10) so that puts her due date at approximately March 3, 2014.

It takes awhile to tell if your dog is pregnant.  Gestation is only about 63 days but there is very little physical change in the first 5 or so weeks.  In fact it takes a full 3 weeks before your vet can palpate her and tell if there are pups growing in there.  This isn't a very good photo (I'll try to take more soon if we get some sunshine again), but it's the most recent I have (taken Feb 16, 2014). We're about 2 weeks from puppies with this photo - I guesstimate.