Last week I wrote about having a litter from your dog; there is quite a lot of planning that needs to go into this process, particularly if you are breeding a pedigree. Once all the preparations are in place you need to find a suitable mate – if this happens to be the dog down the road then you are in luck but if the future “husband” is hundreds of miles away, or even in another country, things can be more tricky; in these situations you want to be as accurate as possible about when the right time to mate is. You want your bitch to mate as close to ovulation as possible and although this usually happens about eleven to thirteen days after they come into season there is huge individual variation in timings.

This is why we offer ovulation tests for dogs; these are blood tests that we vets can take to test for rising progesterone levels (progesterone levels in the blood suddenly rise before ovulation). We can take a blood sample at the surgery and get the results by the next day giving a more accurate prediction of when is the best time to mate. No test is perfect and however accurate we are we cannot guarantee a successful mating but these tests can help, so do ask your vet about them.

Once a mating has occurred we can usually tell if a bitch is pregnant either by palpation of the abdomen or an ultrasound scan a few weeks later, pregnancy lasts nine weeks – and then the fun begins!