Duchess is definitely "looking" pregnant now as her belly has just bloomed into what looks like she could be in her 8th or 9th week of pregnancy instead of only her 7th. She's huge and that makes these last couple weeks so hard because she's just really miserable and uncomfortable. She's eating two regular sized meals per day and eats them without haste and with extreme enthusiasm. 

We are keeping a close eye on her during these hot summer days and trying to keep her calm and cool as much as possible as pregnancy is very trying on the circulatory system. This is why it's especially important not to allow the heat of the summer to add to the stress.  So far she's doing well and we only let her go outside for short periods to do her business.
 

Now that Duchess is 5 weeks pregnant, her belly is showing and she's starting to do her "pregnancy waddle".  When she walks it's no longer the beautiful and seemingly effortless and smooth gait, it's now a side-to-side motion in her back end due to her rear legs being spaced farther apart.

Today, we have started feeding her two meals per day, morning and evening.  Only four more weeks to go...
 

Duchess had a couple days of spotting last week and some hormonal changes (indicated by Splash). We believe the spotting during this time -- around day 31 of her cycle (21 days after ovulation which happens around day 10) -- was due to implantation of the embryos onto the uterine wall, thus confirming a pregnancy.

This two-day spotting occurance has been observed in Duchess' last three pregnancies at around the same time during gestation. These new observations have allowed us to predict a pregnancy about a week earlier than waiting for the 38 day mark (28 days after ovulation) when the fetuses can be felt in the uterus upon palpation.

Therefore, we believe we can say with little doubt that our Duchess/Splash matings have resulted in a pregnancy.
 

Breeding was successful this week with several matings spread across the critical days during Duchess' cycle. We didn't get a breeding today because Duchess was just plain sick of Splash by now, however I'm not worried because Splash made sure we had adequate coverage of the crucial time-frame (haha). Now all we can do is wait and see... stay tuned!
 

Duchess and Splash had a natural breeding today. Being day 9 in Duchess' cycle, today is the "textbook" perfect date for her to be bred and Splash agreed. It's amazing how studs just KNOW these things... Unfortunately though, we did not get a breeding on day 8. Splash didn't think it was time yet. :0)~
 

Duchess is currently in heat since last Saturday May 24th and we are planning on breeding her to Splash starting this weekend. We want to specifically target days 8, 10, 12 and 14 of her cycle. The theory is that if you breed on day 8, the litter may contain more female pups, also if you breed on day 14, the litter count may be higher. We tried this theory on the previous Litter D and did have a higher female count, but we were unable to breed on day 14, so litter size was smaller.