I am now feeling like a total spanner.  We are supposed to be mating our girl, but her season wasn't due for another 5 weeks(!).  I thought I had loads of time... She also usually swells for ages before her season, giving lots of warning - but hadn't started to swell at all yet.

Then last night, I spotted a smear of what looked like dried blood on the (luckily cream) dog blanket.  I have spent since then dabbing her and nothing is coming off on the tissue, but I put down cream blankets on the dog bed area and again, there are a couple of what look like dried blood marks again, overnight.

She is not looking as swollen as she usually is... but she is a bit puffy.

Now I have no idea whether to contact the stud owner, book travel etc... Honestly - out of everything I thought I'd have a problem with, determining if she's in season didn't seem to be one!! I was told to tell the stud owner at Day 1, should I tell her now or wait for signs to become more obvious??  What if something weird is going on with this season??

On another note, she does have very short times between her seasons often - there were only 136 days (4.5 mnths) between her first two seasons, then things seemed to be normalising and there were 168 days (5.5mnths) - and that is what I calculated when the next one would be - I took the longer interval - but with this, we are back to 132 days (4.3mnths) (if she is in season!).  Anyone successfully bred from a girl with short cycles, because I've read that dogs with very short seasons can sometimes not sustain pregnancies...?

arg....

I don't have an answer, but I've just had a similar experience. One of my bitches always goes 7-8 months in between seasons. This time she came in after 6. She had a litter two years ago. I was checking all the bitches as others were due in too, so I am 100 % certain of day one. And I never managed to get her mated. She refused any male dog near her, every day, aggressively as well. (I was due to mate her to my own import, but in case she did not like him in particular I just checked her with all my male dogs, with the dog on a lead. Same reaction to three different dogs.) Season now finished, no mating. I ended up mating a different bitch to a different dog (swapped plans around) and that was no problem at all. All very weird.

Thanks Goldmali

I really was hoping/thinking I was imagining things, but I just did a tissue test and some brown blood came away on it.... So it looks like we are a go-go about 5 weeks earlier than it's supposed to be.  She's not even that puffy (yet).

Her seasons have been:

29/1/15
13/6/15 (136 days)
28/11/15 (168 days)
08/04/16 (132 days)

I was really hoping she was going to stick to 168 days, with the slightly longer cycle - but it looks like we have gone back to the shorter cycle length now.  Does anyone else have experience with a bitch that has very short cycles and has successfully sustained a pregnancy?

I now have a pile of organising to do, so had better go and get on with it...

I had this happen with a bitch years ago and it turned out to be a split season.

> Does anyone else have experience with a bitch that has very short cycles and has successfully sustained a pregnancy?<br />

Anything less than 4 months and it is believed bitches fail to ovulate, but 4 months is quite common in GSD's I am told and they tend to have decent size litters.

I have had shorter cycles like yours in my earlier bitches, but all had gone at least 6 months by the season I mated them on, and most then continued at 6 - 7 month intervals.

My most recent two generations have all tended to go 7 - 8 months and stated their seasons at 10 - 12 month rather than the 6 - 9 months I used to get.

I had out Lexi came in barely 6 months from previous season, (the one before that ahs only been 22 1/2 weeks earlier) when I mated her in Finland.

Thanks folks, I'm a bit more reassured about the 4 months thing :)  I've done some research online and it says that anything less than 4 months is a problem, but 4 months + is ok.

It's more weird to me that she hasn't swollen like she usually does for weeks beforehand, still isn't swollen much - and the bleeding is slow and brown.  But it's only day 2, so maybe things will pick up. 

I just wish the season we wanted to mate her on, wasn't a weird one!!!  I feel a bit reluctant to book the ferry and accommodation etc, when things are so slow and brown and non-puffy... I will go and do some research into split seasons now...

Maybe consider progesterone testing now to see if the levels increase. My.repro vet said that anything less than 5 months is unlikely to result In pregnancy however my girl was every 6 months and then she went longer and the time i managed to get her pregnant she was just under 5 months from the previous season. Each time I did progesterone test as well. The last time she showed she was ready earlier than previous attempts as well, day 10!!
Give it a shot, I would be in contact with stud owner anyway just in case you decide to head over to them.

It's the weekend now, so the earliest I can even speak to a vet is going to be Monday - when I was going to call and order in the herpes jab.

It takes 48hrs to get progesterone results here, so we hadn't planned to test, but we might rethink that if things haven't picked up by Monday.

Maybe it is all normal for this time in her season - I wouldn't mind the brown blood - that could just be because it's slow to start with - if only there were more puffiness. 

I've notified the stud dog owner and told them it may be a false alarm... I'll see if they have any thoughts on it, too.

Oh and the other thing, is that we had a training session with a friend and her entire male dog, on Monday this week, and previously this dog has been totally distracted by our girl 2 weeks before she came into season - unable to eat or focus - and on Monday he was fine.  So that only confirmed to me that we were a ways off, here. 

So what's going on?!  I will monitor things till Monday and then speak to the vet.  In the meantime, anyone with experience of dogs bleeding much less than usual or puffing up much less than usual, on a season they were successfully bred on, would be greatly appreciated!!

Update:  Things are looking much puffier.... Maybe I am just freaking out.  It's going to be like this every day, you're all going to be sick of me