Hi,
My bitch is 5 weeks pregnant.
She has always been very fit and fast, my concern is she doesn't seem to want to slow down. When we go out for walks she still races about all over, chasing after the other two.
When she had her first litter, we didn't have the others, so she didn't have anyone to compete with, and seemed to take it easy. but this time is so different.
Should I just let her get on with it (as mum knows best) or should I try to slow her down a bit, by maybe putting her on her lead so far into the walk. Or will she automatically slow down as she gets bigger.
I don't want her to do any damage.

Michelle.

She will (probably) slow down as she gets bigger but the biggest risk is that the others could knock her

Yes Kerioak your right about that, I have to watch Toesy like a hawk.
He's always been really rough while out. He thinks he's a sheepdog, :D when Ruby is at a distance he drops, then slowly stalks her, then as he gets closer he runs dead fast and either barges into her or dives on her.
Under normal circumstances she can take it, and plays back with him, but obviously I've had to put a stop to all that.
Mumford, I've only recently started taking them all out regularly together, which has made things much easier :) But I did plan to take Ruby separately as she got bigger and wanted less exercise. Maybe I'll just have to do it sooner than later.
Thanks both of you for your responses.

Michelle.

have you tried walking her on her own?

emma :)

Over the years several of my girls will not slow down and I have to walk them separately. It takes them a few days to get used to a change of routine.

I learnt my lesson one day when I arrived back from a walk in the woods with about five retrievers in the car with the back window half down and as we pulled up in the drive there was a rabbit on the lawn and my bitch jumped out of the window and chased the rabbit. She was due 2 days later. Luckily she was fine and gave birth to 9 pups two days later. How she squeezed through the window I'll never know.

Daisy slowed down on her own.  She slowed down SO much, we had to force her to walk on a leash or she wouldn't move an inch during the last 2 weeks of her pregnancy.  Of course, she was huge and terribly uncomfortable with her enormous litter size.  The last week before she whelped we didn't even make her go for walks anymore...she was too big to handle more walking than it took to go out to do business.

In the wild, pregnant animals have to still hunt and suffer few ill effects or they would have died out.  Pups are well protected in fluid filled sacs.  Mine still race about like loonies - I just try to discourage the worst of it, and make sure they have somewhere of their own they can go when they need peace.  And they are barred from leaping on and off the sofa!

One of my bitches took herself off rabbiting one morning. She came back about 11.30am & had her litter that evening. She was a super-fit bitch & had the litter with no trouble at all. She was ready to go back rabbiting 2 days later ( I didn't let her!)