We put together this post that might be helpful: https://puppyintraining.com/how-can-you-tell-if-your-dog-is-pregnant-without-going-to-the-vet-dog-pregnancy-signs/. We take our expecting dogs to the vet for an x-ray at around 56 days.

Take a look at our article on dog pregnancy signs. We’re hoping Raven is pregnant now too. Her behavior changed about 2 weeks after insemination and her activity level is definitely lower than normal. Just like you I think her nipples are larger, but it could be my imagination. Hopefully your Golden is pregnant. Good luck!

All of our puppies are donated to non-profit service dog schools. In my experience most of the puppies are bred at the school or donated to the schools at no charge. I don’t know of any schools that regularly purchase puppies to train as service dogs.

Thank you for your response. Yes, I have read the articles about grain free dog food and dilated cardiomyopathy and I just read some of the newer articles this evening. Here are a few things I found:

#1. Wellness was not on the list of top brands with cases of dogs with DCM
#2. From what I’ve read it seems the link is between the lower levels of Taurine in grain free foods that may be causing the issue: “…grain-free pet foods can skimp on expensive animal proteins and use larger amounts of cheap plant proteins in their place. And because plant proteins are devoid of taurine, dog foods might be deficient in taurine”.
#3. One of the reasons I chose Wellness Core is because it’s high level of animal proteins.
#4. Wellness Core was recommended to me by our veterinarian for Stetson’s allergies and it helped and I was able to take him off other medications.
#5. The past few years I vary my dogs diets by feeding different foods throughout the year. I’ve been feeding a combination of Wellness Core, The Farmers Dog Fresh Food, Honest Kitchen, Fromms, and Natures Variety. This year I also plan to add Ollie Fresh Dog Food and NomNomNow.

I really appreciate your concern and I did do research before choosing Wellness Core and after hearing about the issues with Grain Free and DCM. I’ll do another deep dive into the subject and see if there are some better options available for feeding my dogs.