One of the many reasons I like the PreMate test. Color tells you - breed or wait. No worrying about numbers. Also, results in under an hour and a lot cheaper than the vet lab. Draw blood in the morning, and if it says "go", we can call the stud dog owner and have semen on the doorstep the next morning. Hard to do that with the vet lab.
While PreMate is wonderful, I have found that with repro becoming a 'profit center' for alot of vets they are now running in house progesterone testing. I am lucky to live near a vet who does it in house, so I only wait 90 min from the time I drive up until I get results.
Have had this happen numerous times. I always wait until about day 10 from the first day I see blood to start testing. If the first comes back low (under 2.0ng) I wait about 4 or 5 days to retest. The can hover at those low numbers for days. This is why I never go by the LH surge as I have had girls stall out in the 2's for days also. I would wait a few more days to see if she has risen at all.
You know what, Premate IS wonderful and both my partner and I have used it with great success.
It's just sad that some stud dog owners (NOT ALL before anyone decides to get their knickers in a bunch!) are so hung up on being controlling with what goes on and in demanding that "magical" lab test number. If we test correctly using Premate and know our girls- pregnancy. And it basically comes down to who really has a more vested interest in getting her pregnant......p.s. it ISN'T the stud dog owner!
If we thought for one minute that Premate wasn't above board, we doubted our ability to use it correctly, and suffered an alarming rate of misses....we would utilize another testing method. Period.
I would never wait until day 10 to start testing... Sometimes I test the first day I see blood! I go by the behavior and physical signs in the bitch, my other bitches, and my intact dogs to help me decide when to test. When in doubt, I run a test. At the latest, I'll run the first test at 7 days. Especially when multiple bitches are synchronizing, I've found that they can come into heat and ovulate very quickly.