Someone posed a question to a list I'm on.  Here is the scenario:

You have a nice young bitch who she still needs to mature--coat, body, fill of muzzle, bone, spring of chest--the typical sable and white two year Sheltie. This girl has excellent movement with good reach and drive, good shoulder lay back, and neck.  She loves to show but she just is not at that point yet where she is mature enough to really start winning. You have been told by her breeder and those that are very familiar with the lines that having a litter would really help to mature her, bring on that luscious coat, etc.

And here is the question: How many of you believe that by doing a breeding and having a litter will add to this bitch's maturity?

This is my answer:

This is one I believe ... and I don't believe. Here's my view of the litter-to-mature-the bitch...

1. Say I decide I'm going to breed the bitch on the next season. I evaluate her in terms of evaluating her virtues and faults keeping in mind the boys I know, etc. In other words, I leave off looking at her with an eye toward the show ring and look to see what I like about this bitch for breeding. I'm trying to determine something about her upcoming performance in the brood box.

2. I pick the boy, the breeding is done.  I am looking at the bitch to see if she might be pregnant.  How is she carrying the litter?  How is her topline holding up?  How about her elbows?  How is her health?  She gets fed extra nutritious food during this time, food with extra calories.  Her coat is luscious.  Is it the pregnancy or the extra food and extra attention?  Regardless, I'm not really looking at her as a show girl.  My mind is on her mommy-ness.

3. Nine weeks pass and viola! puppies--yay!! (hopefully) I'm busy helping care for the puppies, picking up poop, weaning them, picking up poop, socializing them, picking up poop.  I'm too busy to really look at the mom and see what she's doing other than making sure she is healthy and taking good care of her puppies.  Besides that, her coat got a bit of trimming to make sure the nipples were easy to access and her skirt was trimmed too because ... well, giving birth is messy!

5. When the puppies are about 10 weeks old,the bitch starts to get naked. And more naked. And more naked.  There's no way she's going in the show ring!  All I can do is see if I like her body lines and have fun playing with her and the puppies and the rest of the Sheltie gang.

6. Finally, about six months after the puppies are born, the bitch is getting in coat and I am
excited about seeing what happens in the show ring with her and having fun with her
keeper pup(s) in the show ring too.

So. How much time passed? I'd say about 10 months. During that 10 months, I have stopped focusing on the bitch as the show girl.  I've been busy doing other things with her and her puppies.  And during that 10 months, she has indeed matured. From what I've seen, that time between 1-1/2 to 3 years old, lots of changes happen. The boys can't have litters so you just have to sit tight, but during that time that you might be having a first litter, the dog or bitch is maturing because that is the way of things.  Maturing takes time.  My little theory is that the litter just takes our minds off of what we want to see fill out/drop/whatever so it only seems a litter matures them when in all actuality it is probably 90% or more just that extra 10 months of time.