So Dr. Hutchison is SO NICE. I had a great phone consultation with him and I am starting to get excited about this. He says there is no real difference in litter size between natural and frozen semen breedings (differences are more related to the age of the dam, older = smaller litters as a general rule). This week he had four frozen semen litters born with 13, 9, 11 and 10 puppies (not Vallhunds, but those are good litter sizes)! He has had great success with surgical inseminations (he’s done something like 30,000). So I think, when the time comes, Nina and I will take a little trip to Ohio!
Other interesting things I learned from our conversation:
pre-breeding antibiotics are not useful, but 10-14 days of something like Baytril or Zenequin after breeding can help with implantation rates due to bacteria in the uterine lining and therefore increase the conception rate and litter size
Pepcid late in pregnancy can reduce the stomach irritation caused by gastrin (which may be part of why Nina didn’t eat well at all in the last couple of weeks)
increasing food just before/just after breeding can actually increase embryonic deaths, so if you plan to bulk your girl up before a litter, do it well before she comes into season, not just before, and don’t change anything calorie/supplement-wise for the first half of the pregnancy (adding a canine prenatal supplement is a good idea, but other than that, leave well enough alone!)
they do their surgery right! Catheters and fluids for all anesthetized patents, BP/CO2/EKG/pulse oximetry and someone watching it
I can watch the procedure!
there is no difference (averaged out) in male/female puppies in frozen semen breedings, the sperm all freeze at the same rate so you should have the same number of male/female sperm as you’d have in a natural breeding
we should check that our lab’s progesterone values are the same as theirs, so I guess we’ll test Tish and send one sample to our lab, and one to them!
they have a greater than 80% success rate with frozen semen breedings
So Tish came into season late Sunday night. Nina isn’t technically due until closer to May, but she did follow shortly after Tish once (last January), but then didn’t follow her on Tish’s next heat. Either way, I have started to get my ducks in a row early just in case I need them to be. This may mean we have to skip CPE Nationals, which would be a bummer, since they are so close to us this year (in Altamont, NY), but you can’t have everything!
Tomorrow night I have a phone consultation with Dr.Robert Hutchison, who is a reproduction veterinarian in Ohio. Because this is planned to be a frozen semen breeding, it’s not as simple as “get the dogs together”. Further bulletins as events warrant!
Tish earned her first level 2 title (CL2-S) AND her first level 3 Q (in Fullhouse). She is not trial-ready for Level 2 courses yet (weaves and teeter aren’t there yet), but I need her to start seeing weaves and teeters outside of where we train, so I will keep running her in Level 2 for now.
Nina did OK, I pulled her once for a really egregious start line stay break. We have one day of AKC next weekend, we will see how we do.
Videos to follow (I am LOVING my new Sony Bloggie camera that Santa brought me! It meets all my requirements: not so expensive that if it went walkies it would be a disaster, easy for anyone to use, takes good video).
Fun weekend at Boom Towne for AKC agility with Nina (first agility trial since my surgery three weeks ago, and I ran Nina ONCE last Wednesday, otherwise I hadn’t done any agility in nearly 5 weeks). No Q’s but some personal Q’s (contacts were the best they have ever been in a trial)! It is coming together, I think we’re very close to getting our mojo really working.
Saturday Novice Standard (bar down at the outset so no Q, but a good run otherwise AND A STOPPED CONTACT ON THE DOGWALK):
Saturday Open Jumpers (stupid handling error where I didn’t get my front cross in time meant I got us two refusals):
Sunday Novice Standard (2 off courses and a refusal):
Sunday Open Jumpers (I wasn’t even going to try for a start line stay, she was WIRED, bars down and I over-handled the tunnel, but a good run otherwise I think):
This past weekend at Boom Towne CPE I went in with two goals (on my birthday weekend!): 1) a Standard Q for Nina (it had been over a year since the last one, admittedly I pulled her a few times for start line stay issues and the like, but still…a YEAR! She is most of the way through her C-ATCH requirements in the games, but still in level 4 Standard!) and 2) for me to run Tish properly, more like Nina and less like a babydog, so Tish could run FAST, stay in the ring and have fun (since she got rewarded for leaving the ring at the NADAC trial, she has wanted to leave at the end to see if there are cookies or playmates available). Well, in the first two runs of the weekend, my awesome dogs fulfilled BOTH my goals, so the rest of the weekend (and it was awesome) was gravy. Jeannine said she thought I was running Nina twice until she saw the Tish-tail! AND TISH FINISHED ALL OF LEVEL 1!!! She finished THREE titles (easy to do in level 1 CPE, but very motivating nonetheless!). She also came right back into the ring when I called her (she did leave, but came right back, that is a HUGE improvement even over the National Specialty). I am also mixing up how I start her – she sometimes starts faster if I carry her in and get a bit of opposition reflex happening by revving her up but not letting her go right away, but she also worked her start line stay very well. I was so proud of my girls. Jen K kindly did some Flip filming again.
Saturday:
Tish Standard (you can see me do my silly tiny-steps mince here and there, instead of running her like she’s Nina, as Jeannine keeps reminding me to do, but I opted to let her run around and explore a bit, and she did come back and work):
Tish Snooker (very nice run, a Q, and she has a send to a tunnel AND called off the off-course tunnel wonderfully!):
Nina Wildcard (this is a classic Nina-Amanda disaster, from knocking the first bar after creeping on her start, to the off course at the second obstacle, and you can hear her shrieking at me the whole time – when we run well, it’s smooth and usually pretty quiet, but when we go off the rails…this is what it looks and sounds like – nice pull to the weaves at the end though!):
So…I am having the best time catching up with old Vallhund friends and spending time with new ones!
Nina’s Jumpers With Weaves today was a thing of beauty, she knocked a bar early or it would have been a perfect Q – fast, accurate, quiet, perfect weave entry, just awesome. Tish had a great time zooming around, but held her stay, came back and worked, and generally was a happy, speedy baby dog!
Tish’s Standard was another happy zoomfest (my only goal with her was to get her running fast and having fun, and we got that at least!). Nina’s…was a disaster. I knew I was in trouble at the start when she wouldn’t sit and I stupidly didn’t pull her…it got worse from there, wild, crazy maniac Nina was in full-on rabies mode! I pulled her after she flew off the teeter, and I had a hard time getting her to hold still long enough for me to grab her, she was spinning and barking and generally being a maniac. The judge was very nice and laughed and said she was telling me “screw you, mom!”.
We arrived last night after 11 hours of driving (well, I drove, the dogs just slept the whole way and never ONCE offered to do their share of the driving!). Today was herding about 2 hours away from the host hotel. If I’d been smart, I’d have stayed closer to the herding site…oh well! Severe weather today, lots of rain, some thunderstorms, tornado watch…but the show went on!
Tish’s herding instinct test (her first official test, and only her second time seeing sheep at all!):
She passed, she kept the sheep very close to us (performing a lovely figure 8, and nearly making the sheep knock me over – as the judge said more than once, herding IS a contact sport!). She did a lovely job of switching off her herding power at the end when I asked her to (you can see her ears go into “friendly Tish” position and her tail wag). A good “that’ll do” is a very important thing to have!
Nina’s first official AKC instinct test:
She thought about snacking on some sheep tails near the end, but didn’t do any damage and backed off when I told her to.
Nina is hormonally challenged, so Tish came out to play alone. Two NQ’s today.
Jackpot (the stinker ran out of the ring – she ran out and got to play with her brother at NADAC, so she thinks there is fun to be had outside the ring…need to nip this in the bud right quick!). An NQ, but nice start line stay and she is really building some speed now. I didn’t handle very well, wasn’t clear so she ran off. STOPPED CONTACT ON THE DOGWALK (you can’t really see it on the video because of the pillars) – I learned that lesson the hard way with Nina!
Standard (video error missed her BEAUTIFUL start line stay!). Again I wasn’t clear with my handling (I need to remember to adjust for the babydog!), so we had some off courses and some wandering, but she came back to work with me every time, and DID NOT run out of the ring.
GREAT day at Ebb Tide CPE today – Tish earned her first-ever agility title, her Level 1 Strategy Games (CL1-S), and Riley earned his first Q! The weather was lovely, if a bit hot for a while. Pat Saito’s courses were challenging but very nice to run. Nina had a couple of Q’s, but Standard was not to be this weekend, she was just so squirrelly out there!
Tish LOVED her herding instinct test! She wasn’t taking any crap from the sheep (other than in the direct poop-eating sense, of course) and wasn’t afraid to back a sheep off who was getting a bit stroppy at her. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, but the knowledgeable people said “GOOD DOG!” a lot and Kathy told me she should have no problem herding. Now to find the time to go regularly…
