Oh Yeah, You Blend

…so during a sleepless night recently I was thinking about things and I suddenly realized (and I am not sure how I hadn’t realized this before) that if I breed Zhora on her next heat, she will not only miss the Invitational, but also in all likelihood the National Agility Championship next March. Missing one or the other would be one thing, but missing both…I have never gone to the NAC before, and next year it’s in Georgia, a one day drive away. I could handle missing the Invitational I suppose, although to be going with the #1 (Zhora) and the #3 (Nina) dog is pretty cool, but given that it is possible that this might be our last time going if it moves to the west coast next year, it would be tough to miss.

So after discussing it with probably more people than truly wanted to discuss it with me, I may be putting off breeding Zhora until after the NAC. I am in the process of setting up a phone consult with Dr Hutchison at Animal Clinic Northview to talk about options (he is a renowned repro vet and is the one who performed the surgical AI with frozen semen that resulted in Zhora herself!). Updates will be posted here. I am so sorry that I am in the position of having to make this decision, since I know many people have been waiting for a puppy for a long time. I welcome any questions or suggestions!

Further bulletins as events warrant!

Earlier this week I thought Zhora was looking smaller instead of bigger, and just “less pregnant”. Today I learned I was right. Ultrasound showed she had reabsorbed the litter. Her uterus and ovaries look healthy, no cysts or obvious problems to be seen, we could see one implantation site where a puppy had been, but there were no puppies left in there. Reabsorption happens in about 30% of litters and they don’t always know why, sometimes it is inflammation (which can sometimes be related to the semen extender they use to keep the semen alive when it is shipped), sometimes infection, but sometimes you just don’t know. We will try again with a natural breeding and hope. Zhora is the only intact dog left from Nina, so it would be devastating not to get something to move forward with. I am very upset but I also know that nature sometimes does what nature does. Dog breeding is not for the faint of heart, I had already put a significant amount of effort, time and money into this litter, I was ready to get the whelping box set up this weekend, but then I started to get a feeling earlier this week that something was wrong, and I was unfortunately right. At least she can go back to agility now!

Sometimes fate puts things in perspective for you, I was driving home from the ultrasound appointment this morning, crying and feeling very sorry for myself, when a line of cars attending a funeral drove past me. I still have my awesome Zhora, Nina and Tish, I still have my awesome husband and wonderful family and great friends. It can always be worse. But still, as Roseanne Roseannadanna said, it’s always something.

Week five is over (yesterday was day 35), and we are entering week six!

The puppies have ears now, and their toes have differentiated. Their internal organs are continuing to form. They are now officially fetuses.

Zhora is getting a little more food now (not as much as she says she should be getting mind you!), it is important to keep the mum in a good but still lean body condition as being overweight and unfit can lead to difficult whelping and other complications. She is still eating her performance dog food which conveniently has 20% fat and 30% protein, which is what is recommended by repro vets. Plus she likes it! While she isn’t doing agility, she continues to go for regular long walks (we shift our walkies to the evening hours if it is too hot to walk during the day, don’t want to cook the babies!). She is still quite slender looking but she has a rounder tummy, a pooch on a pooch! The puppies do most of their growing in the last three weeks so it might be another week before she really starts to go into Zhornormous Zhorasaurus mode! She is still very much herself, playing with the others and full of energy and attitude, but she sleeps more and is very cuddly.

Next weekend we will set up the whelping box and do a supply inventory to make sure we have everything. I will move into the guest room with her the weekend after that and then we wait!

We are watching the Puppy Culture movie so we will know what to do and when. We will still do Early Neurological Stimulation too! I am excited to see how they respond to Puppy Culture!

…and it looked promising! We aren’t ultrasound experts so we can’t be 100% sure, but we were pretty sure we saw at least a couple of little puppy globs (called “vesicles”) in there, and we even saw some movement and what might have been a heartbeat! If there are puppies, their ears formed this week, and next week their toes will start differentiating!

Look at that beautiful Zho smiling for the camera!

That black glob with the whitish glob inside it is hopefully a puppy embryo inside its vesicle!

To everyone who has contacted me recently about puppies, I apologize for taking so long to get back to you, things have been hectic. If you don’t hear from me by next week, please re-send your email!

The way I do things is understandably rough for prospective new homes, I really do understand that (it would drive me crazy if I were on the other side of it!). Please understand that my priority is placing the puppies in the best homes for them, that means that I don’t decide who is going where, or even who is getting a puppy for sure in some cases, until they are at least 7 weeks old (one of my puppy owners from the last litter found out just a few days beforehand!). Many breeders do things differently, this is just what works best for me. This is why I don’t do “first come first served”, I don’t want to place a puppy in what might not be the right home for that puppy. If you don’t get a puppy, it isn’t necessarily that I don’t think you’re a great home (I will tell people if I think this isn’t the right breed for them though!), it’s that I might not have a puppy in this litter that will work out well for you. Until their personalities start to really come out, and evaluations are done, I don’t often make decisions about which goes where.

Given the parents of this litter, two dogs with lots of working drive, I am prioritizing performance homes (agility, herding, obedience, tracking, demo dog, etc.) at least at this point (this may change, depending on what we get!). This is not because being “just a pet” is a bad life for any dog (my dogs are “just pets” for 99% of their lives!), but because if a puppy has real potential and drive to work, it is both a shame not to use that drive and potential, and not ideal for the puppy OR the home to place a puppy with a real desire to work in a home where it won’t get to use that drive. A dog who wants to work needs a job, and really often isn’t the right fit in a home that just wants a nice pet. Dogs who want to work will find a job if you don’t give them one, and if they choose their own, you might not like what it is! Even high drive Vallhunds usually have an off switch, but they need an outlet for that drive in order for the off switch to function.

I hope this helps you understand where I am coming from, and please do contact me if I haven’t replied to your email! If you are interested in a puppy, please tell me about yourself, your home, your family and what your plans are for a dog. I get a lot of email, and I unfortunately often end up not replying to emails which simply ask if I have any puppies available without any further detail. This is a labor of love, I put a LOT of work into each litter, which is why I breed so rarely. 🙂

Further bulletins as things (hopefully puppies!) develop!

Well, round 2 done, seemed like she might be on her way out of ideal breeding time today so fingers, toes and eye crossed! (Why do the weekends always seem to get in the way?)

Bert’s contribution was amazing (Kim let me look at the drop she tested today under the microscope and holy moly there were SO MANY and they were SO VIGOROUS), and I can’t say enough good things about the ICSB Puppy Pak, super easy to use, and their extender is clearly some kind of wizardry!

It’s up to Zhora now, she was such a good girl for this weird alien abduction procedure! I think the cheese helped, she ate four sticks of string cheese while it was going on today! I hope, hope, hope this worked, this cross should be amazing.

We will know in a few weeks if we were successful. Watch this space!

Thanks to Dr Kim Hitt, round one is done! Based on Zhora’s progesterone being 14.4 yesterday, we decided to do the second breeding tomorrow in case Thursday was too late. Bert has managed to contribute again like a rock star, so his little swimmers are on their way here again for tomorrow!

SO MANY THANKS to so many people who have helped with this journey so far! Michelle Fromm for her friendship and advice and for being a total ROCK STAR for taking time off work and driving to Phoenix not once but TWICE to get Bert (who also gets big thanks of course) collected. Kim for helping me recognize that I wanted to breed the best litter I could and for helping me through the logistics and planning and texting me with updates! Simone for coming in on Saturday to draw blood. Caroline for her support and listening to the crazy dog lady talk! And as always Jim for putting up with this craziness and helping so much. Thank you all so much, and anyone I’ve forgotten. And that’s my Academy Award acceptance speech.

Now we do one more tomorrow, then we wait, and hope, and keep our fingers and toes and eyes crossed that we get some wonderful puppies!

Just heard from Kim (breeder vet friend who is helping us through all this) that Bert’s contribution has arrived safely at her clinic! Z and I head over there in a couple of hours! Wish us luck!

Bert did an awesome job like a pro today apparently and donated an excellent collection with 90% motility! (that’s good news for us!)

Only crazy dog ladies talk about dog progesterone and dog semen like this… Well,  crazy dog ladies and people you’d rather not think about anyway.

Hopefully doing our part to keep this lovely breed healthy!

So looks like Zhora ovulated between Friday (when she was at 3 ng/mL) and Saturday (when she was at 5 ng/mL). So hoping for a good collection in Arizona today and AI tomorrow!

0.7 ng/mL was the progesterone from yesterday. We test again tomorrow.