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Breeder's Notes
If you own a bitch this is probably one of the most important questions you will ask yourselves. For some the answer is a simple 'No'. If that is the case for you then you should speak to your vet and discuss having your bitch spayed (Neutered) at the earliest opportunity. There are a number of myths associated with this procedure, such as weight gain, personality changes etc, but most are probably untrue. The benefits of having your female dog sterilised are two-fold: you won't have the inconvenience and mess associated with her coming into season every six to nine months and you won't have the worry of her being accidentally mated. Another probable benefit of sterilisation is that if it is performed early enough, you can significantly reduce the chances of your dog succumbing to cancer associated with her reproductive organs including the breasts. If you own, or are thinking of owning, a male dog then don't think that this issue doesn't involve you. It does. As the owner of a male dog it is considerably less likely that you will be using your dog as a stud. In which case you should be getting it sterilised at around six months of age. Whilst there is no guarantee that your dog will not develop 'anti-social' habits if you have him castrated early, I can assure you that if you leave it too late he most certainly will and these habits will haunt you for the rest of that dog's active life. For those of you who have never owned or been acquainted with a male dog, the anti-social habits I refer to include the relentless pursuit of any female dog that bears the slightest trace of ever having been in season and the potentially embarrassing attempted matings of legs, cushions, bedding, pot plants and elderly female relatives to name a few! The decision to allow your bitch to have puppies is not one to be taken lightly. Let me try to dispel another myth before we go much further: it is not necessary for your dog to have a litter before she is spayed. Before you go down this path please make sure that you are fully aware of all the implications involved in letting her have pups. Speak with a responsible breeder; if anyone can put you off, they can. If you have had children you will know of the countless sleepless nights and other problems associated with young babies. You probably will have only had to deal with one baby at a time. However, dogs rarely give birth to only one puppy. In her first litter Elsa gave birth to ten! I can almost guarantee that you will have broken sleep for at least the first two weeks as you will be wanting to check that the mother hasn't smothered one of the pups or turned one out into the cold. You may also find that you have to bottle feed the puppies, in which case this will have to be done every few hours day and night. Don't think that once the puppies have become stronger you will be able to have a lie-in. You won't. Six o'clock should see you awake and cleaning up after the pups before you give them their first meal of the day. The noise that they make will ensure that you don't oversleep. Your first consideration should be to check the health of your bitch. get her hips and elbows X-rayed and her eyes checked to ensure that there are no abnormalities to passed on to future generations. Because dogs' bones take time to develop, X-rays can only be done after the bitch's first birthday. The procedure can be quite expensive as the vet will need to give her a general anaesthetic; fortunately this only needs to be done once. The eye test, which is much cheaper and involves a short examination with no sedation, will need to be done every year for as long as you intend to breed with her. Hopefully, when you bought your bitch, you will have been given documentary evidence to show that her sire and dam have no hip or elbow problems. If you were not given this assurance, or if the X-rays showed that either of both parents had high scores (indicating potential problems) then it may be advisable not to proceed with your plans. Discuss the matter with your vet. You should not consider taking your bitch to a stud dog before she is two years old. At this age your dog's skeletal development should be complete. Allowing a dog to become pregnant at an earlier stage, when her bones are still soft and forming, will increase the risk of problems such as arthritis at a later stage in life. Not only that, your dog may not yet have attained emotional maturity; she may not be mentally ready to give birth to and raise a litter. Do your homework. Study your bitches pedigree. Talk to other breeders. Visit dog shows. Join a specialist breeders club. Go and see the offspring that have been sired by potential mates for your bitch. Why? Because you will want to ensure that the pups that you breed, and the offspring that may evolve from them, have the best chance of leading a long, happy and healthy life. As I have previously mentioned, she needs to be over the age of two years. That will probably mean she will already have had two 'seasons'. A bitch will come into season at any time between the ages of six and nine months. She will then come into season at similar intervals after that. Hopefully before she has come into season for the first time after her second birthday you will have identified a suitable mate for her. When deciding which stud to use, as well as covering all of the aspects relating to health and temperament, you should bear in mind that the actual mating should take place on more than one occasion usually (but not always) between the 12th and 14th days following the day when she comes into season. Mating should be timed to coincide with the period when the bitch is at her most fertile, when she is ovulating. Ovulation is the period when the eggs are released from the ovaries and begin their journey to the uterus. Whilst some bitches may enter this fertile period around the 12th day, some can begin up to four days earlier and some may begin later. How can you tell if your bitch is ovulating? Many experienced breeders will instinctively recognise the signs that their bitches are ready for the stud. Others, including novices such as ourselves, will need to look for more tangible signs such as tail flagging (the bitch will hold her tail to one side when you touch her back end), a cessation of the bloody discharge and swelling of the vulva. Some breeders now use blood tests to determine the presence and level of particular hormones at ovulation. Blood tests, which are performed by your vet, obviously come at a cost (£40-£50) and are necessarily invasive. Other options that you may wish to consider are a test which looks for the presence of Luteinizing hormone (LH) in the bitches saliva, a test that involves placing an indicator strip into the vulva and daily monitoring of the bitches temperature to spot the rise that coincides with ovulation. The simple arithmetic is that if your stud dog lives 50 miles away, you will have to drive a total of 200 miles (Yes - you have to go to the stud dog; he won't come to you). If he lives 100 miles away you will be travelling 400 miles etc. To compound the problem you might find that when you first take your dog to the stud she isn't ready for him yet. On the other hand, the stud may be the most eligible partner for your bitch, in which case you may be willing to travel to the ends of the earth!! We have two bitches and we found that when the youngest one, Sabah, came into season for the first time it actually brought Elsa into season about six weeks earlier than we had expected. How Do You Know if the Mating Has Worked? In the same way that human mothers do, some dogs will experience morning sickness caused by the changes in hormone levels. Some dogs will begin to behave differently quickly changing from that loveable carefree puppy to the oh-so-sensible adult dog overnight. Elsa's first sign was a slight thickening of the waist line after about three weeks. She continued to behave like a playful puppy until week eight and only had morning sickness on day 55. Unless the number of pups she is going to have is small, you should see the beginning of a bulge between three and four weeks into the pregnancy. If you wish to incur the expense, your vet will perform an ultra-sound scan at around 30 days. If you do have your bitch scanned, don't expect your vet to be able to say what size the litter is going to be. The vet will probably only say that it is going to be more than a certain number of puppies. Identifying the exact number is almost impossible. How Will You Know When Your Bitch is Going to Give Birth? The gestation period (duration of pregnancy) for dogs is around 62 to 63 days. To help you plan ahead you should mark on your calendar the day corresponding to 62 days after her first mating, then mark the date corresponding to 63 days after her second mating. As with humans, dogs can produce their litters earlier but, bearing in mind that the dog pregnancy lasts nine weeks as opposed to the nine months for humans, if the pups are born more than a week early then it is quite likely that they will not have developed sufficiently in which case you can expect to encounter problems. Elsa gave birth two days before the earliest expected date but all of her pups had reached an advanced state of development. The signs indicating the imminent arrival are sometimes harder to spot. On the day before Elsa's pups were born, she became very restless and was frequently looking for a suitable nesting site. The options she identified were behind the sofa, inside the sofa (she was going to dig into it!), under a coffee table and in the undergrowth beside the garden ponds. She seemed to have entirely overlooked the expensive and most luxuriously appointed whelping box we had provided for her in the dining room. We were eventually able to encourage her to get into the whelping box by enclosing it in a tent made from a blanket and a plank of wood. Another apparently well recognised sign of the impending arrival of the pups was that Elsa went off her food the day before the event took place. This wasn't so easily spotted as her appetite had been up and down over the last couple of weeks. At around 10.00pm I prepared for a long night on the sofa to keep Elsa company. "Dogs nearly always give birth during the night", I was told. Elsa didn't. At 2.30am she brought me first a ball, so that we could play fetch, and then her toy dolphin. As a final indication of her unpreparedness for labour she climbed up onto the sofa, stretched out alongside me and went to sleep. I took the hint and went to bed. The next morning was the only occasion that we haven't taken her out for a walk. Elsa longingly gazed out of the window as Sabah was taken for a run on the beach and for the next hour and a half whined and moaned her disgust. I was almost at the point of taking her out for a short walk across the fields when she spotted Sabah returning in the car. Elsa leapt into the armchair by the window to watch Sabah come down the drive and as she did so her waters burst, the time was 10.30am. Birthing Difficulties - Caesarian Section Unfortunately we experienced problems with Sabah's first and only litter. Her uterus was found to be rather elongated and large. Her four puppies were lying halfway along the uterus with fluid filling the remaining spaces at either end of the uterus. She failed to develop any contractions, but even if she had, it is unlikely that she would have been able to deliver the puppies normally. We had calculated her due date to be the 16th of August and when nothing had happened by the 19th we took her to the vet for a check-up. All appeared to be normal at that stage and a number of healthy heartbeats could be heard. Her temperature then was 38.5 C but within an hour and a half it had fallen to 36.7 C which indicated that labour could start within the next 24 hours. Later in the day she was showing signs of agitation and was looking for a nesting site. By nighttime she had calmed down and it was apparent that the birth would not happen then. She resumed her restless state the following morning and, unusually for Sabah, she did not want to go out for a morning walk. At about 2.00 p.m. I noticed a dark green discharge from Sabah's vulva. This is usually an indication that the placenta is coming away from the uterus and a sign that a birth is imminent. My concern with Sabah was that she did not appear to be having any contractions so I contacted the vet. After an hour had elapsed from the first sighting of the discharge and no puppy had yet appeared, the vet administered an injection of Oxytocin with the aim of stimulating contractions. A further hour and a half elapsed with no change in her condition so a further injection was given. This too had no effect and at 6.30 p.m. Sabah was taken back to the surgery where a Caesarian Section was performed. Whilst we were aware that Caesarians are sometimes necessary, we had never really considered what would happen if it were needed for any of our dogs. Whilst it is often regarded as an elective treatment in humans, in animals it is often the case that without one both the mother and her young would die. A Caesarian provides no guarantee that both will survive but it at least increases the chances of a happy outcome for the mother. When we left the vets surgery shortly after 6.30 p.m. with heavy hearts, our thoughts weren't about how many puppies we were going to have but whether or not our happy-go-lucky dog Sabah would survive and if she did, would she ever forgive us? The cost of the treatment, estimated at between £400 to £500, was a distant consideration at this stage. Our only concern was that Sabah should emerge from the procedure safely and in good health. Two hours later, after a welcome phone call from the surgery, we returned to collect a slightly groggy Sabah and her very vociferous puppies. Having got over one hurdle the next problem was going to be the introduction of the puppies to Sabah. One could only wonder at her reaction, having been anaesthetised and then to be woken up and have four yelping puppies thrust into your life. We got them home and all our worries were proved to be unfounded as she immediately cleaned them up and allowed them to try and suckle from her. The wound on her stomach was about six inches long running down her centre line from just below the bottom of her rib cage. Even though she had been given pain relief after the operation she showed no sign whatsoever of discomfort even managing to run up and down the stairs twelve hours later. (to be continued)
Monitoring the Weight of the Litter We considered it essential to monitor the weight of each pup on a daily basis during the early days of their lives. It helped us to identify, at an early stage, those pups that were not thriving as well as the others. Elsa had only eight working nipples and so it was necessary for us to ensure that each pup had the chance to suckle. Monitoring the weights on a daily basis helped us to spot those pups whose weight was not keeping up with the average daily increase. When this happened we could generally help things along by putting the pup to Elsa at additional times during the day and night. On other occasions it was necessary for us to provide supplementary feeding by way of a bottle. By following the next link you will be able to see a graph that shows the average weight of the litter for each of the first 28 days (Weight Chart) 1: Bedding: We didn't have a large enough supply of old newspapers. Ten puppies produce a prodigious amount of waste, most of it in the two minute period after you have replaced the old bedding with new! Our saviours in this instance were our neighbours, the council recycling staff, who let us take copious supplies from the lorry, and one neighbour in particular, who works for a newspaper during the week and who, on his return home at the weekend, brought with him a small mountain of paper. One of the problems with using newspaper is that the newsprint rubs off on the puppies which, for light coated pups, results in a dirty looking puppy (see Judging Colour). At around week four we were pointed in the direction of Woodland Enterprises Ltd who supplied large bales of bedding made from the off cuts of paper tissue. Two bales lasted us for the remaining five weeks that the pups were with us. With shredded tissue paper we found that their mess tended to form into paper coated clumps which could easily be separated from the clean bedding with the added benefit that the pups tended to have cleaner coats (and it was good fun to play in!). Note: Woodland Enterprises no longer supply the bales of paper bedding. We have since found an alternative supplier: J & M Products of Norfolk. 2: Expensive Doesn't Mean Best: Whilst on the subject of bedding, puppies cannot distinguish between £150s worth of fleecy, luxurious vet bed and freely available old newsprint. They prefer to eat, sleep and p.... on the latter. 3: Judging Colour: Don't announce the discovery of a new breed colour variety called the Slate Grey Golden Retriever until you have tried washing the newsprint off your puppies first. 4: Marking Your Pups: My Wife suggested that I should use nail varnish but part of being a man is that you have to be the one who takes the decisions. Right? I tried a number of options the first of which was food colouring. You will find, as I did, it will stay on your hands for at least a week but vanish from the puppy within 24 hours. Red food colouring will make you look like you have been involved in a small massacre. I then tried indelible marker pens; they obviously aren't indelible on puppy fur. We then tried nail varnish, I knew all along that that was the best option... Having ten pups meant that we had to work out some sort of code. We achieved this by using two different colours and marking different combinations of claws. Care needs to be exercised here. Pups and dogs have very sensitive noses and the smell of nail varnish will distress young pups. Try to do it in a well ventilated area. The varnish on the claws will wear off after several days and will need to be renewed, particularly if the pups are allowed outside onto hard ground. I had a distressing moment when I found that all traces of varnish had disappeared overnight on four of the pups. Fortunately I was able to identify each by reference to their weight charts. The final method involved applying the nail varnish to the knuckle of the toe rather than the claw; it looks a bit unsightly but will wear off in time. Update - August 2009 Prior to the arrival of Sabah's litter of four pups I purchased a quantity of coloured identity tags from a supplier on eBay. They are made of Tyvek and are strong, durable and light. The tags are an inch (25mm) wide and probably too large for a small puppies neck but they can be cut down to a smaller size. 5: Visitor Refreshments: Never under estimate the quantity of Jaffa cakes you buy. If you buy too may you can always eat them yourself. If you buy too few...
(To be continued....) |
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