No puppies for Lexi May (ever)

A couple of weeks ago we got news that we didn’t want to hear. Our second attempt at breeding Lexi May failed. And, given what we learned, we won’t be trying again.

Here’s what happened…

Lexi May finally came into heat again around Thanksgiving. Since we missed last time, so I took her to the vet at the first sign of heat for a progesterone test. I figured we were early in the heat cycle, but didn’t want to miss again. We were indeed early and so the vet told us to come back for another test in about 5 days.

On the day of the third progesterone test, we also did a culture to see if she had any of the “wrong” kind of bacteria in her uterus. When the vet did the flush after the culture she didn’t like what she saw. The discharge was “like sludge” indicating a problem with the uterus. Given what happened last time we tried to breed, and what the vet saw, she diagnosed Lexi May with delayed uterine clearance. Which apparently is more common in horses than it is in dogs, but apparently Lexi May wanted to be exceptional (in the wrong way). Not great news, but the good part of the news that is we had something to treat, and a likely reason for her pregnancy not taking the last time we bred her.

The treatment plan that would give us the best chance of getting her pregnant was “involved.” We had to give Lexi May oxytocin injections to clear the uterus. Twice a day for a few days, then once a day until she was ready to be bred, and for a few days following the breeding. Also, the uterine culture results came back indicating that Lexi May needed to go on antibiotics as well.  

For the breeding itself, we bred Lexi May twice via TCI. The stud dog we chose was nearby, so we did side-by-side breeding. We did everything we could to get our girl pregnant.

Then we waited around 3.5 weeks for an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed no puppies. The vet did see some indication that there were four “attempted implantations,” but no puppies.

Since we tried everything we possibly could, the vet recommended we do not try again. In her experience, if the treatment plan we tried doesn’t work the first time, it won’t work. And, since bitches with delayed uterine clearance are at a greatly increased risk of pyometra, the vet recommends we spay in a couple of months.

So that’s the end of the road for Lexi May’s puppy quest (or the hoomans puppy quest, since she doesn’t really care). Her co-owner and I are deeply disappointed but that’s the way the chips fall sometimes. Lexi May will continue with her professional career – we’ll head back to barn hunt, agility, and maybe a little obedience & rally too, once things clear up with COVID. Until then she is enjoying training, snuggling, and getting really muddy on our daily field walks.

The best laid plans...

In my last post (which was a long time ago), I mentioned that we planned to breed Lexi May again on her next heat cycle. That was the plan; but the plan failed. Unfortunately, Lexi May had a “silent heat” and by the time I took her to the vet for progesterone testing, she was already past her fertile period.

I was looking forward to summer puppies, but it’s not to be. We do plan to try again next time around (which will be in November-ish) but I’ve pulled down my litter page and will re-post again when/if Lexi May is pregnant. I’m starting to get superstitious and don’t want to jinx it. ;-)

In the meantime, we’re continuing to train in agility, started training for our rally and trick dog titles, and look forward to things opening up again so we can do more Barn Hunt!

Lexi May at the peak of the A-Frame while practicing agility.

No puppies this time.

Despite our best planning and lots of worrying and work (see previous posts) we learned last week that Lexi May is not pregnant.

I took her in to the repro vet for an ultrasound on the day recommended and no puppies were found. At this time, we don’t know if we just missed our timing (she ovulated at the start of Labor Day weekend, and we couldn’t inseminate until Wednesday, so our timing wasn’t ideal) or if something else is happening.

Needless to say this was very dispiriting, as we have been planning this litter for a while and many of us were looking forward to the puppies. I know disappointments like this happen in the dog breeding game, but I just wasn’t really mentally prepared for it.

Recommended next steps according to the repro vet are to have some tests done in early November (near her predicted due date), and some additional testing at the beginning of her next heat cycle to see if we can sort out if anything is amiss that we can treat/manage next time around. The sperm counts were good, and Grant has had other successful litters via AI, so the vet thinks the problem is at our end.

Now that I’m (mostly) over my “no puppies” funk, I’ve started to look for agility and obedience trials to enter. We might as well have some fun while we wait for the next heat cycle, and see if we can add a few more titles to Lexi May’s “resume.” We were back in agility class last week, and Lexi May seemed very happy to be there and didn’t miss a beat, despite a nearly-two-month absence; it’s great to have a dog that loves to work as much as I do!

So for now, it’s time to focus on performance events while we wait for her next heat cycle…

Yes, I'm asking a lot of questions, but it’s not because I’m nosy

I’m happy when someone contacts me with interest in one of our (potential) puppies. I remember the joy of bringing a new pack member home; how special that day is. For me, that happiness is balanced with a strong sense of responsibility, so I need to know (as much as possible) about the person I’d be sending a puppy home with.

Why do I have so many questions?

First, because I take very seriously that I’m bringing new lives into the world, and only one of them can stay with me. That means I need to make sure that, to the best of my ability, each and every puppy from my litter is going to a home that will love it, care for it, and give it the best possible life. And that’s a big deal to me. It’s actually the part that freaks me out the most about this whole dog breeding thing.

Also, I hope to have a lifelong support relationship with the new owners. My obligation to each puppy doesn’t end when the puppy leaves my house. I’ll be on call to answer questions and support the owner whenever the need arises. This includes (though I hope it never happens) me taking the puppy back in case the new owners are no longer willing and able to care for it.

So who gets my puppies is really important for me. And, short of hiring a private investigator (which would be costly, time consuming, and probably involve and unacceptable-to-most-people invasion of privacy), the best way for me to find out who the potential puppy owners are is for me to ask them a lot of questions, and let them ask me a lot of questions.

What are those questions, exactly?

Since this is my first litter, I had to create a Wagmore puppy questionnaire, which I did last weekend. I didn’t start with a completely blank page, as I have had to fill out a few puppy questionnaires myself over the past 20 years, and I have a number of dog friends who were kind enough to share their questions with me. I had a lot of material to leverage.

I won’t list all the questions here (I ended up with 22 questions total, plus an ask for two references), but the main categories of questions are:

• Why are you interested in a Cardigan?

• What type of Cardigan are you looking for?

• What kind of pet owner are you?

• What is your household like?

• What kind of life will the dog lead if it lives with you?

If you’re a breeder, I’d love to about the questions that have provided you with the most useful bits of info. And if you’re a pet owner, what question would you most like to be asked?

14 days, 18.5 hours, and a lot of second-guessing

Now that Lexi May was in heat many things needed to happen, and happen now.

After my conversation with the repro vet, I talked with my co-owner and Grant’s owner to let them know that Project Puppy was in full swing. I called a nearby vet who does some repro work to schedule an appointment on Tuesday for Lexi May’s first progesterone test. That’s a little earlier than recommended, but since I hadn’t been home in a week, I wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss any days of the heat cycle.

Once I got home, over the weekend, I ordered Puppy Packs from ICSB (the International Canine Semen Bank – yes, there is such a thing). The puppy packs were sent to Grant’s owner so she could easily collect and ship what needed to be collected and shipped. Then I sat around over the weekend worrying that I was missing something, or was going to miss something.

On Tuesday the progesterone test indicated that it was still early in her heat cycle and the vet recommended her next test be on Friday. It was then that I realized that Lexi May had waited, and waited, and waited to come into heat – only to time it so that she was nearing the most fertile time of her cycle over Labor Day weekend. Which wasn’t a problem for the repro vet; she was working. But it WAS a problem for FedEx who don’t deliver on Sunday or Labor Day. (Neither does UPS, which makes me want to do a mini-rant about delivery services.)

The realization about timing led me to make a series of harried phone calls – to the repro vet (more than once or twice), the stud dog owner, my co-owner, and a long-time Cardi breeder I trust. I was trying to sort out how/if we could get semen to Lexi May on Monday or Tuesday. As it turns out, this wasn’t possible (shakes fist at FedEx). I could ship for Saturday delivery, but then the semen would have to sit longer than ideal, and the repro vet was not a fan of this idea. Since I feel like repro work is mix of art and science, and this vet is good at what she does, I did what any sane owner would do and went with her recommendation to wait (even though this was very hard for me).

We decided to have the Friday progesterone test done at the repro vet, which meant a trip to the other side of a major metro area on Friday afternoon, with the return trip Friday during rush hour. That trip took much longer than any human would like, but allowed us to get a test from the same vet/system we’d use for the all future tests so we’d have an apples-to-apples comparison for better timing.

The test indicated that she was nearing ovulation, and the repro vet recommended a follow-up progesterone test on Monday. Yes, this vet was working on Monday (she’s a saint, and I’m not sure she ever takes a day off) and I was one of many who were there for a progesterone test that day. I even met a woman from Nevada who’d been hanging out in Oregon for a month and a half waiting for her Dachshund bitch to come into heat. This made me feel a little bad about complaining about my drive.  But still, the traffic… (Though it was NOT bad mid-day on a holiday Monday – it took me 45-50 minutes each way vs 1.5-2 hours in rush hour traffic).

Monday’s test told us she had ovulated already – probably on Saturday – making the ideal days for insemination Tuesday and Thursday. But of course the holiday weekend made Tuesday impossible, so the vet scheduled her for Wednesday and Thursday. 

I communicated this to the stud dog owner, and she got things rolling on her end. We coordinated with the vet to set a time to bring Lexi May in both days. 

Given the vet’s schedule, we ended up with late afternoon appointments, putting us smack in the middle of rush hour on the way home both days. The Husband took Lexi May in on Wednesday, and I took the afternoon off on Thursday so I could take her for one of the appointments (I was keen to know what happened).

Good news for us is that the semen was high-quality (thanks, Grant and Jane!) and the trans-cervical insemination went well. My role in all of it was to keep Lexi May as comfortable as possible (I brought platinum-level treats with me to help on this front). It was really interesting to watch, as they use a scope for navigation to get the sperm in the ideal location (non-medical terms). The procedure took a lot longer than I thought it would – and afterwards Lexi May had to remain standing on the table for 10 minutes, and was not allowed to squat and urinate for two hours. Which, since we were stuck in traffic for early that whole time, meant I could let her out of her travel crate shortly after we got home.

And now we wait to see if all of it worked. If it DID work Lexi May’s due date is November 3rd +/- 2 days. We have an appointment with the repro vet on 27 September for an ultrasound, which will tell us if we have puppies, but not how many. It’s surprising to me that we have to wait so long for a definitive answer on pregnancy, given how short the gestation period is. The wonders of nature…

So please keep your fingers crossed for us!

OK to WA

When we last spoke, my co-owner/Lexi May’s breeder and I had decided on a Puppy Daddy (aka stud dog). Whew; not an easy decision, but wonderful to find a dog we’re excited about. The only down side? The dog we selected lives 2000 miles away from us. We’re a family who enjoys a good road trip, so it did (ever-so-briefly) cross our minds to drive the 2K miles when Lexi May came into heat. But that trip would be stressful for the humans and canine, and a little crazy, so I started to investigate artificial insemination (AI) options. 

The first step was sorting out a reputable repro vet – ideally a board-certified reproductive specialist. Being relatively new to the area, I didn’t know many (any, really) dog breeders, so I started to ask around at dog training seminars, lessons, etc. with limited success. As luck would have it, my agility class schedule changed, and I met two women in my new classes who breed and show dogs. Both of them recommended the same repro vet (one I’d heard mentioned before), so I reached out to the vet for more info.

A vet tech from the office and I had a nice talk, she gave me the practice’s recommendation on AI method (trans cervical insemination aka TCI), and told me to call her back after Lexi May next came in to heat.

And so we waited. For months. While Lexi May took her time coming into heat again.

And then it happened. Lexi May came into heat on the last day of a business trip I took to the other side of the country. While I waited for my flight, I activated Project Puppy, and sat in the airport leaving messages for the repro vet so we could get things started. (And yes, I did get some funny looks from those sitting nearby – apparently, the general public is not used to someone saying bitch that frequently.)

The vet’s advice was for us to wait a few days before doing the first progesterone test so we could time the breeding right. Which is where I’ll pick up in the next blog.

Choosing a Puppy Daddy

So how DID we choose who we’d like to breed to? Needless to say, it’s an important decision and one that Kathy and I took very seriously. We want puppies that conform to the breed standard AND who are happy, healthy, well-adjusted dogs.

I’m co-breeding this litter with Lexi May’s breeder/co-owner, and we spent a LOT of time looking for the right (or what we hope is right) match for Lexi May. This work started with health clearances. We knew about Lexi May’s genetic watch-outs since she was tested as puppy, so the first round of cuts was made based on genetic screening – to make sure we avoided the things we needed to avoid.

We also watched how Lexi May matured.  We evaluated her structure, determining we like and what we’d like to improve.  This information helped us narrow the field down even further, as we looked for stud dogs who were consistently producing what we’d like to improve on and retain, while trying to avoid things we’d rather not have. Temperament was again a big factor, as Kathy and I, and all the future puppy owners, need to live with the dogs for many years.

When we had the field narrowed down to a few dogs, we contacted the stud dog owners to learn more about the dogs, and make sure the stud dog owner also saw Lexi May as a good match for their dog. It was also important to us that the stud dog owner would be a good match for Kathy and I, because even though we’ll be doing the work of whelping and raising the puppies, we need a stud dog owner who is honest, has a good reputation in the breed, and is willing to work with us throughout.

After agonizing over who to choose (maybe a little too much ;-) ) we narrowed down the field, and were lucky enough to meet our top two “candidates” in person at the Cardigan Welsh Corgi National Specialty. It’s nice (but not always possible) to see the dog in person and meet the stud dog owner. It gave us a chance to “get our hands on” the dogs, watch them move, and get a feel for temperament, helping us make the choice.

In case you're curious, here’s a link to the pedigree: http://www.cardiped.net/testmating.php?dam=93988&sire=93982

Stay tuned for an update on our work last week to get Lexi May pregnant…

Off and running

And so it begins…

 …well, it really began 3.5 years ago, when I agreed to co-own Lexi May. She was a lovely puppy with a lot of potential for conformation and performance; a great addition to our pack. And, part of the deal was that at some point her breeder, Kathy, and I would co-breed a litter a puppies. 

This litter was conditional on a number of things happening.  She had to be shown and finish her conformation championship, to get external validation that she is a high-quality representative of the breed. Lexi may accomplished this goal, and earned her Grand Championship title, too. She also had to pass the health screens important for Cardigans, which she did – OFA Good hips and Normal elbows, PRA clear through her line, DM tested (she is a carrier, so we will breed to a clear dog), and eyes tested and passed by a veterinary ophthalmologist. And, she had to grow into an adult with a good temperament – something that we’d want to pass on in the breed – she passed that one with flying colors as a lovely, friendly, snuggly bitch with a great work ethic.

Now the path to puppies begins, as Lexi May has come into heat on the cycle we’re ready to breed. GULP. I feel ready but not prepared – not knowing what to expect even though I’ve done a bunch of “studying.”

 Of course, there’s still a long way between here and there, but the starting gates have opened and we’re off and running.

I’m planning to blog throughout the process – partly as a way for me to process things and remember things, and partly to help people understand what reputable, preservation-minded dog breeders do to maintain the health and integrity of the breed they love. I hope you enjoy the journey!