Episode 3: Myra Savant-Harris: The Role of the stud dog in a natural breeding

Laura and Myra Savant-Harris talk about the importance of natural breeding. Tune in to learn more about the specialized canine reproductive system and what you can do for your breeding program.

About Myra Savant-Harris: Renowned author and speaker on canine reproduction and whelping, Myra has been a scientist for much of her life. She quickly became interested in the reproductive system and has bred everything from dogs to hamsters to fish. She got into nursing, where she worked as an RN in the NICU and labor-delivery. She has written several acclaimed books and guides on the breeding and whelping process.

We often forget that dogs are much more behavioral-oriented than we think. We've gone to some of the things humans use like TCIs when we should remember that the male dog is anatomically built for natural reproduction as it is.

Myra discusses the importance of the tie as well as some important properties of semen and eggs. "Nothing is a substitute for egg sperm and time...it's a wonderful system."

Myra gives advice to breeders who want to do a natural breeding but can't - for example for those who need to get sperm shipped to them. Laura and Myra then end by giving stud dog owners advice about what to look for in their dog's sperm, as well as potential myths and misconceptions to be aware of!

Transcript

INTRO

Welcome to the Good Dog Pod! I’m your host, Laura Reeves. Here at the Good Dog Pod, we are all about supporting dog breeders and responsible dog ownership. Join our mission and help change the conversation—because we are all stronger together! Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them, through education and advocacy. The Good Dog Pod provides dog lovers with the latest updates in canine health and veterinary care, animal legislation and legal advocacy, canine training and behavior science, and dog breeding practices. Subscribe, and join our mission to help give our dogs the world they deserve. 

Laura Reeves [0:53] Welcome to the Good Dog Pod! I am your host, Laura Reeves, and we have a super exciting guest today. Many of you will have read books and joined Facebook groups and heard, in many ways, of our host, Myra Harris—Myra Savant Harris (you might have seen the author title). Myra is beloved in the breeding dog community for all of her knowledge that she so graciously shares with us. So, welcome Myra! I’m super glad that you can join us. And we are talking about the role of the stud dog in a natural breeding. 

Myra Harris [1:31] Yes!

Laura Reeves [1:32] Excellent. So, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself, so anybody—the three people—who haven’t heard of you can get a little bit of an idea of the knowledge and experience that you bring to this?

Myra Harris [1:46] Sure. First of all, I know that I join with a lot of other people who breed dogs. We share a lot of things in common, right from childhood on. I was one of those kids who was not just obsessed with dogs but in general, just obsessed with any kind of life science. Early on, I was drawn to everything sciencey. If I can take it apart—all the bloody pieces—and lay ‘em out on my front step and just had some time with them, I was a very happy child. My parents viewed me as just a little bit short of a ghoul, you know? It led to this fascination with, eventually, the reproduction system. I went through all the systems, actually, where I was fascinated. But where it led me was the reproduction system and trying to understand that particular system. So, I bred dogs but I also bred cats and hamsters and rabbits. I gave fish a shot. So then I got all disgusted with giving fish a chance.

Laura Reeves [3:04] Yeah, fish aren’t as fun!

Myra Harris [3:08] Fish aren’t as fun! And they eat their babies! 

Laura Reeves [3:13] There’s no snuggling a fish, Myra.

Myra Harris [3:14] No cuddling, and they don’t even love you. But anyway, I went eventually into nursing and automatically just veered right off into labor delivery and NICU, all the things to do with the human OB department—everything that I could learn there. But after I’d been nursing for several years and also breeding dogs and horses and cattle and everything I could get my little hands on to learn those systems, suddenly (and it really was like a little light went off) I realized that the things we did in human OB did not have anything to do with the things that were being done in dog OB. And yet I understood that as far as the gold standard goes, it is human. Because we are so much better staffed than a vet’s office. We have so many more malpractices, things don’t go well, that we can’t afford to be careless. Docs are just obsessed with not being careless. And so I began to see that certain things we did in OB weren’t being done in dogs. One of the things that kind of hit me first-off was that in human OB, if there’s a fertility issue—if dad or mom had a fertility issue—then they involve docs, test tubes, sperm collections, fancy AIs, and of course—being the gold standard—they can also harvest eggs, fertilize them, then do a very complete examination of the little zygote after it gets about 300 cells of growth. So that people who now own those eggs can have them implanted whenever they’re ready to have another baby. 

Laura Reeves [5:11] That’s just crazy, the progress. It’s just amazing to me. 

Myra Harris [5:17] The progress and yet: tie always end with reproduction issues. And then the dog people—what I learned is that we tamper with that stuff, often when there are no repro issues. The one that we seem to cut out of the game the most willingly is the male. Once I started to really become familiar with that reproduction system, I started to really get some hands-on with it and really start to understand that it works. In its own way, it’s really more efficient than the human way. But part of that is just the things about dogs we know and take for granted. Dogs are much more behavioral-oriented. In the human world, we think if you wear a low-cut blouse and lean toward a man, you’re enticing him. We get that kind of mindset. But sometimes we forget to watch our little bitches, who are flagging their tails, bumping their little butts right into the dog’s face. They are flirtatious, their ears are raised, they are showing that male—that stud dog—in every conceivable way that they can (including exposing their swollen vulva, which is now raised to a level on her rear end, where he can aim and hit it). We forget they are more behaviorally-minded than we are. And both of them have that behavior. He has his stance. 

Then in addition to that, they have things that we don’t have. They have a much more sensitive nose. That male dog can sniff. He can lick the discharge. He can taste. He knows what the heck he’s doing! And we cut him out of the picture so much. We’ve gone to TCIs, we’ve gone to surgicals, and we’ve gone to some of the things that human OB uses when there’s a repro problem—but a lot of the times that we’re doing it, there’s no repro problem! And it’s kind of like we feel like if we do a TCI, we’re more likely to get puppies. If we trust the vet to implant and just do nothing but collect him and “goodbye,” we’re good to go. We couldn’t be further from the truth. The male is anatomically made for what he does. That bulb that is next to his abdomen (and it is right between his abdomen and his penis), that bulb isn’t a prostate gland. It’s not a gland of any kind. It’s specific, anatomical tissue, placed at that exact place to affect the tie. That’s what that bulb is. And the tie is everything. So, bottom line for the dog breeder, the tie is your ballgame. It isn’t a TCI. It isn’t a surgical. It isn’t an AI, because you’re afraid of sexually transmitted diseases. It’s none of the above. Your ballgame is the tie. So, here’s why. 

Laura Reeves [8:38] Yeah, that’s just what I was gonna say! You’re so far ahead of me. You’re so good. So, tell us what specifically about that tie—the process, the 15 minutes of discomfort for everyone or half an hour or however long—tell us what is specifically so important about that, that I think a lot of people lose track of.

Myra Harris [9:02] Yeah, they lose track of it, and the thing is: some of them don’t even know it to begin with. 

Laura Reeves [9:06] Right.

Myra Harris [9:07] I’ve gone through the vet textbooks. I don’t find it. It’s not there! What it is is that when he enters her body, he enters as a small penis. His penis is small. And he goes in and what effectively happens is that her vulva captures his bulb next to the abdomen, with a vaginal ring. She captures it. That’s what causes the tie. His bulb enlarges inside. Her vaginal ring clasps next to the abdomen. And then they are in that tie. He then will ejaculate and when he ejaculates, the numbers he ejaculates are—I would have to say—very, very generous. This is a very generous ejaculation. And they are built to be able to breed several females at a time, if they need to. So we worry about “if that stud dog’s been used in the last 30 days, I don’t think we’ll have enough sperm” but actually, your stud dog can be used just about every dang day of the week, and he’s good to go. Because he’s designed to be good to go. And he has lots of sperm. So now she’s captured his tie. She’s in the tie, and she’s captured that bulb. If you guys remember, if anybody thinks back to when they last saw a natural breeding, the male lifts that hind leg over her back and then, for a little while, they’re rear end to rear end. They’re just stuck butt to butt. Now, one of them takes a step or two. And you know it drives us nuts. 

Laura Reeves [10:52] It takes three people to do a natural breeding.

Myra Harris [10:56] Yes, except that in real life, it doesn’t really take anybody. They do it on their own! And that little step—when he takes a step or she takes a step—we’re sure she’s going to yank that penis right off and we’re not going to be able to show him anymore because good Lord, they don’t even like to do one testicle. Imagine what they’d do if you showed up with one testicle and no penis! They’d have you kicked into the cat agility ring faster than you can say, “Give me a tie.” So, we have to kind of be thoughtful. And we have to kind of think back into our human experience, because the same thing happens in humans—except it’s not discussed very often. When they take that little step, it pulls on that vaginal ring, and it pulls on that bulb. She then goes into the most key point of her entire season. All the other things we’ve paid attention to count for nothing, because what happens now is her uterine horns have that sperm, and they begin to contract. The contractability is not little and piddly. It’s nothing like that. I had an opportunity to collect and do an AI on a German Shepherd when I was giving a seminar. They had arranged to bring the bitch and the dog together, and I collected him, and that took a little bit of time because he was anxious to get to her. There was some strength involved with a couple of people holding him. But he was dying to get to the teaser bit, and then I did the AI. I pulled in with the syringe and the tube, and I placed the sperm. She ended up having, I think, 13 puppies, so it was a good AI. I placed it, but after I removed that rod and the syringe, I put my two fingers (the index finger and the middle finger) right into her vulva. I put them in there! And I tickled the top of the vulva. I knew there were contractions, because I’d been able to see them from the outside on my Cavaliers. I know the human experience is filled with that contractability. They call it an orgasm in human language. We just don’t know exactly the pleasure that the female gets, but they are willing to be bred. So, when I put my fingers, I expected to feel a squeeze on my two fingers. That’s what I thought I would feel. A squeeze. It wasn’t like that at all. And I was ill-prepared for what it is with a German Shepherd. 

Laura Reeves [13:35] It’s going to take your entire arm and swallow it.

Myra Harris [13:37] And knock you off your feet! I mean, it’s going to pull you right off your feet! That pull. Where do you suppose that pull is taking that sperm? It’s taking it straight up those uterine horns. The sperm—they’ve got weak, little fishy tail things. We’ve always thought, “Oh, they’re going to swim up! They’re swimming up! They’re swimming up!” They’re not swimming up. They’re not doing diddly. They’re being swept along on the prostate fluid that’s like a little river, and they are being pulled and swept and deposited right at those fallopian tubes. By the time your bitch is out of the tie, her eggs are already fertilized. 

Laura Reeves [14:21] Really?!

Myra Harris [14:22] Yes! They are gone. The real thing that energizes those sperm is—you know the neck? They have a head, they have the little tail, and they have a neck. The neck is the energy of it. This is the energy in it. The energy that they use up is in the prostate fluid, and it’s fructose—like we get when we drink a glass of orange juice. So this energy unit now starts burning, and when those sperm reach those eggs that are ripe and ready, if they’re ripe and ready for breeding, that’s when that tail does—you can find videos of it online. It’s not a little swimming motion. It is flapping that tail from side to side like that to drive the head of that sperm into that egg. That’s all from the contractions that got it up to the eggs themselves in there. If they are ripe, the sperm is instantly penetrating, penetrating, penetrating. If they’re not ripe, it just lays along the side of the fallopian tube, where the fallopian tube produces a nutrient for it. But the prostate fluid is its fuel. That’s its fuel.

Laura Reeves [15:44] Okay, so this is the part that now is fascinating to me, as we’re talking about this. Back in the days when we didn’t have progesterone testing, and we couldn’t nail our timing to the minute, you just bred the dog. if the bitch stood there, you got them bred. And you said, “Okay, she’s covered.” Personal experience: I had a breeding. I knew when the breeding took place. The bitch did not want puppies for a week past that breeding date, so clearly she had ovulated fully seven days after the actual tie. I just think it’s mind-boggling. It’s still mind-boggling to me. But talk to us a little bit about that, because the semen will live for clearly seven days. Give us some more information on that. 

Myra Harris [16:30] The semen inside the bitch, with its prostate fluid and the fluid that the fallopian tubes provide, can lay back and just wait it out until the eggs are perfect. We also can get into another little click on this part, and that’s that the eggs are each on their own time schedule. She doesn’t ovulate like the blink of an eye, all the eggs are ovulated. She ovulates between a progesterone level of five and ten. So between the hours, between five and ten, eggs are coming out. They’re kind of on their own schedule, too. Nothing in this world is a substitute for sperm and egg put in immediately so that they have time to fertilize what’s ripe and time to lay back and get that nutrition from the fructose in that prostate fluid. It’s a system that boggles the mind when you see how well. You got a litter right now of 13 puppies. 

Laura Reeves [17:36] Yes. That, P.S., was from one 15-minute tie. That’s all it took!

Myra Harris [17:40] And that’s all that needed, isn’t it?

Laura Reeves [17:42] It is.

Myra Harris [17:43] And it’s all done.

Laura Reeves [17:44] My girlfriend said, “Oh, we need to get another tie!” I’m like, “Oh no. No, no, no.” 

Myra Harris [17:50] Do not. Because if they have an opportunity to tie another day, or if they’re left together and they have three ties, that is just because they have the instinct. She still has the smell. But if her progesterone level is right (and right is, believe it or not, the level that everything is ripe and ready for penetration, about 25 to 35), that’s going to get you your biggest litter. If you do it a day or two before that, big deal. Sperm has a really nice, long lifespan. What I always teach at the seminars is exactly what you’re saying here. I always say, “You got at least five days, under all circumstances, and longer, according to a lot of the different sources.” Because it’s in the environment that it will thrive in. It’s not going to thrive in a freezer. Not really. They always kind of come out of there diminished. It’s not going to thrive in a fridge. But at body temp in the bitch, with nutrients that were designed to keep it alive and thriving and penetrating those eggs? You’ve got this perfect set-up where, if you allow him to do his thing (his play mounts), if you allow her to flirt (flag that tail, expose the vulva), and then you allow them to mate, keep your hands off! Because when he does take that step and when she does take that step, that’s the thing that sets up the contractabiltiy! Without it, you’ve got nothing. You’ve got sperm sitting at the vulva and inside the uterine horns, but not sucked up to the eggs, where it goes. The system is a wonderful system. I just wish we had more faith in it, less alarm. I think we’re worried a lot about sexually transmitted diseases.

Laura Reeves [19:46] Well, I mean, we do our brucellosis test—should do! It’s an important test. 

Myra Harris [19:51] Male and female. 

Laura Reeves [19:55] But I think for me, my primary concern is generally I’ve got either a) a dumb-dumb young stud dog or b) a kind of snarky young bitch. And I’m like, I don’t want anybody’s face to get eaten. 

Myra Harris [20:13] And so you’re there to be careful. 

Laura Reeves [20:15] Right.

Myra Harris [20:16] What I’d like us to do is just relax a little bit more. I used to have…  I never actually intended to breed them. She hated a young stud dog I had. I mean, my bitch hated that dog. She would go after him. I don’t mean she would growl a little. She flat went after him and had him down and snarling in his face, taking his little face off. It got so bad that I went to an animal communicator.

Laura Reeves [20:48] Oh my gosh. Awesome.

Myra Harris [20:49] That’s how desperate I was. 

Laura Reeves [20:51] I was just going to say! I’ve only done that like once or twice, for the same level of desperation. 

Myra Harris [20:56] I know, I know! We’ll go to any length. And I went. And she said, “Well, she hates him because he’s cocky.” Well, he was cocky! There’s no doubt about that. And he was always parading himself. When she was in season, I didn’t let any of the boys around her, so she’d be in a crate a lot of times and he would go. She said he taunted her. And I didn’t ever see the taunting, but I did see him hanging out by her crate when he knew she hated him. So one day, just out of the blue, she’s in season. I had not planned to use him. He was young. And they didn’t get along. And all of a sudden, I blinked my eyes, and they were in a tie. And they were in a tie one time, and then after that, I was too afraid to let him do it again because I thought one of them will end up dead! But she had nine puppies. And that’s a Cavalier. She was young and he was young, but they had nine puppies. 

Laura Reeves [21:51] That’s a lot of puppies for a Cavalier, dude. 

Myra Harris [21:55] You know, she handled it like a pro! I had been told, “Separate out part of the puppies. Give her half the litter.” If I gave her half the litter, she wouldn’t get in with anybody.

Laura Reeves [22:05] Oh, interesting! 

Myra Harris [22:06] She didn’t get in with the puppies I was giving her. She would lay her body halfway between the box that had the second shift and the puppy pen where the first ones were and not take care of anybody. I got a hint. So I just gave them all to her, gave her all nine, and she went right in and took care of all nine—nursed them, raised them, no problems. 

Laura Reeves [22:29] Oh my gosh. That’s funny.

Myra Harris [22:31] We have to trust them, too. 

Laura Reeves [22:32] Yeah. I think always trusting the dogs is difficult, but you know, we can do a whole nother segment (and I’m sure probably, at some point, we will!) on neonates and feeding puppies and all of the things we can do to help these puppies. But specifically on the stud dog and the natural breeding, I think the other thing that comes into play too is that a lot of times, in our society today, the dog we want doesn’t live with us, or next door, or really close. Rather than put a bitch on an airplane, we’re shipping semen. So you’re talking about feathering the bitch. I’ve seen that done. My vets do the same thing. Any other suggestions for people who would love to do a natural breeding in an ideal world but can’t?

Myra Harris [23:20] Well, the first thing is you want to be sure that he has the basics. Before you commit to a dog clear across the US that you’re going to have to ship in sperm: Does he have a living litter on the ground? Is he capable of producing puppies? Has his vet on his end done a check of the viability and motility and numbers of this dog? That’s A. You want to make sure there’s a check. But before you go spending the money on a sperm check, there’s something way more basic that you do at home first. The stud dog owner. And what stud dog owners need to learn to do is (they need to do this at least once a month, on a calendar) a clean-out. At least once a month! You go, you collect that boy. First of all, you have to learn how to collect him. And there’s plenty of stuff on YouTube: you can learn how to collect, you can learn how to inseminate. You can contact me if you need to know what kind of tools and equipment you’d need. And you’d need to just practice but keep him cleaned out all the time. 

Here’s what they know in the horse world, where they spend a lot more money on repro than we do: They know that if they’d had a stallion in a paddock for a length of time (several months), just out there, then he needs to be cleaned out ten times before he can get down to fresh, good quality, healthy sperm. 

Laura Reeves [24:57] Interesting. 

Myra Harris [24:58] Yeah, ten times. They have to do it so much that there’s whole articles written on how they protect the penis when they’re having to collect so much. So a dog owner needs to think: If I get the notice that this bitch is going to be ready in about ten days, and she’s just been in season, I need to go clean him out three times in rapid succession. Morning, lunch, dinner.

Laura Reeves [25:24] Oh really? Three in the same day, rather than three days in a row?

Myra Harris [25:27] Yes. That way you give him lots of time to recuperate. Lots of time. You’ve got plenty of time. He can regather up all the sperm he needs. So first is a clean-out, a regular clean-out, and a good clean-out prior to being collected. That’s A. Then that’s the point when the vet checks him and lets you know. I never advise spending a lot of money using either a first-time mom or a first-time stud dog. Just because there’s too many unknowns. You don’t want to spend a fortune on a maiden bitch, when we just don’t know yet exactly.

Laura Reeves [26:03] Well, it’s one of the reasons I always use live cover on a maiden bitch. For example, the next breeding I want to do frozen semen, I want to get her proven with a live cover, on-the-hoof stud dog, and know that—before I invest thousands of dollars—she’s actually going to be able to whelp and raise a litter of puppies.

Myra Harris [26:27] Yes, and whelp and raise is key! Because you want to have that proven pelvis before you’re dealing with a really expensive breeding that is kind of the breeding of your life. So those are the things first. And then the second thing is, like you mentioned, brucellosis on mom and dad. That is still—for all the rumors and all the myths and all the stuff that goes out in the dog world—the only sexually transmitted disease that dogs have. I hear a lot about canine herpes. In the human world, that is a sexually transmitted disease, genital herpes. And dog people get the idea that this is a sexually transmitted disease, but it is not. It is not. And it doesn’t have the same characteristics. There’s nothing even similar to it. And it annoys me that we get those two things mixed up. If you were in the business I was in, where you are carefully examining a woman’s perineum before you make a decision for her to vaginally deliver if she’s told you that she’s got genital herpes, you’re looking for the outbreak. So, canine herpes would work kind of like a head cold. If you had sex with an individual who had a head cold, chances are: in two or three days, you’re going to have a head cold. But it’s not a sexually transmitted disease. It’s transmitted in many, many different ways. It’s a virus. And it’s transmitted in several ways. So anything we catch during the act of sex—like a head cold, measles, chicken pox, God forbid you’re well enough to do anything really extra fancy during that—those aren’t necessarily sexually transmitted. They were transmitted with contact. 

Laura Reeves [28:23] Right. Okay, so anything else that our stud dog owners should know? Cleaning him out, absolutely. Talk a little bit about (and this is something I’m not entirely sure how much listeners know about, but I think it’s really fascinating) the morphology of the sperm (bent tails, and all that kind of stuff).

Myra Harris [28:40] Age! That’s age. 

Laura Reeves [28:42] Can you talk a little bit about some of the things they might see, things that would be concerning, things that would not be concerning? Stuff like that.

Myra Harris [28:50] Okay, so the first thing is: Go back a second to the clean-out. If you haven’t cleaned him out in months and you clean him out and put that on a slide, you’re going to be disturbed. You will have your panties in a genuine twist. Because you will see heads broken off, tails curly, tails bent. You’ll see every conceivable thing. Nobody is going to be swimming where they’re belonging, because most of them are geriatric sperm who are on a walker that you just can no longer catch a glimpse of. During the clean-out, you’ll get some really interesting crap there. Sometimes, it’s all dead. Because it sat there long enough to be all dead. Make sure you don’t get a glimpse of that first clean-out. Just save it for after three. Now when you see it, you should see sperm all moving, the tail (at that point) just has a gentle swish (it’s not that lashing that you will see on a microscope when they’re entering an electron; when they’re entering that egg, that tail is just lashing to give force to the head to get into that egg). You’ll see that. You may see the occasional blood in a collection. If you have been getting ready to ship that collection, ship it. Go ahead and ship it. And then after you have done it, then examine the outside of the penis. A lot of times, the collection (whatever you’re doing, whatever device you’ve used, or your technique) maybe could be a little more gentle. One of the things we’re missing on the collection piece is we are likening it to the human male. The human male ejaculates with friction on the shaft of his penis. So what do we do when we get ready to collect our dog? We decide to put our hand on his penis and provide the friction that so desperately he needs, according to us. But if you ever watch them breed, he has very little friction. The little sperm component is ejacultaed within a couple of seconds. It’s a quickie-quickie. And it drips. It doesn’t have ejaculatory force. So you don’t want to do any kind of friction on the penis. I have to say: men who collect are much worse about that friction on the penis thing. So, if you have any of that going on, then you check that penis. And it’s always good to have some normal saline (and there’s recipes all over the Internet; it’s easy to make: hot water, salt, easy-peasy) and you just use that to rinse off the penis after, if there’s been any blood. And you keep checking. Blood in the semen does not mean you cannot use it. So you’d still want to ship it, because those collections are pretty important. Another good idea when you’re doing chill is do a collection, lay off for an hour, run down to the local Wendy’s, have a hamburger, take your dog with you, take a break, go back in an hour, collect him again. With almost no extra expense, no extra time, you’ve got twice as much sperm to withstand that chilling. Of course, with freezing, that’s a whole thing. 

Laura Reeves [32:18] That’s a whole podcast all by itself. 

Myra Harris [32:21] But interesting! 

Laura Reeves [32:22] Absolutely. The only other one I would ask you about or add to that from anecdotal and personal information: urine in the semen is a bad thing. 

Myra Harris [32:33] Urine in the semen is a bad thing. If you have taken the dog out and let him pee—

Laura Reeves [32:44] That was my point. Make sure he goes pee!

Myra Harris [32:48] Make sure he goes pee! Then you should not have that. And you should also make sure she pees, because her bladder can also kind of (if it’s big enough) block off that vaginal passageway and make uncomfortable breeding. As long as we’re on that little, quick topic: after a bitch whelps, make sure she is constantly peeing. Because a full bladder will cause bleeding on the uterus that is almost uncontrollable, and it’s easily fixed by something so simple as either cathing or walking them. Humans, too. It’s the same thing. Empty your bladder, the bleeding stops. 

Laura Reeves [33:27] Interesting, interesting. Okay! Well, Myra, this has been absolutely fascinating and fabulous, as always. I just adore talking to you. I know that our listeners are going to enjoy this as well, so thank you so much for joining us!

Myra Harris [33:40] I hope they like it! Thank you!

Laura Reeves [33:43] I know they will!