Episode 6: Dr. Chris Zink, DVM PhD: Proper fitness and conditioning for your dogs

About Dr. Chris Zink: Previously named Veterinarian of the Year by the AVMA, Dr. Chris Zink is an award-winning author of numerous books and co-editor of the first ever book on Canine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, Co-Founder of Avidog-Zink Ventures, and a world-renowned expert in canine sports medicine and rehabilitation, with over 125 titles in Agility, Obedience, Conformation, Tracking, Hunt Tests, Barn Hunt, Nosework, Coursing, and Rally on dogs from the Sporting, Hound, Working, Terrier and Herding groups. Dr. Zink was also instrumental in establishing the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation as the newest specialty in veterinary medicine.

Dr. Zink discusses the Fit for Life program with Laura. The program was developed in response to seeing a lot of dogs with a lot of injuries, combined with the knowledge that being at a certain weight and fitness level can help prevent these injuries. Dr. Zink started to see that most people have no idea that dogs need to be conditioned and fit just like humans do to improve their health spans.

There’s a lack of focus on our dogs’ healthy weights - added weight has a lot of negative effects for dogs - it affects everything about our dogs’ lives, including leading to things like increased chance of arthritis, which affects mobility issues.

Laura and Dr. Zink discuss the importance of starting your dogs right - chubby puppies are set up for a lifetime of trouble, so it’s important to start conditioning and health monitoring young.

Fit for Life outlines many low-impact exercises that you can do at home with little effort; Dr. Zink gives an example of a rear-leg strength exercise that’s featured in the program.

Laura and Dr. Zink talk about the importance of repetitions and how you can use reps to get to overload. Fit for Life lets you know how to observe your dog as it exercises, so that you know when they are getting to that ‘overload’ point. Getting to overload is the important thing, not the number of reps or the amount of weight.

Dr. Zink then gives the background behind the Fit to be Tied program and how important it is that breeding dogs be fit. The program applies specific criteria to each stage of the breeding process (what you should and shouldn’t do). While you want your breeding dogs to be fit, you don’t want them as thin as you would want a performance dog.

In short, why is conditioning important?

1: Dogs that are weak are more likely to be injured, and injuries are expensive.

2: Fitness equates to longevity - who doesn’t want their dogs to live longer?

Transcription:

INTRO

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Laura Reeves [0:53] Welcome to the Good Dog Pod! I am your host, Laura Reeves, and I’m being joined today by Chris Zink. Chris has teamed up with Good Dog, with the Avidog Zink Ventures, and we are talking today about conditioning for our dogs. I’m really excited. Chris just told me a new thing I hadn’t heard of, which is her Fit to Be Tied program for fitness for dogs in breeding programs. I had heard of Fit for Life, which is fitness for all dogs of all ages. I’m really excited for Chris to show us some of the projects that they have going, some of the information and educational opportunities that are available. Welcome, Chris!

Chris Zink [1:36] Thank you very much.

Laura Reeves [1:37] And I see your old dog in the background. Welcome to the old dog, too!

Chris Zink [1:42] That’s a Golden Retriever back there.

Laura Reeves [1:44] It looks to be a happy Golden Retriever. So Chris, let’s start with Fit for Life. Let’s start with that particular program. I really want to emphasize that Fit to Be Tied, but let’s start with Fit for Life so we have some ideas, some basis of what we’re starting with.

Chris Zink [1:58] I thought about this for a long, long time as a sports medicine veterinarian and rehabilitation veterinarian. We see a lot of dogs (whether they are active performance dogs or everybody’s beloved family member) and we see a lot of injuries. I see a lot of injuries. A lot of times, I’m thinking to myself: what we know about humans is that being at a proper weight—being properly physically fit—improves longevity in humans. We think about this concept of healthspan, where we want our cells to live a long time but not just to live many years, but many healthy years. The same thing applies to dogs. We want them to have a long healthspan, where they are going to be able to be active as a part of our lives for many, many years rather than going into old age and fading away, etc., which we so often see. As I started to work with people that have particularly active dogs (dogs that do a lot of retrieving or swimming or performance dogs), what I started to see was: most people had really no idea that dogs need to be conditioned and fed and well-muscled, just like we do, to improve healthspan. We might not actually improve our own health span, but we’d love to improve our dog’s health span! 

Laura Reeves [3:26] You know, Chris, one of the things that I am frequently struck by (and I was struck by it most often when I was doing pet grooming a few years ago) is the lack of focus on our pets’, our dogs’, healthy weight. I understand I’m a little fluffy, but I think those extra pounds (and I’d like you to speak to this if you would) are more damaging to our dogs than they are even to us. 

Chris Zink [3:58] Well, certainly we know that added weight has a lot of negative effects. We read about it all of the time. Body fat is an endocrine tissue, and it’s affecting everything about our dogs’ lives all of the time. The other thing is, of course, that it leads to an increased prevalence of arthritis. We know that huge numbers of dogs have arthritis. And then you end up with this vicious cycle, where it affects their mobility, then they gain more weight because they’re less mobile, etc., their arthritis becomes worse. So you get into this vicious cycle. Well, actually, in the Fit for Life program (and the Fit to Be Tied program), we have a new way for you to be able to assess your dog’s weight. It’s kinda cool.

Laura Reeves [4:41] I want to hear about it. 

Chris Zink [4:44] Here’s the thing. If you have a large dog, weighing it is really difficult. You’re going to pick the thing up, you’re going to step on the scale, then you’ve got to get someone to read it. Then they’re going to be making the subtraction. You know. Then they’re going to be thinking about how much you weigh, and you probably don’t want that. 

Laura Reeves [4:59] No! 

Chris Zink [5:01] And the other thing is that weight (body weight) is a matter of fat plus organ size and plus musculary. We want to be able to separate out how strong a dog is from how fat they are. We like to be able to know those two things separately. Ideally, what we do is we actually take a little pinch of tissue on the side of the rib cage where there’s nothing but skin, then a layer of fat, then the ribs. We take a little pinch of that. Then we monitor that. Every week or so. We just take that little pinch. We feel how thick it is and actually that tells us about body fat, whereas weight tells us about changes in muscle as well as changes in fat. 

 Laura Reeves [5:45] So now we’re going to pinch an inch on our dogs? 

Chris Zink [5:50] Hopefully not an inch. 

Laura Reeves [5:53] That’s immediately what came to mind was the old thing about if you can pinch an inch, right? But yes, I think an inch on a dog would be a lot. I like that. And that’s an easy monitoring system for people in their homes, for people who are breeders, to just track. For people who are raising puppies for the first time who aren’t really sure what the proper way should be for their growing puppies.

Chris Zink [6:20] Exactly, and we do see a lot of chubby, fat puppies. We really don’t want that either. It sets them up for a lifetime of these kinds of problems. 

Laura Reeves [6:28] And joint issues. I always think about the extra pounds on their joints. 

Chris Zink [6:33] Right. Here’s the thing: it’s very difficult for us to know how in pain a dog is. They hide it really, really well. Especially, for example, if they have pain in both front limbs. They’re not going to necessarily look like they’re limping. Because they can’t. It hurts equally. That’s a really important factor. What I’ve learned over time is that people think that, for example, they come home from work and they throw the ball a lot for their dogs, so they feel like the dog got a lot of exercise. But if he really gets the kind of exercise that he needs, ideally, exercise would be very low impact. For example lifting weight is a very low impact exercise. It would be able to be done any time. Cold weather, hot weather. Ideally, it would be done inside the house in air-conditioned comfort or heat. Ideally, it would not require very much effort on the part of the human. What we did was we set up this program so it would encompass all of those things. It would be really doable in a short amount of time. Non-impact. Targeted to the specific areas that the dog needs to work on, because every dog doesn’t have the same body. And then we show, by the use of exercise videos and lots of personal support help, how to get that done in just a few minutes a week. 

Laura Reeves [7:50] Give us some ideas. What is one of the exercise that you can do with your dog that’s part of the program for Fit for Life?

Chris Zink [8:00] We have 32 exercise videos. What we do is we target them. They’re going to be either in the category of front leg, core, or rear leg exercises. Let me give you a really fun one, actually. An exercise that helps with rear leg strength: what we call it is Front Feet Perched. Basically, you put the front legs elevated on a perch. It could be something the size of an upside-down food bowl for an average size dog, for example. The dog puts their feet on that perch and then they use their rear feet to step sideways around in circles in one direction, then to the other direction, at various speeds. And then we gradually make it a little bit harder and a little bit harder by doing things like gradually elevating how high the front legs are, so that puts more weight onto the rear. Having items that the dog has to step over, like poles or a ladder, where the dog’s rear feet have to step over those obstacles.

Laura Reeves [9:01] So they have to come up—not just shuffle.

Chris Zink [9:02] Exactly. They have to lift their foot up and place it over the obstacle. Or we might do it on changes of surface. Like for little puppies, we might do it on gravel and grass, where they have to experience the feeling on their feet, of stepping on a different surface, which is actually part of educating the neurological system of developing puppies. 

Laura Reeves [9:24] Yes. I have a litter of 13 Wirehaired Pointers we were just talking about. Three weeks old. They just got moved into their play pin. There’s three different surfaces for them to walk on.

Chris Zink [9:31] Fantastic! That’s really good. That’s really, really important. I don’t know whether most people realize this but actually there’s an entire component of the nervous system that senses things like different sensations on the feet and then sends those messages up to the brain. It’s part of their education. 

Laura Reeves [9:48] Okay, so that’s very fun. Just to do multitasking, you could turn that into a trick if you wanted to do a trick title for some dogs.

Chris Zink [9:58] You could. You actually could. Lots of our people have. Although the real difference between a trick and exercises is a subtle difference, but you can do both at the same time. The key to exercise is you always have to think about how you can make it just a little bit harder so that the dog goes into overload. In a trick, for example, the dog just does the thing. In exercise, they do the thing and then you make it a little bit harder and a little bit harder and a little bit harder. But that’s the main difference. 

Laura Reeves [10:28] So with dogs (and this is fascinating to me; I love this kind of stuff), I know what I do for my big dogs when I’m running them and getting them ready for a field trial, for example, is repetition. When we lift weights, we’re supposed to lift X amount of weight, X number of times. Are we working on repetitions? How are we thinking about that with our dogs?

Chris Zink [10:48] This is a fantastic question! This is really, really important. If you were to go to a personal trainer, they’ll give you repetitions. But what they’re doing is they’re observing you, to see how difficult it is for you, and they’re giving you a number of reps to do to get it so that it becomes quite difficult at the end of the number of reps. They’re observing you for this. They are actually working you to overload, and they’re only using the reps as a way to get to overload. What we do in Fit for Life is we give you a number of reps, but we tell you what to observe in the dog to know that you’re getting to overload. Let me give you an example from human strength training. Let’s say you want to build your biceps. If you pick up a 1-pound dumbbell, you could do 100 bicep curls and you’d be really doing nothing. You’d never work to overload, and you’d be barely maintaining your strength. If you picked up a 35-pound dumbbell, you probably couldn’t even do one bicep curl. I know I couldn’t. Then I’m doing one rep, but I’m not getting any strength training either. I didn’t even get one rep done! But if I picked up a 15-pound dumbbell, I could maybe do six or seven, and then on the seventh, I would get all kind of shaky, and I’d have to put it down. Now I’ve worked to overload, so it wasn’t actually the number of reps alone, but it was what number of reps gets you to overload. That’s the key concept of strength training for humans and for dogs that we have to understand. It’s artificial to say, “I did X number of reps.” The real thing is, “I worked to overload.” 

Laura Reeves [12:34] I love that. And can you—without giving away trade secrets—give us an idea of what some of the signs are that people are going to look for that says, “Okay, my dog has reached overload. My dog has reached the point that it’s succeeded in exercising to the point that I need it to exercise.”

Chris Zink [12:54] Well, the main one is that they’re going to lose their ability to do the exercise. Let’s say you’re doing a very simple exercise where you’re just lifting your dog’s front leg (one front leg) and he has to balance on his other three legs. You’re timing it. One of the things that we do to test a dog’s strength is we actually do that very simple exercise because we like to see that you get to 120 before the dog has to put the leg down and fidgets so much you have to let go of it. Early on, the dog might only get to 20 seconds or 25 seconds. He’s shifting away from you and trying to get away and everything because he needs to put that leg down. So then we know that that’s a sign of overload. He couldn’t keep that leg up. And then sometimes we’ll lift two legs up. We’ll lift one front leg up and the diagonally opposite rear leg up, and then we wait to measure time to fidgeting essentially. That’s when the dog is going to overload. Actually, when you do that particular exercise where you lift one front leg and a diagonally opposite rear leg, the dog will usually start to sink in the rear. And they’ll sit down because they can’t support themselves anymore.

Laura Reeves [14:06] Fascinating. 

Chris Zink [14:08] So overload looks a little bit different for each exercise, but it’s basically a failure to be successful at the exercise.

Laura Reeves [14:15] Okay. That makes perfect sense. So all of these things are very important for any dog. I think this is so important and we miss making this connection too many times. Can you draw that connection for people who are not competing with their dogs? Who are not doing anything with their dogs besides sitting on the couch and watching Netflix and eating popcorn? Why is it just as important for the dog to be fit as it is for you to be fit? They don’t have to look good in yoga pants! What is it that is important and why is it important to the dog and to your relationship to the dog and the dog’s long term health? That connection, I think, is frequently lost. 

Chris Zink [15:00] Okay, two main reasons come to mind. Number one: Dogs that are weak are more likely to be injured. Injuries are expensive. Think about all of the dogs that have had cranial cruciate ligament surgery. You know, we’re talking about something that’s $4,000–$7,000 and months out of the dog’s lifetime and relationship with you. Although, I guess your relationship can grow as you work together in rehab. But pain is involved for the dog. So dogs that have muscles that are weak are more susceptible to injuries and just injuries from doing regular things, like playing around in the yard, wrestling with other dogs, retrieving balls, etc. That’s a big thing. But we also know (and science has been done again and again in humans) fitness equates to longevity. Which one of us doesn’t want our dog to live longer? And to live a healthier life.

Laura Reeves [15:54] This is the Fountain of Youth, people!

Chris Zink [15:56] Yeah, it is. 

Laura Reeves [15:58] Awesome. So now let’s shift focus and let’s talk about Fit to Be Tied because I think, as a dog breeder, this is fascinating to me. And I really have not heard anything about this before and so I am very excited to get some details on this. 

Chris Zink [16:15] Actually, it all started with Fit to Be Tied. Gayle Watkins, who is the founder and CEO of Avidog, actually is the one who came to me and asked me to help her. Avidog International is a group that’s interested in breeding healthier dogs—healthy, stable, long-lived puppies. Everything that’s involved to do with that.

Laura Reeves [16:40] Good Dog listeners, remember we just had a conversation with Dr. Gayle Watkins not too long ago? 

Chris Zink [16:46] Right, and she recognized the importance of fitness in breeding dogs. Think about how important it is for the whole whelping process, that the whelping process is shorter, that the puppies are healthier and more stable, all of this. We know this in humans. Why can’t we apply this in dogs? So she came to me with that and that’s how we began: by setting up a fitness program that would apply specific criteria for fitness to each of the stages of the breeding cycle, not only for bitches but also for stud dogs. It’s a hard thing to breed. It’s an exhausting process. 

Laura Reeves [17:26] Anybody that’s ever watched a natural breeding, it wears me out just looking at it!

Chris Zink [17:31] I know! And people seem to think it’s just this easy thing that happens naturally. 

Laura Reeves [17:36] No, definitely not.

Chris Zink [17:38] People are always asking questions like, “I have a pregnant bitch. What should I be doing with her for exercise? What shouldn’t I be doing? What’s safe? What could injure her puppies?” All of this. And then after the puppies are born, in all those different stages of nursing and weaning: “How soon can I exercise my bitch afterwards?” We’ve divided up the breeding cycle into those various stages and applied criteria. You can do this and you shouldn’t do that at each one of those stages. It’s actually very, very effective. We’re tracking the data, too, because we want to see whether this actually does what the science shows. 

Laura Reeves [18:15] That’s what I was just about to ask! How long have you guys been doing this?

Chris Zink [18:19] Five years. 

Laura Reeves [18:22] Okay. So you should be getting some decent data by now.

Chris Zink [18:24] We do. It’s mostly dependent on the breeders gathering the data themselves, so yes, we’re hoping to put together those records and take a look. Subjectively, we are seeing much faster whelping periods, healthy puppies. Theoretically, we know that the science suggests that there should be more puppies, that the puppies should be healthier, and that whelping times should be shorter. We’re just in the process of gathering those data, and we will publish them when we get them.

Laura Reeves [18:54] Very, very, very cool! So give us just a few samples. Say, for example, I’ve got this Wirehaired Pointer over here with 13 puppies. She’s exhausted just feeding them. What can I be doing to exercise her right now? 

Chris Zink [19:07] When were the puppies born? They’re very young, aren’t they? 

Laura Reeves [19:10] They are three weeks yesterday. 

Chris Zink [19:12] Right. So in that first three weeks, there’s not an awful lot that bitch is going to be doing. She’s going to be laying it out with the puppies, nursing them.

Laura Reeves [19:18] She’s tired! 

Chris Zink [19:20] Getting over having 13 puppies. After that, at about three weeks, when the puppies start to be a lot more active and everything, there are things that you can set up for her that will cause her to exercise more, even ways that you can set up that she can jump in and out of the whelping box. We give criteria for the amount of types of exercise. For example, simple core exercises are good at that time, to start to regain her previously svelte physique. Of course this is going to be different if she had had a C-section versus a natural whelping. So you have to think about what we are going to do. How long do we have to wait after the C-section before we do core exercises? But we do want to do them, because we want to regain that strength. There are criteria for all of those stages. And things that you shouldn’t do. For example, when in pregnancy can you let a bitch swim or maybe should she not swim? We don’t recommend swimming, for example, in the third trimester. But previously, lots of people were unsure of what their dogs can do during pregnancy in terms of exercise or not.

Laura Reeves [20:32] Here’s a curiosity question for you. I have bird dogs, pointing dogs, and I have always heard the myth that having the bitch go on point (find a bird and point it), that there’s some kind of thing that goes in their head. Our females are out working birds frequently, pretty much up to the end. 

Chris Zink [20:53] And you’re saying…

Laura Reeves [20:55] That that transfers to the puppies. 

Chris Zink [20:57] I don’t think there’s science on that.

Laura Reeves [21:00] I don’t think so either.

Chris Zink [21:02] But I actually believe it, too. Because it’s neurological. There’s a lot of neurological things that are being established in puppies, especially during the third trimester. Their brains are developing very, very quickly and expanding very, very quickly. And then the other thing is, of course, that the brain has more cells than it will ever have in its whole lifetime late in pregnancy and early after whelping. And then the neurons start to die. Some of them die, the ones that aren’t being used and aren’t as important. Does something like that give information to the brain that those are the important ones to keep? I think probably it does. Although I don’t think it’s been studied.

Laura Reeves [21:40] No, I don’t think it’s been studied. It falls under the category of old wives’ tales, so I was curious while I had somebody who had a thought on that.

Chris Zink [21:46] Some of these old wives’ tales, there’s reasons for them. Some of these old-time people, they know stuff! 

Laura Reeves [21:53] They do know stuff! So many of my early breeding mentors were old. Like, old when I knew them. Like, founding-members-of-the-National-Club old. Lots of good information in there. Back to other things that we can do with our dogs when they are pregnant, after their pregnancy, and then to build them up if we plan to breed them again in the future. 

Chris Zink [22:18] Right. There’s two components. There’s not only physical strength; we’re going to really target the core. Secondarily, we’re going to target the rear, because the rear gets less exercise than the front, just by virtue of the fact that it basically carries 40% of the dog’s weight all the time and the front holds 60%. We’re going to really focus on the core, and we’re going to secondarily focus on the rear. We’re going to do a little bit with the front, but not as much. But then there’s also the question of how much weight they should be carrying, because we know that, for example, women that are triathletes—probably not a good time to think about getting pregnant, because they’re probably not going to be able to. Their cycles are different. Their whole endocrine system is different. This is, of course, science. We know this in breeding dogs. We want them to be in a stage where they do have some body fat, and where they’re actually in a gaining level of body condition, when they’re getting ready to ovulate, etc. So the criteria that we might have for thinness for a performance dog does not apply to bitches or to stud dogs when they’re getting ready to breed. There’s differences. There’s all these differences that apply to breeding [23:30], which nobody has ever really investigated. Although there is data to show it in other breeding animals; cattle and farm animals, horses, we know about really well. 

Laura Reeves [23:42] I just did a fascinating interview with Myra Savant-Harris here on the Good Dog Pod, talking about the stud dog’s role in natural breeding. We talked about that earlier. What are some of the things that we’re going to do with our stud dogs to make them better able to stand up to the natural breeding process? 

Chris Zink [24:02] Three things come to mind that are very important. Number one: core strength. Number two: rear leg strength. And number three: proprioception. Proprioception is the dog’s understanding of where its body parts are in space. It’s just a fancy word for that. There are specific neurological pathways that can be strengthened for proprioception. Think about it. A stud dog used to know exactly where his rear feet are. 

Laura Reeves [24:33] And where all of his other parts are!

Chris Zink [24:35] And how does he position himself so he can get it done? How does he use his front legs to grip and to hold himself in position? Proprioception is something that is oftentimes forgotten or not even thought of.

Laura Reeves [24:48] Never would have thought of that, as a concept! But you’re absolutely right.

Chris Zink [24:51] The cool thing is: since there are specific neurological pathways for that, then we know we can make it better. We can make it better neurologically, by practice. Just like any other kind of practice.

Laura Reeves [25:03] And do you do things like cavalettis? What are you doing to get them to pay attention to where their feet are?

Chris Zink [25:08] Even better than cavalettis, which a lot of people use, I think there’s something much, much better. And that’s just a simple ladder made of PVC or you can use an extension ladder or a wooden straight ladder. Here’s why that’s better than cavaletti. Cavalettis only help the dog know where to place their feet forward and backward, but not sideways. A ladder has the sides of it that also teaches a dog lateral understanding of foot placement. Here’s the thing: what you can do is you can just place a ladder on the ground. The key is (and everybody finds this very difficult) you must do it extremely slowly so that the dog is thinking about foot placement. You have the dog step through the ladder, from one end to the other. One foot at a time, even holding each foot as long as a full second in between each rung. Once the dog can do that without ticking the sides of the rungs of the ladder, then you have him or her go forward through the ladder and then followed by backward. As they go forward, they memorize the distances between the rungs. And as they go backward, they step their feet carefully back without touching the rungs. Once they can do that, then you have them go forward uphill, backward downhill, forward downhill, backward uphill. Forward and backward sideways on a hill, where their uphill leg has to lift higher than their downhill leg. And then you can even place the ladder perpendicular to the direction you’re looking in. You can have them put their front feet in the ladder and step sideways. You can have them put the rear feet in the ladder and step sideways. You can then put the ladder on hills and have them step sideways. It’s a simple, easy exercise. With lots of food rewards. You can drop the food between the rungs. Dogs love it. But the key is to do it slowly, so they think about where they’re playing their feet.

Laura Reeves [27:02] Right. That is one of the coolest things. Not even just the ladder (I’ve heard that), but the idea of making them back up, which I think is fabulous, and using the ladder to get the lateral piece. I think those two things are really, really clicking in my head. That makes sense, about rear-end awareness. 

Chris Zink [27:24] think about a bitch with a bunch of puppies in a whelping box. They need the lateral aspect. They need to know they’re not going to step on them sideways, just as much as forward or backward, maybe even more. 

Laura Reeves [27:26] Maybe even more, as I watch this one try not to step on her puppies. It’s a balancing act! Okay, well, those are absolutely fabulous. I know that you guys are now working with Good Dog. There’s going to be these videos and programs available to Good Dog Breeders is my understanding.

Chris Zink [27:55] Yes. 

Laura Reeves [27:55] Excellent. 

Chris Zink [27:56] Here’s the thing: Good Dog is all about not only linking up people who have dogs with people who want dogs, but then you don’t just desert the puppy. The puppy is a living being and you want to be able to set them up for a lifetime of health. So, it really continues on into not only their first year of life, but if you can establish them in a program during the first year of life, that can be continued on. It feeds into longevity and health. 

Laura Reeves [28:27] Absolutely. We talk about it on Pure Dog Talk, the podcast that I do separate from Good Dog, as 24/7 tech support. That puppy goes home with 24/7 tech support. You have a problem? Please don’t get on the Internet and ask a random stranger. Please just call me. Because I will help you! And I think that that’s one of the great things that Good Dog is doing, is trying to provide those resources both to the breeders and to the buyers and make them super accessible. 

Chris Zink [28:56] It’s one of the differentiating factors of going to a breeder.

Laura Reeves [29:00] Entirely. Without any question at all. Because you don’t have to ask Dr. Google. You have my phone number. Alright, well, thank you so much, Chris! I really, really appreciate your time. I am super excited to follow up on this. As a Good Dog Breeder, I am going to be checking out all the ladder walking that I need to do! 

Chris Zink [29:21] It’s been great talking to you. I’m very excited about your litter of 13 puppies! That’s an adventure you’re going to have.

Laura Reeves [29:28] I’ve kept 13 puppies alive for three weeks, so we shall see! I’m very, very, very hopeful we can get through this unscathed—all of us. 

Chris Zink [29:37] Good luck on that. Enjoy the process! 

Laura Reeves [29:40] It is the best thing in the world. I’ve been breeding dogs for 40 years, and there is still nothing that I would rather do than sit with a lap full of puppies.