Episode 197: The Most Common Breeding Problems

Fran Smith, DVM PhD DACT discusses how to avoid common problems with breeding. The number one cause of reproductive failure is improper timing. Learn about normal cycling behavior, cycle intervals and progesterone testing to help you determine the ideal time to breed your female. Learn about breeding options from natural service to side-by-side AI to chilled and frozen semen.

Watch the video version of the presentation here.

Transcript

Nicole Engelman  00:04

Welcome to the Good Dog Pod. Join us every other Wednesday when we discuss all things dogs, from health and veterinary care to training and behavior science, as well as the ins and outs of Good Dog and how our platform can help you successfully run your breeding program. Follow us and join Good Dog's mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them.

Nicole Engelman  00:28

I just want to officially kick off Good Dog's fifth annual health symposium. I can't believe this was our fifth one. I remember when this was just an idea that we had that we were so excited to do, and now we've been doing it for five years now, and I think each year gets better and better for our community. This is truly one of the highlights of our year. It's how we're able to give back to all of you by providing these free virtual opportunities to learn really cutting edge information from canine health experts like Dr. Smith about how we can all raise the bar on our programs and together just really shape a healthier future for our dogs. It's very exciting work that everyone here is doing. These are not just presentations. They are interactive conversations where you can ask questions and get answers from the experts who are really shaping the future of canine health. This symposium is really at the heart of what we do at Good Dog, which is making sure every breeder, no matter where in the country you're located, has access to the latest health insights and research to continue growing and improving their programs. Because when you empower yourself with knowledge, you're not just supporting your program. You're helping us really build that healthier and happier future for dogs everywhere, and together as a community of breeders, we're just proving that education and community can really transform the world of dog breeding one conversation at a time. So it sounds like very lofty, big goals, but this is how you chip away at that, and we are all doing that work together just by attending this first session of our symposium. So we couldn't be more excited to officially kick things off with Dr. Fran Smith. You know her. You love her. She's joined us for many webinars this year, and she is kicking off our symposium to present on the most common breeding problems. 

So in this discussion, Dr. Smith is going to talk about how to master breeding timing and explore AI services to maximize your reproductive success rates. I want to just extend a big thank you to our friends at Purina Pro Plan for sponsoring this event and helping us bring it to life. Of course, we want to hear from you with questions, commentary. We're going to have a dedicated Q and A segment of this presentation. We also got some previously submitted questions already, so we'll try to answer those first. But please ask as many as you would like, and we will hopefully get to as many of them as we can during the Q and A segment at the end. Last housekeeping thing that I will mention: we're going to be posting a quiz after each session that you can take to test your knowledge based on what Dr. Smith presents. So if you complete all four quizzes by the end of our symposium in October, you will be automatically eligible to win prizes from our partners like Purina, Snuggle Puppy, Embark and more, and we are going to announce all of those giveaway winners at the end of the month. We're going to put that quiz in our private Facebook group immediately after this, as well as in our Friday newsletter. So you have until the end of the month to complete it.

And before we officially pass things over to Dr. Smith, I just want to share a little bit more about Good Dog for anyone who is new and joining us. Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them by advocating for dog breeders, educating the public and promoting canine health and responsible ownership through events just like this. We're a community created just for dog breeders to connect with serious Good Dog applicants from all across the country, to find forever homes for your puppies. And we support breeders in a number of ways, whether it's through education or just tools to seamlessly place their puppies from start to finish—so everything from getting your litters listed, connecting with buyers, accepting payments securely. Good Dog is really here to help breeders with anything and everything relating to managing their programs and really helping them thrive. So if you are not yet a member of our community, we would love to have you apply to join and learn more about us and our mission at GoodDog.com/join. In case you're not yet a member of our community, we would absolutely love to have you join us. 

And last thing for me, and then I promise I will stop talking and pass it over to the lady of the hour. I wanted to share quickly a little bit about Dr. Smith, who is going to be presenting today. Dr. Smith became a diplomat of the College of Theriogenology in 1986 and since that time, she has been in private practice as a small animal practitioner, specializing in canine reproduction. Dr. Smith is one of very few board certified theriogenologists in private practice. Her expertise in genetic counseling, chilled and frozen semen, and reproductive infertility of male and female canines is known throughout the US. Dr. Smith frequently speaks to breed groups. Also to Good Breeders at Good Dog, veterinary associations and students, and the general public. Dr. Smith retired from full time practice in March 2023, but maintains licenses in Minnesota, Mississippi, and Colorado. Dr. Smith grew up in a military family that bred German Shepherd dogs, and her commitment to veterinary medicine began at a very early age—seven years of age, to be exact—and was confirmed in her high school yearbook, which stated that her goal was the pattern of 40 little feet—not human. So with that, Dr. Smith, I'm going to pass things over to you for the first session of our symposium.

Dr. Francis Smith  05:34

Thank you Nicole, and thank you Dr. Ritter and Steven—all of whom helped me tremendously in this whole process. So today we're going to talk about the most common problem in reproduction. And I think all of you will gain a lot from this. As I just mentioned to Nate and Nicole and Stephen, even reproduction specialists do breedings that do not result in puppies. So I recently bred a Labrador female with perfect timing. I have my own progesterone machine—and a good one. She was bred perfectly. Had a normal cycle. She was bred with frozen semen, and she was bred once vaginally and once surgically, a day apart. Timing was perfect. We ultrasounded her yesterday, and she's not pregnant. So why is that? We're going to talk about that today. But I want you to know that even with natural service, with the stud dog breeding the female, with normal cycles, and really good semen quality, you can expect to have a litter of puppies about 85% of the time. So it's not an automatic “you breed them, then we'll have puppies.” So as Nicole said, I'm a veterinarian with a PhD, a diplomat in American College of Theriogenology. I'm also the President of the OFA, which is the canine health information system, President of the Labrador Retriever Club Incorporated, which is the parent club for the Labrador breed nationally, and the Health Chair for the Labrador Retriever Club. So I'm board certified. Recently retired. I still do get calls from people who say, “Can you treat my dog?” I can, or I could in some states, but not all. I'm a breeder, owner, trainer, handler, and judge of Retriever breeds. I do also judge quite a number of sweepstakes breeds that aren't Retrievers, but I am not a licensed conformation judge. You saw that I'm the President of the Labrador Club and Health Chairperson for the Labrador Retriever Club. Next week, the Labrador Retriever Club is having their National Specialty, which will be held at Purina Farms and, again, sponsored heavily by Purina Pro Plan. 

So the canine reproductive cycle has three stages: proestrus, estrus, and diestrus. And we're going to talk about these in detail. Proestrus can last from one to 27 days in the female. The average is nine days. That is the stage of the cycle where the boys are very, very interested. There's vaginal swelling, varying amounts of vaginal bleeding, but typically the female, in a natural service situation, will not allow the male to breed her. Estrus is defined as the acceptance period of the female, and that can last three to 21 days. Again, the average is about nine days. Diestrus is at the end of/after estrus, and it can last from 60 to 70 days. And then the last cycle stage is anestrus which lasts several months, and it results in varying inner estrus intervals. If you learn nothing else from this talk, this next statement is the most important: The most common cause of failure to conceive is improper timing of breeding. And I'm going to stress to you how to figure that out. Also realize that all I'm talking to you about today is most applicable to natural service, but we're going to talk about fresh AI, chilled semen breedings, and even frozen semen breedings. All of those still go back to the idea that proper timing of breeding is necessary for conception. The second most common failure to conceive is stud dog issues. 

So proestrus, again, is the period from the beginning of vulvar bleeding until the female will allow the male to mount. Now, with so many of us doing AI today, we don't oftentimes even know when that was. When I was doing my PhD on frozen semen, we actually did chart normal breeding behavior and timed that with when we were doing our frozen semen breedings. Estrus is the period when the female shows signs of receptivity and may allow mating. We're going to talk about that as well. Improperly socialized or very early weaned females may never be receptive to males because they have missed out on early dog interaction, social behavior. And diestrus begins after ovulation and continues until the time of whelping, or in the case of a female who is not pregnant, until her progesterone returns to baseline, and we will talk about that. It is a misconception that a female cycle will repeat itself at subsequent cycles. One of the most common questions I would get in my practice was “I bred my female last time on day nine and 11, and she had eight puppies. So I can assume that that will work this time and she will also have puppies. Is that true?” No. In general, the cycle will be similar, but it certainly is not going to be exact, and using that thought as the time to breed or not breed will not result in good luck with conception. The other thing that I have heard, and again, this has changed over the years, as we do more progesterone usage, it used to be said that you should breed the female after her vaginal discharge turns straw to clear color, about 15 to 20% of normal females bleed throughout their entire cycle. So they bleed in proestrus all the way through they're in diestrus, which would be way too late for breeding to result in a fertile cycle. Ovulation timing can be used to minimize failed conception. In the female, the hormone best utilized to determine when to breed is progesterone. Progesterone is an endogenous—meaning it's produced in the animal itself—steroid and progestogen sex hormone that is involved in cycling behavior and pregnancy and dogs and other species. This is a good point to talk about the idea. And I have breeders tell me, “Well, I breed them when the stud dog tells me, and they always know.” That also is a fallacy. There are stud dogs who will breed a female who is not even in her heat cycle, and the hormone that typically triggers most males to be really excited to breed is a rise in progesterone. So the boys are not always right. Progesterone is produced in the ovaries and, in a much smaller extent, the adrenal glands. You need progesterone, which is produced in the ovaries from the corpus luteum, to maintain pregnancy. If your progesterone is too low, you won't be pregnant. So the two hormones most involved in timing and breathing are LH (luteinizing hormone), which triggers ovulation, and progesterone, which we are going to call P4, which is responsible for maintaining pregnancy and uterine quiescence. So what does uterine quiescence mean? If you have a really irritated uterus and it's active, implantation (if it occurs) will be poor and the litter can be resolved or lost. So this is a really important chart for all of you to look at. 

Hormonal events during the bitch heat cycle. So the hormones that we're most concerned about are estradiol, LH, and progesterone. Estradiol, as you can see by that red line, starts to rise well before the female actually is fully into estrus—certainly the very, very beginning of proestrus. We typically don't measure estradiol in the dog because the assays are difficult, and you're not going to be able to have them—what I would call—bench side. Instead, we look at the green line, which is LH. That is luteinizing hormone; that is the hormone that tells the ovary ovulate, and theoretically, ovulation occurs briefly and rapidly, which means that if you're going to use LH testing (so it's a very quick burst), you have to do LH testing multiple times, typically on multiple days, in order to be sure you are catching that LH peak, which tells the ovary to ovulate. However, we can, in the dog, use the orange line, or on my screen, it looks orange and yellow. And after the LH peak, progesterone starts to rise. And it rises rapidly and stays high for a very long time. Progesterone is at baseline prior to the beginning of this heat cycle, and it starts to rise towards the end of estrus. By all research parameters, a progesterone level of 2.0 nanograms per mil is associated with the LH peak, which means, once your progesterone gets to be 2, the bitch is near ovulation. So LH again, has a brief peak, so LH testing needs to be done frequently and repeatedly if it is being used to time breeding. A progesterone value of two nanograms per mil is used as an indicator of the LH surge, so it can be more readily used to predict ovulation. Why is that important? It's important to tell us to use for timing of breeding, but also in the case of late in pregnancy, to help us determine when and if we need to do a C section, or if we want to do one because of events in our life, and not necessarily for other reasons, we can time a C section properly. So ovulation in the female canine results in release of an immature egg, what is called a primary oocyte, which cannot be fertilized. Interestingly, the bitch and the mare are the two species that ovulate an immature egg. After maturation of this primary oocyte, in two to three days, the egg can be fertilized. So if you were in a situation where you're only—you have a stud dog for one day only that you borrowed from a friend, or for some reason, your dog is leaving to go to a show—a single breeding two days after ovulation in a normal stud dog with a normal bitch is likely to result in your largest litter size. Progesterone testing may be performed using several modalities, and I just want to comment a little bit about the previous slide. There really is no advantage of back to back breeding. If you breed them on a Tuesday, there's no advantage to breeding again on Wednesday because of how long both the eggs and the sperm survive in the reproduction track. We'll talk about that further on. But there are a number of ways to do progesterone testing. The very first progesterone test that breeders could access, and even veterinarians, were color on metric, so they relied on a color change to measure a level of progesterone. I can tell you because they came out about the time I was doing my PhD. They were not very accurate, and they were worse at around the time of ovulation. Also, they were very subject to the interpretation of the color scene. It was a blue color, a blue to kind of bluish purple, and depending upon your perception of color, it was easy to read them wrong as well. Currently, there are numerous methodologies that we use to measure progesterone. These tests are quantitative. Remember, the ones that were color on metric were what are called qualitative. So you're just saying, “Yeah, progesterone is present.” But with quantitative, we know exactly a number, the amount of progesterone that's in the sample. Progesterone testing, typically, is done with many, many—it can be done in laboratories, individual veterinary practices, research events, places like Antech and Idexx, all of those offer progesterone testing. 

Options for testing, as far as the methodology, include radio immunoassay. That is really, really a fabulous process, but it does require radioisotopes, so it is probably the least commonly used today because of the potential exposure to radiation. Now, I don't mean that you or your dogs would be—I'm talking about the lab technician who is running that test. Liquid chromatography, tandem mass spectrometry and automated immunoassays. Immunoassay is highly correlated with liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. All of this means these are accurate tests. In my Veterinary Hospital in Minnesota, I used a machine called an Immulite, which measured progesterone based on a chemical luminescent technique. But, and here is an important thing, because I do get people who call me and say, “My bitch’s progesterone is seven. When do I need to breed her?” Seven is not the same from lab to lab. So it is really important that you know the values that that particular laboratory or that machine assigns to these events. So at my hospital, because many clients came a long distance to have a bitch bred at our clinic, it was important for us to know that our value of two was correlated with the other reference laboratories. So we would take a sample that was two, split it, and send it to Idexx and Antech to see if our two compared to their two. That's a critical number to know. Likewise, we needed to know when those laboratories felt ovulation occurred, and those laboratories have data that tells you that. So it's very important if you're relying on a machine that you buy yourself, that you do quality control that way, at least initially. Again, at our hospital, we did samples for two. We did it at ovulation, and we did it at 20. And 20 is quite high, but that number was important to us when we were doing frozen semen breeding. So we correlated again, our values for ovulation, optimal breeding levels and timing of greetings with fresh semen, chilled semen and frozen semen. Frozen semen breeding requires the most exact timing, as once you thaw frozen semen, it likely is only viable for about 12 hours in the female reproductive tract. So that's a very narrow spectrum of time. In contrast, based on old research, with natural service, dog sperm can live in the female’s reproductive tract for up to 10 days, and are likely to be able to fertilize for six to seven. Again, a reason why there's no benefit to doing breedings two days in a row. Natural service then does not require the exact timing that these artificial modalities require. Again, if you breed a female once at the proper time—she needs to be bred once at the proper time to a male with good semen quality, provided she is bred close to or at ovulation. So your biggest litters are a couple of days after ovulation. If she's bred a day or two before ovulation, and everything is good, she is likely to still conceive. But your litter size is not going to be as big as it would be with her breeding two days after ovulation. It is assumed that once a female reaches the progesterone level of two, she'll ovulate two days later and should be bred two days after ovulation—a total of four days from the LHP. Unfortunately, females don't read well and don't count well. So it is not uncommon for a female to reach two and kind of stall and hang at two for several days. And this is one of the reasons that many females do miss. So you're traveling with your female to another state or another town, and your female’s not used to riding in the car. Even just the stress of that can delay ovulation after she has reached two. So you want to be sure, for once they reach two, that is not the end of their ovulation timing.

Currently I’m in my retirement, so now I still breed Labradors, but I don't take care of other people's dogs. I have a VCHECK V200 by Bionote as a progesterone analyzer. Again, I correlated it to reference laboratories, and it works very, very well for me. Why do I not have an Immulite? An Immulite costs—a new one around $50,000 and is expensive to maintain, and I may have one litter a year. The economics does not check out. The VCHECK is very reasonably priced. So this test, the VCHECK, uses a competitive immunoassay method to quantify the amount of progesterone in the bitch's serum. The test range on this machine is reported from less than one nanogram to milk to greater than 30, and you do need to use the machine that encompasses both the very low range and at least up to 30. So reference ranges for this machine. Or say you don't know if your female’s in season. You draw a blood sample. If her blood progesterone is less than one, she's either in anestrus, meaning between cycles, or very early in proestrus. At one to 1.99, she's before the LH surge. At two to 2.99 is the LH surge. Three to 4.99, post-LH surge, pre-ovulation. And five to 12, ovulation. Greater than 12 is post-ovulation. I want to point out: I talked about stalling at two, we also see bitches stall here, and sometimes you will even see a bitch that will get to five and go no further, which is why I recommend repeating a progesterone test either the day of what your last breeding to be certain that the female did in fact, ovulate. Ovulatory failure can and does occur in the canine. So if the female gets all the way up to five or even to eight, if she doesn't get above 10, ovulation did not occur, and she is not going to be pregnant. I also want to stress to you that in a normal canine cycle, whether the female is bred or not, these hormone levels should be the same. So if I'm not going to breed peaches, my female, and I want to track her cycle, I can still track it, and that will let me know that she does, in fact, have kind of a standard estrus cycle, and that she does, in fact, ovulate. We talked about this a little bit, but remember that the female has to maintain progesterone above 2.6 nanograms per mil to maintain her pregnancy. Progesterone, again, is produced in a structure on the ovary. 

Pregnancy should be confirmed at 28 to 30 days post-breeding, ideally by ultrasonography. In the olden days, we palpated them and you could feel uterine swelling. There's no question in some females, that does work, but you cannot tell by palpation if the swelling that you are feeling is a uterus full of bags of pus, or if those are actually what we call fetal vesicles. So open females, females that fail to conceive, should have a progesterone test performed to be sure that the CL worked all the way through that portion of the cycle. And if you have a female that has a history of resorption or abortion, you should also run progesterone. I would also tell you it's important when we work up why a bitch is not pregnant, it's important for us to know if she became pregnant, had implantation, and then reabsorbed the fetuses versus totally failed to conceive. And the only way you can do that is by doing ultrasound. So during pregnancy, the progesterone may reach as high as 90 and gradually decline until there is a rapid drop near term. Females that have false pregnancies or were not bred will remain in diestrus for approximately 70 days, which means that's longer than their progesterone would stay high if they were pregnant. At term, most females have a sudden drop in progesterone, often to below one. 

So C-sections, and we talked about this: Why is this important? C-sections may be safely performed if the progesterone concentration is 2.0 nanograms per mil or lower. That's important, because if the progesterone is still higher, the puppies’ lungs are not mature enough to survive, and you certainly will have some fetal loss. Again, this is important. If progesterone timing was not performed during the heat cycle and/or the breeding dates are unknown, it is common for bitches to get down to around three near term and stay that way for several days. If the progesterone is greater than five, the female will likely whelp 12 hours and longer away. If it's less than two, it's likely to be 48 hours, and less than one, likely will be within the next 24 hours. If a female does not begin whelping within those parameters—or if a female has the temperature dropped to 99 or below—she needs to be examined by a veterinarian. Hormone progesterone promotes a higher body temperature, so the rectal temperature taken with a thermometer is a crude measure of what her progesterone is.

Okay, the stud dog. So let's talk about the stud dog, because this is a common issue. Items to consider: cryptorchidism. What does that mean? Crypt means hidden; orchid is a scientific term for testicle. It literally means a hidden testicle. Normal testicular descent in the dog is complete by eight weeks of age. I don't care what you and your friends and all think is normal for your breed. The testicle in the fetus starts out at the caudal pole of the kidney, meaning at the part of the kidney facing towards the rear end of the dog. It gradually transfers down through the abdomen, comes down through the inguinal ring, and should be in the scrotum at eight weeks of age.

How do you know when your stud dog is old enough? The hormone testosterone is responsible for male behavior, and once a young male starts leg lifting, that indicates to you that he has testosterone on board, and he should be ready to produce sperm. Other issues to consider when you're selecting stud dogs is testicular size. Sperm production is associated with testicular size. The bigger the testicle, the more room there is for spermatogenic cycles and for spermatogonia within that testicle. So what does that mean? That means I'm a Pomeranian breeder, and I have two boys I'm considering holding back as stud dogs. Both of them have their testicles down. One of them has markedly smaller testicles than the other. Common sense would tell you: keep the one with the bigger testicles if sperm production is one of your important criteria. The other thing that you need to know is that the sperm that is ejaculated on any one day was produced about 70 days ago. So we are always working with old news when we do anything with the stud dog as far as what is going on with his fertility. So if I were to breed to a stud dog, or one of my clients were to say, “I'm thinking about breeding to a stud dog from we'll just say Washington state, and I live in Mississippi, what should I ask?” I say, “You should ask, is the stud dog proven?” And if they say yes, that's a good sign, then you need to ask that stud owner, “When was the last time that sire produced puppies that are on the ground now?” And let's just say, for example, they say his last litter was born two months ago. So two months plus two months for the pregnancy plus 70 days means that we know that pretty close to six months ago, that stud dog had normal sperm production. It doesn't really tell us anything about today. That particularly is important if you are trying to breed. Well, obviously we want puppies, or we wouldn't be doing this, but say it's your best female’s last litter, you don't want to risk a missed pregnancy, because this stud dog has suboptimal sperm. And when we talk about cryptorchidism, again, one other thing I want to tell you is: the mother and the female siblings of the male puppy that only has one testicle descended may be carriers of the trait. They could either be homozygous or heterozygous carriers. Now, obviously females can't be cryptorchid because they don't have testicles, but the dam, so the mother, could be the carrier of the cryptorchid trait, which is heritable, but we know that the sire and the male siblings will be heterozygous carriers. 

Sperm production is best in young, healthy male dogs. Avoid raw meat diets. They can result in amino acid or vitamin mineral deficiencies, and I would tell you also avoid—you have a dog that has acid reflux, and it's on Cyberiding for reflux, that will decrease testosterone production, resulting in low sperm production. Any steroid use can result in low production. The single biggest issue in dogs that were once fertile that are no longer is heat. Heat is a terrible detriment to dog sperm. And summertime in hot areas, like where I live, sperm production goes way down. So alright, let's talk about August in Mississippi; our temperatures were typically over 100 all day. If you had stud dogs that lived outside, I would expect the sperm production to be off in late October and November, and it might be until December before the heat factors have gone away and the testicle can return to normal production. Also avoid over usage. We used to say that you could breed a dog every day and it would never hurt his sperm numbers, that is not true. Dogs have sperm reserves, but you can deplete them. If sperm reserves are totally depleted, you end up having to wait as long as nine months for them to totally rebound. So every other day for a few days or a few bitches is okay, but if all of your bitches cycle in the same month, you're going to need to have more than one stud dog. Environmental factors really, really do influence sperm production. Heat, cold, chemical irritants. One of the worst cases of orchitis that I have ever seen was a dog who—a person bought a new boarding kennel. Didn't know anything about disinfection, although they really wanted to do a good job, and they used undiluted chemicals in the runs and allowed stud dogs to return to those runs when they were wet and they got terrible scald on the scrotum. Now that's important because, again, there are unique issues with males and with all mammals. The mammalian system does not recognize the lens and the sperm cell as foreign. If, in fact, the sperm cell or leaks in the testicle expose the sperm cell to the immune system, the immune system will try to destroy all of the sperm. So infections or inflammation, orchitis, epididymitis or prostatitis are important and immune mediated disease happens, age related testicular generation tumors. And I want you to know that male dogs do lose sperm daily in the urinary tract, that it's not necessary or desirable to do clean-out collections. Theriogenologists consider male dogs with less than 200 million sperm to be a term we call oligospermic, and they may be infertile. Lower numbers are adequate in small breed dogs because remember, we talked about the fact: sperm production is related to testicular size. You don't expect the Maltese to have testicles like a Mastiff. 

The last thing that I want to talk to you about, and I think we're running through some issues here, is brucellosis. Brucellosis is the most significant sexually transmitted dog disease in the dog. It is in seminal fluid. It is transmitted orally, meaning it can be through licking seminal fluid, licking urine, licking genital tracts. Can also be transmitted in blood. The first case of brucellosis that I saw as a veterinarian was in a dog that was in a dog fight, and the biting dog was Brucella dependent. Brucellosis is a very serious disease to the dog. The dogs are not sick. The signs are swollen testicles, sometimes swollen epididymis. Usually in boys, you don't see anything. In girls, they get pregnant, they abort early on. And the most important thing for all of you is there is no treatment. In most states, it's a reportable disease, and the recommended treatment is euthanasia. So I strongly encourage anybody who is bringing a new dog in to do a brucellosis test as soon as they get it home. Keep that dog isolated for 30 days before it is added to a dog population. Also prevent stray dogs from getting into your kennel. I have a Labrador friend who had a stray dog jump a fence in her yard. Breed one of her bitches. She was not concerned that bitch conceived and aborted, and she ended up with 18 of her 24 dogs brucella positive, and needed to euthanize them all. So it is a real issue. Be very aware of brucellosis. The other thing you need to know about brucellosis is that it will survive freezing, so it can be present in frozen semen. Certainly can survive in chilled semen and with AI. You don't have to have mucus membrane to skin or whatever contact; it is in the fluids that are responsible. That is the end of my talk. I'm ready to open it up for questions.

Dr. Nate Ritter  42:36

That was fantastic. We do have a couple of questions. We'll start with one breeder who wrote in: I have a young, inexperienced male. Do you have any tips, or is there anything I can do to assist him in having a successful breeding?

Dr. Francis Smith  42:48

So my first question: Is she trying to do natural service or AI? But the biggest issue is this stud dog needs to be used to being handled so that when you go to handle his prepuse, etc., he is not intimidated by that. It's also very important that he have good footing, so a slippery floor is not the place either to try to do a natural breeding or to collect semen. Many breeders like to use a rug that is only used for that purpose, and that habituates the dog to then know he's either going to be collected or he's going to breed a female in that surrounding. Make sure it's quiet and that you don't get frustrated, because if you get frustrated, the dog can absolutely tell and they are unlikely to cooperate. I say to clients, collection of semen is the only thing that we do to dogs that they are in total control of. We cannot make them ejaculate. In other species, we use electro ejaculation, but it's a training process. Also make sure, sure, sure, for those of you who watch, who compete in any performance events: if you want a stud dog, you cannot be telling him every time he sniffs a female or another male, “No sniff, no sniff, no, no, no, no, no.” They don't have a magic switch that says, “Okay, today I can't do that, but tomorrow I can.” So you can distract that dog in that environment, but don't scold them for mounting or investigative behavior. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  44:42

Great. Thank you. Another one in kind of the same line with the natural breeding: When breeding naturally, is it necessary for the bitch and sire to tie in order for the bitch to become pregnant?

Dr. Francis Smith  44:49

Okay, that's a great question. And the answer is no. During the tie, typically, prostatic fluid is ejaculated. The sperm-rich fraction is small, and typically, if the stud dog achieves penetration, that's really all that is required. Hence, that's why sometimes bitches get bred through chain link fences. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  45:15

Great. You touched on this previously. I know you mentioned you have your own progesterone machine. Someone wrote in: When you're running progesterone tests, are some machines more accurate than others?

Dr. Francis Smith  45:24

I would say that based on what I have been told, yes, but my caveat would be: I suspect that many of them are very accurate, but the owners of those machines have not done the quality control that I talked about to verify that two is two on their machine. So I'm going to just make up an example. For my machine, I consider 10 ovulation. Okay, but I have correlated that with Idexx and Antech, and it works for me. It doesn't mean that ovulation will be 10 on somebody else's machine. The technology is different, and all of the machines purchased from the original manufacturer tell you what it should be when. Do the machines work? Yes. Does the interpretation of the result work? Sometimes yes and sometimes no, and oftentimes that's operator error. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  46:32

Great. Another question we had: Does body temperature change when the female is ready to be bred, similarly to when she's ready to deliver?

Dr. Francis Smith  46:38

Not at all. There is no temperature difference at ovulation or associated with ovulation. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  46:45

All right, great. Might have time for a couple more. This is a kind of a general, wide, sweeping question, but is it safe to give antibiotics to a bitch after breeding?

Dr. Francis Smith  46:55

Well, if the bitch has a normal whelp and it's not prolonged, there's really no reason for antibiotic therapy at all, and we want to avoid. It's very important in our environment and in our health issues, that we don't arbitrarily give animals or people antibiotics they don't need. None of us listening to this have our females outside whelping in a cow barn, you know, on straw, et cetera. So it's a pretty clean, although not sterile, process. So there's no advantage to doing that. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  47:33

Great. Thank you. We'll do one more: You previously mentioned early weaning and improper socialization of puppies may create females who are not interested in breeding naturally. Can you explain why those factors might affect the dam’s sexual behavior or maturity?

Dr. Francis Smith  47:46

Sure, absolutely. So as puppies develop—and I know a lot of you have had a lot of training in early puppy socialization—many of “the dog skills” that they learn about being a dog, they learn in their litter. So they do that with play fighting and chasing things and jumping on one another, etc, etc. So puppies absolutely need to stay with their litter until they are minimum, six (and ideally eight) weeks of age. In order to learn to mount others to not mount, to learn warning signs of when a bitch is receptive, etc, etc. The same thing happens, even to a greater extent: a singleton puppy who had none of that stimulation and activity from the rest of its—you know, because there weren't any—is one of the hardest bitches to breed and one of the hardest stud dogs to manage, because he just doesn't know how to be a dog. If you have a singleton puppy, I strongly recommend that you add that puppy to another litter during that critical time once they're on solids so that they learn to be a dog. 

Dr. Nate Ritter  49:05

Amazing. Well, that was, like I said, a fantastic presentation, and great Q and A. Dr. Smith, thank you so much for kicking us off here. Nicole, I will turn it over to you.

Nicole Engelman  49:13

Thank you both for such an amazing conversation, and thank you to our audience for joining us today for session one of our health symposium. Your support means so much to us, and it's how we can bring events like this to life. So thank you all for being here, and we hope everyone will be at the rest of our sessions. I realized at the beginning of this presentation, I did not mention what the rest of the sessions were, so I will do that now, in case you might have missed the news about all of the sessions we're hosting this month as part of the symposium. So this was obviously our first. Next week will be on Wednesday, October 8, at 1pm Eastern, right back here on Zoom. And it will be pre-breeding genetic counseling led by Dr. Carla Barstow. And then the next one will be October 15, also Wednesday at 1pm Eastern, with Dr. Julie Cecere. And it will be about newborns, when puppies crash and burn. Very compelling title. And then our last symposium session will be on Wednesday, October 22 at 1pm Eastern, and it will be a breeders roundtable, Q and A, and Dr. Smith will actually be coming back to join us for that, along with Dr. Barstow and Dr. Cecere, which will be really cool. I don't believe we've ever had a round table opportunity before for our community. So that's all to look forward to. We will be sharing plenty of reminders about all of those sessions, so no need to worry about all of that. Please keep following us on Facebook, checking out our Friday newsletter to stay up to date on when all of those are coming up, but you can reliably think about them this way, that they are going to be every Wednesday at 1pm eastern on Zoom for the rest of the month. And just a reminder before I let everyone go, to take our session one quiz. So by completing all of the quizzes that we'll be sharing throughout the month, you will be eligible to win prizes from our partners, like Snuggle Puppy, Purina, Embark, and more to be announced. So please join our Facebook group to take that quiz or look out for it in our Friday newsletter. Until our next session of the symposium, which is next Wednesday, I hope everyone has a wonderful week. Thank you again for being here. Thank you, Dr. Smith, and we will see you at our next session. Bye. 

Nicole Engelman  51:23

Thank you for listening to the Good Dog Pod. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode, so be sure to subscribe to the Good Dog Pod on your favorite podcast platform.