Episode 200: Breeders' Roundtable Q&A

Dr. Smith, Dr. Barstow, and Dr. Cecere joined us for a Roundtable Q&A where they answered your questions about breeding. Learn about everything from progesterone to artificial insemination in this session.

Watch the video version of this 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

Okay, I am going to formally open up the last session of our fifth annual Health Symposium. This has just been such a highlight for the Good Dog team as usual, and I also know for our community as well. So in case you've missed it, throughout the past month, we've really had these amazing opportunities each week to come together, to learn, to ask questions, to test our knowledge, to improve our programs, because every single one of us joining here today is really instrumental in shaping this healthier future for our dogs. So we cannot thank everyone enough for devoting time to these sessions each week. Having all of you here just brings the symposium to life and makes it as impactful as it can be. So if you were unable to join us for the other sessions of the symposium, and you're interested in watching those recordings, which I highly encourage you do—also, because I know people are going to ask—this is also being recorded. We will have that recording up so you can re-watch this as many times as you like. So without further ado, to conclude this month long event, we have all three of our previous speakers from this year's symposium—Dr. Fran Smith, Dr. Carla Barstow, Dr. Julie Cecere—joining us for our very first breeder roundtable. So what that means is the floor is completely yours to ask these amazing canine health experts and repro specialists your burning questions about breeding strategies, selecting breeding partners, caring for puppies. The possibilities are really endless. So this is a really great opportunity to ask any questions that have been on your mind, no matter how big or how small. The only thing that we do ask is that you try to keep it as general as possible, so that we can have these be learning opportunities that apply to everybody. And I just want to thank our friends at Purina Pro Plan again for sponsoring this event and helping us bring it to life each year. So unlike previous sessions that had a small Q and A at the end, this one, as I mentioned, is just devoted to Q and A. The last thing I will mention is that, as you know, if you've been joining us for this month-long symposium, we have a quiz that’s shared after each session. So this one will be our very last quiz. We also have the other three still available if you haven't filled those out and would like to, because, as I'm sure many of you know, if you complete all four of our quizzes by the end of the symposium, you're going to be automatically eligible to win some really fun prizes from Purina, Snuggle Puppy, and Revival, and we'll be announcing those winners on Monday, October 27, so you have plenty of time over the weekend to watch any sessions you haven't seen, fill out quizzes that you haven't done yet, but just make sure that you have filled out all four by Monday so that we can pick our winners. That quiz will go in our private Facebook group immediately after this; it will also be in our Friday newsletter. I will share reminders even at the end of this session, so that everyone feels like they understand exactly what they need to do to be eligible to win those prizes. Last thing, I just want to share a little bit more about Good Dog. For anyone who is new here and joining us for the first time—and if that is the case, welcome, we're so excited you're here. 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 like yourselves, educating the public and promoting canine health and responsible dog ownership through opportunities just like this. We help breeders run their programs from start to finish, everything from getting your litter of puppies listed, connecting with quality applicants from across the country, getting payments securely for those puppies and ultimately sending them off to their new homes. And also those little steps that happen in between—anything that happens between your puppies being born and going off to those new homes. Good Dog is really here to support breeders in that, so you can get time back to do what you do best, which is raising healthy puppies. And we get to shoulder some of the more administrative burdens that can come with running a program. And we also have a number of free educational resources. That's something that's really important to us, which is why we host events like this. We have health related discounts that you can always check out that are just different ways to help your breeding programs thrive, so anything from management to also just bettering your programs through access to information. So if you're not yet a member of our community, we would love for you to join us, and you can always learn more about our mission and apply to join at GoodDog.com/join. I've already shared some more extensive bios about these three amazing speakers; hopefully you recognize them because you've joined us for the many webinars they have hosted for us already. So today I'm going to just keep things short and sweet. Dr. Cecere is a diplomat of the American College of Theriogenology, an organization to which she contributes leadership service roles. She's clinical associate professor of theriogenology at the Virginia–Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, where she has developed an internationally recognized clinical service for canine reproduction. Dr. Carla Barstow is a diplomat of the American Practices in Small Animal Medicine in Lakeland, Florida, and is the only reproductive specialist serving the Greater Tampa, Florida area. I believe we have some breeders joining us today who mentioned that Dr. Barstow is their own vet, which is very cool. And then we have, of course, Dr. Smith. 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. She's also 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 United States. So we could not be more grateful to have the three of you here. I'm going to kick things off with our first question that we had submitted. I did my best to also group them together so that they make sense and flow together. And all of you should feel free to jump in and answer anything or add to what another person is saying. So just feel free to share whatever's on your mind. So our first batch of questions were largely around progesterone and pregnancy management. We had a lot of questions come in about progesterone specifically. So our first question is: Would bitches with low progesterone release less eggs to be fertilized?

Dr. Francis Smith  06:52

Well, progesterone is not the hormone that causes egg release at all, so the direct answer to that question is no. LH is the hormone that signals the ovary to release the eggs and a puppy female is born with all of the eggs that she will ever have. In fact, egg numbers decrease even before the puppy is born. So that would not be the reason for releasing fewer eggs. You will have less eggs released as a female ages. But to the best of my knowledge, there is no finite chart that says, “If you're two, you'll release eight eggs. If you're six, you'll release one egg.” There's just no chart like that. I'll be interested to see what the other two doctors say about that.

Dr. Carla Barstow  07:48

So if I remember correctly, and Julie, please correct me if I'm wrong. I think there's a study that's out there where they looked at progesterone trending and whether it jumped quickly versus it rose slower. They were looking at litter sizes comparing how the progesterone rose, and I don't think that they found any correlation with how quickly a progesterone rose or anything like that. From my own experience, I have found that litter size is highly heritable. So if you've got a bitch that came from a large litter, she is more likely to have a large litter as well.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  08:23

Yep, absolutely. And the only thing that I would probably add to that is there's actually a study out there that has proven that dogs don't even have to have an LH peak to ovulate. And so it was a really weird side effect of something that they were doing outside of, and so we can't really correlate LH necessarily. And so again, that's probably a whole nother can of worms to talk about, but we do know that the rate of the oocyte, which is the egg maturation, is directly related to how fast the progesterone rises. And so that does change timing. But as far as actually the number of puppies or oocytes that are released, that doesn't correlate.

Nicole Engelman  09:00

Thank you all for answering that. This is related to, I think, what we were just talking about with progesterone levels. Do we know what causes low progesterone during pregnancy? And is there anything that breeders can do to help other than medication? 

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  09:14

This is kind of a soapbox for me, so you guys cut me off if I get going a little crazy. So why people try to blame primary low progesterone levels for pregnancy: they're not documented very well. I, in my entire career, have seen two bitches that truly have had low levels of progesterone to try to maintain pregnancy. Typically, it's related to an inflammatory event that's happened within the body and has actually caused the CL that produces the progesterone to die. So again, you know whether or not that's a primary cause is something to be debated. If it is well documented and requires treatment, certainly that is something to talk about. But bitches can maintain pregnancy at two nanograms per mil for weeks before they go ahead and whelp naturally. So numbers are not absolute.

Dr. Francis Smith  10:02

I would agree with what Dr. Cecere just said, in that it's a common reason to blame for loss of pregnancy, but we have no real evidence that it's cause and effect. The drop in progesterone for some bitches is likely due to some other issue. Oftentimes, uterine factors or environmental or a million other possibilities. But we have not proven from a scientific standpoint that premature ovarian or premature loss of the CL causes this and loss of pregnancy.

Dr. Carla Barstow  10:37

We also worry about certain medications and stuff like that. So we're very cautious with medications that we use during pregnancy. Definitely heartworm medications. Please use those, everybody. But we, you know, are cautious with anything else that we might use. So always make sure you talk to your reproductive veterinarian about those before you use them. 

Dr. Francis Smith  10:54

And I'll add to that, that includes things you put on your dog, not just in your dogs, because products that are put on your dogs are often absorbed, and that includes eye and ear medications.

Nicole Engelman  11:08

Amazing. Thank you for answering that. I think this is our last low progesterone themed question. But someone was wondering if low progesterone is something that's actually inherited.

Dr. Carla Barstow  11:19

One of the cases that I got to work with while I was at Auburn, we definitely had a mom with a documented low progesterone case, and her mother also had that. So I'm very hesitant. If people have told me that they've struggled with having bitches that have lower progesterone, that I would be hesitant to keep a bitch for breeding purposes out of that mom.

Dr. Francis Smith  11:43

My case was in a bulldog and mother and daughter, and I strongly suggested that the breeder not keep offspring of the daughter either for breeding.

Nicole Engelman  11:55

Amazing. Now we have some questions about just hormone testing in general throughout pregnancy management. Are there hormone tests that the three of you would recommend that breeders should consider monitoring throughout a dog's pregnancy?

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  12:11

Let's start with that one! No. If everything is normal otherwise, there is no reason for us to be monitoring. If you're going to look for things and you're going to find some things that you're going to have to try to explain away. If everything is going fine otherwise, and you're working very closely with a veterinarian and there's no outward sides of problems, there shouldn't be any excess monitoring that you're doing. If there's an unusual history, just like Dr. Smith and Dr. Barstow talked about (we've got either a lineage issue or we've had problems in the past), that will change, but if everything's going fine otherwise, no, there's nothing we should be monitoring.

Dr. Francis Smith  12:42

I would agree with Dr. Julie, absolutely.

Nicole Engelman  12:46

Awesome. Okay, shifting away from progesterone, even though I'm sure more questions will come around about that, we do have a handful of questions about heat cycles and conception, one of them being just a general question about what to look for if a female isn't having a heat cycle.

Dr. Carla Barstow  13:05

So we know females can have a silent heat where they're not really going to show any outward signs, but usually you still might have some male interest in the female. So those are things that they can definitely be looking for. Sometimes they'll still kind of do the flagging behaviors, those kinds of things. But if the bitch isn't two years of age yet, we're not really overly concerned that she hasn't had a heat cycle yet.

Dr. Francis Smith  13:26

I would agree with that, and very often, if, in fact, I'm quite certain that the client has not missed their heat, which oftentimes does happen, I will suggest that we do monthly progesterones, just in fact, to see if we can determine if that bitch did cycle and did ovulate, and you would be able to tell that. You certainly would be able to tell if she had a rise in progesterone, if she had had a heat cycle within the last even about 60 or more days. And so in that case, we need to educate the client on better heat detection schemes. What those are? I'm not always sure.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  14:13

Yeah, it's hard sometimes, and we know that breeders, especially if you have a haired breed in a very, very, very fastidious cleaner, it's hard sometimes, and you don't have a mixed kennel with males to tell you, so we're not trying to tell you, “Oh, you missed it.” We know it can be hard sometimes.

Nicole Engelman  14:27

There were some questions that also came in, just curiosity about antibiotics and if those can affect conception.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  14:38

Oh, okay, can of worms! Here we go, guys! So right, in my opinion, we don't have as much research as we do in cows and horses. I'm just going to put that out there. We are working on it. We are trying to get there. We do suspect that there probably is post mating induced endometritis, but due to the way that the oocytes and the embryos and how late they actually arrive into the uterus, out of the uterine tubes where they're fertilized, whether or not a bacterial “infection” or bacterial invader, because, you know, #theuterusisnotasterileenvironment. We do have bacteria that lives there normally. Whether or not that's actually causing a fulminant problem is of debate, and so again, working with someone who can give you a really good background, explain with what's been going on and what's been documented. Certainly, I know in our practice, we very rarely will give antibiotics. We have to have a clear indication to do so, and usually that is bacterial contamination with doing an early estriol uterine lavage, with a trans cervical catheterization and bacterial culture, so we have to have inflammation and bacteria on our culture. But again, no, we're probably potentially going to be doing more harm by causing bacterial resistance to antibiotics by having animals on antibiotics that don't necessarily need them.

Dr. Francis Smith  16:06

I would concur with that. We need to be very aware of what we are doing to our populations, both human and animal, with overuse of unnecessary antibiotic treatment. So we need to only use antibiotics when there is a proven need. 

Nicole Engelman  16:28

Amazing. Thank you for answering that one. I think we're going to shift gears a little bit to breeding timing and success. And I know from joining these talks myself, breeding timing and finding success there can be both a science and an art. So is there general advice we can share for breeders to assist with inexperienced males in having a successful first breeding?

Dr. Francis Smith  16:52

Well, I'll just go from an experience that I had a very, very, very long time ago, which really changed how I approached reproduction in males. I had a young Labrador male who had a very successful show career, and he was successful in multiple venues, and I really had no intent to breed him until a certain date, and that date arrived, and he had a female come in, and he bred that bitch, and we didn't—now, this is a long time ago, really, so we weren't doing progesterone testing. That tells you how old I am, etc. But he bred her successfully, and she did not conceive. Okay, that's one time. The second bitch that came to him was not cooperative, which was going to require side by side artificial insemination. So I collected him, and he had no sperm in his ejaculate. He had normal appearing testicles. Heaven knows he had great libido, but that was the first time, personally, I had experienced a young stud dog who was totally azospermic. So how it changed my practice after that, and what I did in my own breeding dogs, was I made sure that any boy I was growing up, at about the age when he should be sexually mature (and hence he had leg lifting behavior), I would collect to make sure he was producing sperm. And if not, that was a big red flag to me, and it warranted further investigation and possibly rehoming a dog, because his show career is a very, very expensive venture, and if there is no hope of ever reproducing their talent, maybe not money well spent. I'm anxious to hear what both Dr. Carla and Dr. Julie have to say about that,

Dr. Carla Barstow  19:05

I'm a huge proponent of progesterone timing for that reason, so we know when they're ovulating, then we know when they need to be bred. Now, obviously, dogs have been doing this longer than what we've been around, but when we've got finite numbers of stud dogs and we're trying to hit a certain window, I think that's where our progesterone timing can be very beneficial. I love to be able to collect the male so I can know that, you know, even though he's at home and he thinks he's doing what he's supposed to be doing, that he's actually not shooting blanks, and that we actually have good semen that we're putting into the female.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  19:37

Yep. And I'll just add—I'm going to reiterate—have your stud dogs checked early and often. Okay, so you know what's going on with them. Make sure that you put in your contracts that you have progesterone timing, because they're gonna blame the male no matter what. They’re the easiest to check out. I think one thing we don't talk to a lot of people about is behavioral. If you're gonna raise a stud dog, do not negatively reinforce sexual behavior. Okay, you teach them where it's appropriate. You teach them where it's inappropriate. But you don't use that in a negative manner. Because if you have a handler, let's say, that puts a dog up on the table and to get them to stand well on the table, holds on to his Os penis and his testicles, he's not going to be real happy about having his first collection. So making sure it's positive reinforcement, you can do minor corrections if it's not the appropriate place. But I think between having them checked often, like Dr. Smith said, having progesterone hanging, like Dr. Barstow said, and then doing that behavior early on, and making sure that you're kind of melding them to have a really good experience, you should be doing just fine.

Dr. Francis Smith  20:40

The last thing that I'll add about that is: flooring is important, and depending upon this, probably is most apparent to the three of us. If you have dogs in different areas of the country, for instance, in the south, many dogs are never allowed in the house, and then if you bring them into a building, just the mere change in environment is enough of an inhibitor that it can be difficult to collect.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  21:13

And/or if you're blowdrying your dogs, be really, really careful about hot air around the scrotum. I'll leave it at that.

Nicole Engelman  21:21

Yeah, amazing. We're actually getting some follow up questions about this original question, which tells me it was a good one. We have one coming in that I know we just mentioned the importance of continuing to check the sperm quality. Can you talk a little bit about how breeders can actually check this at home, if that's possible, and specifically, what kind of magnification you would even use, and what they would be looking for if they were to do this at home?

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  21:48

Specifically, I would say, checking spermatozoa at home, if you're not trained to do so, is not advised. You could certainly see if there are sperm cells that are swimming, and you could see that at 10x or 20x magnification. But to actually really critically evaluate the morphologic makeup of the sperm cells, we know there are very subtle abnormalities that can affect fertility. I would leave that best to someone who's been trained. 

Dr. Francis Smith  22:14

I would agree with all of that. One of the most common things that is missed, if you ask someone if their dog's semen has been checked, oftentimes, no one has looked at the dog's morphology, and abnormal morphology is certainly a factor in failure of conception. 

Nicole Engelman  22:35

We have some really interesting questions about AI that I want to get to in just a minute, but we do have some remaining male fertility questions that I think would be really helpful to talk about. This one is an interesting question that some breeders had: Just wondering, in general, frequent breeding affects semen quality and how much rest time do the three of you recommend between breedings?

Dr. Francis Smith  22:59

Well, I will tell you that we know what the spermatogenic cycle is in the dog. And dogs do have the capability, meaning, when they ejaculate, they do not deplete all of what I will call the sperm reserves. But that is dog by dog dependent, and a thing to keep in mind: in dogs, much like farm animals, sperm output is correlated with testicle size. So for some dogs, they can breed bitches every other day for weeks to a month or so; for other dogs, that may not be the case. And there is actually a report of a Labrador, which is my breed, in Scotland, who was collected at a veterinary school as an experiment to the point of—I'm just going to call it sperm exhaustion. There were no cells left. And I believe that particular dog, I don't remember the time frame, but after he totally had exhausted his sperm reserve, he remained, azospermic, meaning without sperm, for a period of over five months. So it is dog to dog variable. That's also going to be affected by the dog semen quality. If you have a dog with normal sperm numbers who is young and he doesn't have any morphologic defects, he'll be more fertile with frequent collections than will an older dog who already has some sperm changes.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  24:40

Yeah. I would just add that if you guys want an actual number—I don't know how many people are actually numbered. So the statistic that we do have is a normal dog should be able to produce about 20 million sperm cells per kilogram. So based on the weight of the dog, or greater than 300 million cells at least. And if we're below that number, obviously, a toy sized breed is not going to be able to produce what a Great Dane can, but at the same time, certainly paying attention to that. And if you have an older stud dog, don't commit to too many females at once, because he may not be able to cover that many. There's a reason we don't split ejaculates on dogs like we do in horses. 

Nicole Engelman  25:20

Amazing. Just to wrap up some of these questions about male fertility, I know we just talked about assessing fertility when a sire is on the younger side, just starting their first breeding. This might be a million dollar question, and there might not be a clear answer, but I think breeders are curious if there's a general age that the three of you find that male fertility typically begins to decline, or if it's breed dependent, if there are all of these other factors that make having a definitive answer difficult, but I was curious what the three of you think about that.

Dr. Francis Smith  25:53

Well, I'll give you my opinion on that. What I find maybe frustrating, and maybe it's just an effect of where I have practiced is that it appears that there are significant number of stunt dogs who will go along for a very long time, and their semen quality is great, and rather than have a gradual decline, the next time I'm asked to collect that same dog, it goes from being really, really good to not good at all. Now I'm differentiating here from a dog that the first time I saw it had problems, and that's been highly variable on age. While I was still at the University of Minnesota doing reproduction there, I met with a Chesapeake breeder. She came to me because, in fact—this was anecdotal information from the breeder that around the age of five, most of the males in that bloodline started to become initially infertile and ultimately sterile. And that, in fact, was the case with the dog I saw. So I bet that's an n of one.

Dr. Carla Barstow  27:05

I was going to say, I think most males would be at peak fertility, somewhere between two to five years of age, depending on breed size and all of that. But a lot does play into the role of what do they do with their lives? So if we've got dogs that are in heavy work, they're overheating, all of those things can definitely affect that. And you know, I had a two year old dog in here today whose testicles are kind of already starting to atrophy, so we know that stuff like that can definitely happen, unfortunately, as they're getting for some reason, we don't have great reasons for that, but definitely, if you've got a good stud dog that you like, definitely get semen frozen on him while he's still while he's still young, because, you know, you can't go backwards in time on that one. 

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  27:46

That's the one thing I was going to add was we talk about maximum fecundity in the female, and it's about the same as it is in the male, two to five years. There's a difference between breeding naturally beyond five years, which you're probably still going to be producing normal litter sizes, versus being able to be put in the tank, those sperm cells have to be able to go through heck and back. I'm still amazed every time we produce anything from frozen semen, that a cell can actually go through the process we put it in and survive. So if you're even halfway toying with the idea that you might want something from this dog in the future, after they're gone, get them in the tank early, get them evaluated at two years of age, and then, you know, every six months after that, and put them in the tank.

Nicole Engelman  28:27

This brings us, actually, really nicely into the next few questions I wanted to ask about, which are all about artificial insemination. And I think the first one that would just be really helpful to cover, based on what the three of you just shared, is what are the differences in success rates between fresh, chilled and frozen semen?

Dr. Carla Barstow  28:45

Oh, wow. On that one, Julie, do you have the stats pulled up on that one? Fresh semen: those are obviously going to have the highest fertility rate. Chilled obviously is going to be our lowest. As far as you know, what the averages sit at, you know, I'm always shooting for, you know, an 80% pregnancy rate as an ideal for all the dogs that I deal with on a daily basis. But I do think that, you know, frozen kind of sits a little bit lower than that, unfortunately, depending on, you know, timing and the semen quality and all of those things.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  29:21

Correct. And I would emphasize the fact, especially in frozen semen, not all frozen semen is created equal. It depends on the evaluation. I think we just had a talk about this at our national conference this summer, and what the report said the semen was, and what it actually was in a diplomat's hand before it was being used in the pregnancy rates—it definitely correlated. What we thought was bad usually didn't end up with having a pregnancy, even though it was said to be good. So be very careful about what you think you have in your tanks or what the evaluation says.

Dr. Francis Smith  29:54

Right. And I would agree with that. Definitely the quality of frozen semen that I was shipped and the evaluations accompanying them are very different. And I would also say, if there are instructions that come with your frozen semen about whether you're going to add anything to it after the semen is thawed, that's important to follow. But oftentimes what is reported is not what I see under the microscope in frozen semen. It's a really uncomfortable place to be in when you're shipped this semen and you're ready to do a surgical AI, and you look at the semen, and it's terrible. What do you do then? I mean, obviously you ask the client, “Do you want to proceed?” Because there's always hope. Or do you want to say, “Hey, this was just not meant to be,” and not proceed? And that's an uncomfortable position. Fortunately, most of the time we can avoid that, but we can't always.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  31:01

And I would certainly say the stats that we do have right now on frozen semen and side by side and/or shipped chilled semen, that we actually have a much better rate with transcervical than we do with just a regular vaginal AI or even surgical AI compared to TCI with frozen semen. We're causing a lot of damage and inflammation by entering the abdomen at a surgical versus the TCI is a 10-minute procedure we're in and out. So again, just considering those alternatives.

Nicole Engelman  31:33

And thinking about chilled specifically, we had a lot of questions come in about how long chilled semen can remain viable. If there's like a rule of thumb there that breeders can follow, or maybe some factors to look out for that might have breeders questioning its longevity.

Dr. Francis Smith  31:50

One of the factors is—I just like to say it depends upon what extender they're using. And most of the extenders do come with recommendations for how long it might be good. I'll pass this on to the others.

Dr. Carla Barstow  32:05

I was going to say I'm kind of excited here. So there was actually really good data that we just had within the last two years at our theriogenology conference, where they looked at semen longevity, and we know that we actually have a decent drop in motility after 24 hours. So we really want to have our semen—if we're having to ship semen—we want that overnighted and we're using it the next day. There are extenders out there that do say that they are five and they are 10 day extenders. And yes, that semen might still be swimming on a microscope because it's been living in the refrigerator, but what I haven't seen them do is take that semen that's been sitting in a refrigerator for five days and put it in a bitch and have adequate pregnancy results. So it lives better in the bitch than in a box. So if you're going to send me two semen samples, I'm going to put it all in your bitch all at once, because she knows what to do with it. We haven't come that far with our technology yet, that we can make it live better than what nature can do itself. 

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  33:06

Absolutely. Those studies were done here at Virginia Tech.

Dr. Carla Barstow  33:11

And I love them. They were great. Thank you.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  33:13

That was Dr. Sugai’s masters study. And again, that was based off of us receiving semen that had been collected on Saturday and tried to ship to us for a Monday. And so again, it's best inside the animal compared to other species. A good quality dog can last five to seven days in the female’s tract. It will not last that long and be that good of quality. The viability drops drastically with each 24 hours that passes, no matter what the extender is. And so again, better in the female, by all means. And the quality of the dog really does affect that. I mean, we get some that FedEx didn't, or UPS, or whoever just didn't get it there in 24 hours, and we may get it at 72 hours. Some dogs will be okay. Most dogs are not. Why play with fire?

Nicole Engelman  34:02

And I know the three of you just brought up this idea of extenders when dealing with frozen semen. We have a question about if there's potential for bitches to be sensitive to those types of extenders.

Dr. Carla Barstow  34:14

I think that's always a possibility. We've got a lot more information, kind of like what Dr. Cecere had mentioned earlier about that post-mating endometritis, and there might be some factors that play along with that, because there's lots of different extenders out there. I don't think we have any good, hard, concrete data on which ones, because it's probably going to be just like people, and it might just be more of an underlying allergy. A lot of those formulations are proprietary, and we don't necessarily know exactly everything that's in them.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  34:40

Yeah, I think some of that also may be related to how many of those cells are actually alive. And so they can have a very strong reaction to a lot of dead sperm cells. We know that in horses, we know that in cattle, we're pretty sure it happens in dogs. And you're just gonna expect frozen semen to be less viable than the other forms of semen because of the process that we put it through. So people need to just know that going into a breeding.

Nicole Engelman  35:06

And then shifting gears a little bit to thinking about side by side AIs. This is a very specific question, but someone was wondering if semen for side by side AIs needs to be spun down in a centrifuge, and if so, what's the advantage of that?

Dr. Francis Smith  35:22

In my opinion, side by side does not require centrifugation, but others may feel differently.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  35:28

I think it depends on how you're going to put it in, because certainly, a uterus can only hold so much volume. So if you're collecting seven or eight mils and you're planning on putting that in transcervically side by side, no female (even a Great Dane female) is going to be able to hold that much semen in their uterus. It's very small. That would be the only reason we might process it, but we would probably try to control our collection to not have that much volume. Because, again, if you're literally taking from one dog and putting it into the other, it's not that big of a deal. Processing is something that we do if we're actually going to be putting it under strenuous conditions through shipping and chilling and/or freezing.

Dr. Carla Barstow  36:05

Absolutely ,because if you get a male that you know when you're collecting a male and he doesn't fractionate well, you have that larger volume. And then, yes, via centrifuging it, we put it into that smaller volume, which makes it much more advisable for TCIs. 

Nicole Engelman  36:18

Awesome. And then I will wrap up the last one of our AI questions with this one, which is much more general, but I think really helpful for breeders here, who might be considering freezing semen themselves. What are the requirements from the three of your perspectives that are necessary for collecting and freezing semen to have it be as viable and successful as possible?

Dr. Carla Barstow  36:40

I was thinking as requirements, I want to know that the male is potentially proven, and we know that his semen can get a bitch pregnant. That way, I've got a better understanding of, you know, maybe the semen—if I go to use it in the future—I'm going to have better success with it. 

Dr. Francis Smith  36:55

I want to be sure he's brucellosis negative, because brucella can survive in frozen semen. A lot of people don't realize that, so that's critical. And if you're shipping it, there are places that you might ship frozen semen that want proof that the dog was brucella negative on the day that semen was frozen. So that's always a good thing to keep in mind.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  37:23

We have a separate tank just for non-tested semen here. All of the non-tested brucellosis—it was in a separate tank because of that reason. I would say requirements: young; has an evaluation that includes concentration, motility, morphology, and, you know, certainly there's some other things that you can throw it in there, but at least has those parameters. And certainly making sure that someone has post-thawed the sample, not expected results, but they actually looked at it after they froze it to say, “Yes, it did survive the process.” Because sometimes they don't. A dog just doesn't freeze well, and it's not the time to find that out, 20 years down the road. And so ideally, when you guys go to a center, you should get a report that says how many sperm cells he's produced, what his morphology is and what abnormalities he did or did not have, what his motility was before and after it was frozen, and/or we do morphologies after we freeze as well, because we can induce some abnormalities that are there. Extra things that you might see are CASA reports, but that's just a beefed up motility report. A computer system is not really good at doing morphologies. Post-test and/or viabilities are going to be nice and helpful. But as far as putting an actual number on what parameters of something should go in the tank or not go in the tank, we don't really choose our dog species like we do our production species. So we can't say, “Oh, 70% and higher motility, 70% higher morphology.” While we would like that, it's not realistic, I don’t think.

Nicole Engelman  38:59

Great. Let's see. So we have fully covered progesterone, heat cycles, breeding, timing, fertility, AI, all of these things that kind of bring us to hopefully a successful pregnancy. So we did have some questions to think about with monitoring pregnancies and equipment that the three of you would recommend. Someone was wondering—I love this question—at what point in pregnancy, can you reliably count puppies via ultrasound or X-rays? We have breeders who post in our Facebook group a lot their first few X-rays and ask people to count how many little skeletons they see. But at what point do the three of you feel like you can really reliably count how many puppies there are?

Dr. Francis Smith  39:41

In my opinion, it is semi-reliable, meaning on a good size litter, probably plus or minus one or two. It's very easy to count puppies when there's only one.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  39:54

So ultrasounds are only 30% accurate. So don't go off of your ultrasound, because they can still resorb puppies. So again, don't ever go off of an ultrasound. And the way that the uterus is freely mobile in the abdomen, we can double count or we can miss. So again, just realize that on the ultrasound side, and then, Carla, I'll let you say what you want to say. Sorry! 

Dr. Carla Barstow  40:20

Absolutely. Because I love my ultrasound, but it tells me: Do I have maybe a small litter? Do I have a large litter? That's really all we're using it for. And do I have puppies that are alive? Resorption? So I love my ultrasound. It is my favorite piece of equipment. I highly recommend doing them. But when you're looking at doing an X-ray puppy count, because you're going to be free whelping your bitch, the last week of pregnancy. Now you can read in the literature, it's going to tell you mineralization starts at 45 days. It is closer to being complete, and we're going to get a more accurate number near the end of that pregnancy. Now, however, in a really large litter, it is possible to miss puppies. I've done it myself, you know. I've had radiologists look at an X-ray, they said we had 14. We pulled out 19. So it does happen when you have larger litters.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  41:07

And the one thing that I would say is we try to combine our pre-whelping radiograph at 56 or 57 days post-ovulation. And that's a reason because, and this is an aside, but we're seeing a lot of hookworm resistance to Fenbendazole as well as Pyrantal. And if you combine your pre-whelping radiograph with those two days, and you're given the dogs preventative Moxydectin specifically on those, you actually eliminate any inter-mammary or interplacental transfer of hookworms and roundworms for up to six weeks post-partum. And so we have now kind of pivoted, because we have had several puppies from litters that have died, and they were dewormed appropriately because of that hookworm resistance that we're seeing. And it's countrywide. We're seeing a lot of that. So that's the double benefit of getting a puppy count and doing the deworming. I would also say technique makes a huge difference. And so if your practice is not used to doing pre-whelping radiographs, technique is going to be really, really important, because if they're not getting the right technique, you're not going to be able to see much. 

Nicole Engelman  42:11

I think we briefly touched on this in all of your answers, but I did want to ask this question specifically: Do you recommend breeders use Doppler ultrasound at home, and if so, do you have any models that you would recommend for them?

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  42:24

I do not. Personally, I've had people that are counting mama's heart rate and not the babies and panic and end up in the hospital, and we use an ultrasound and the babies are fine. We also have people who are really good at it, but it's not something that I recommend on a routine basis.

Nicole Engelman  42:40

Okay, great. That's a great answer. And I think this is our last monitoring question for breeders who have, especially in early pregnancy: What are early warning signs of pregnancy complications that breeders should watch out for? Just as a rule of thumb.

Dr. Carla Barstow  42:57

I would be watching for color and character on the vaginal discharge. So you know, some clear opacity, little mucoidy discharge, we're not going to be as worried about. But if you've got something that's, you know, bloody or anything along those lines, especially with a foul odor, those are things I want to see for.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  43:14

Absolutely, we usually tell people the things that will land you in our clinic faster than anything else is black, green, or red vulvar discharge.

Dr. Francis Smith  43:20

Yep, I would agree with all of that.

Nicole Engelman  43:23

Amazing, resounding answer for that one. That's very helpful. And now we have a few questions about genetic health considerations. This one is kind of a big question, but someone has asked: When you have a genetic marker that is not tied to clinical symptoms in the breed—in other words, the genetic marker comes up on DNA test results, but the disease itself is rare or non-existent in the breed—what's your advice to breeders? Does that advice change for breeders who have a rare or small population breed?

Dr. Francis Smith  43:53

I would be glad to take that one. I think particularly since we have so many panel tests now, and you get results for genes that are known, that are associated with the disease in some breeds, but not in yours, as a breeder myself as well as a theriogenologist, I would record that and be aware of it, but I certainly would not discard either a stud dog or a potential brood bitch, because they found that gene and it is not associated with disease in your breed. And that particularly will be important in rarer breeds. I mean, in Labradors, our choices are almost endless. So you can even be more and more and more and more selective. But discarding dogs unnecessarily is not good for breed populations and genetic diversity.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  44:55

Sometimes understanding what those blast sequencings are doing, it's cheaper for the companies to be able to run all known mutations than it is to make a separate panel for each breed that's out there. I mean, you guys know we're all having these new breeds, and they're not new. They've existed in their land race, but we're getting to know them more as they become more global. And so if it's not specific to your breed and it's not something that you guys are seeing, you know, don't necessarily ignore it, but I would not put too much thought about it. 

Nicole Engelman  45:23

Great. Thank you for answering that one. That was one of my favorite questions that had come in. I'm going to now shift to some of the ones that are coming in live as sort of a rapid fire potpourri. So these might not be as well organized, but I see Laurie is wondering what equipment you would recommend having on hand for whelping a litter. Any favorite equipment that you think breeders should really prioritize having?

Dr. Carla Barstow  45:48

I love our daily little mucus trap. You can order them online. They basically work in place of a bulb syringe so you can help clear out the mucus from their faces. It's one of the best things to kind of have on hand.

Nicole Engelman  45:58

I see someone else in the chat actually wrote that as well. Erin agrees with the daily.

Dr. Carla Barstow  46:04

It’s a great piece of equipment to have—in addition to everything else you need.

Nicole Engelman  46:07

Yeah, it sounds like it. And this is an interesting question from Lindsay, who said that, you know, in all life stages, nutrition is ideal and so important, but perhaps not more so than when a bitch is pregnant. What should a breeder do if they're seeing a pregnant bitch prefer specific food that might not be appropriate for them, such as puppy food? At what point can you safely feed it to that bitch, if at all?

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  46:29

So any puppy food at any time is appropriate for pregnancy and lactation. We usually just say all life stages, because then that way you're not having to flip back and forth between diets all the time. So a puppy food at any point. And little known fact: Purina’s and Ian’s Naturals and Hills ID is also labeled as all life stages. So you can use those, even good for GI upset, and they're appropriate for pregnancy and lactation.

Dr. Francis Smith  46:55

And the other trick to when dogs are fussy with eating during pregnancy is try adding a little bit of like Swanson's chicken broth, just something to moisten it and increase the aroma. And if you warm that a little bit, I find that that will encourage appetite for some females. Now, that's not going to be the major part of their food, but it's just an appetite tempter. 

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  47:24

And if it’s real bad, then talk to your veterinarian. There are medications that we can give that are safe for pregnancy to save their stomachs a bit.

Dr. Francis Smith  47:30

And I would say, added to that, if you have a female that really eats poorly during her pregnancy, I would think long and hard about breeding her again, because my experience has been the bitches that have poor appetite during pregnancy tend to repeat that at a subsequent pregnancy, making life difficult, certainly for the bitch, but also for the breeder who's trying to keep her healthy.

Nicole Engelman  48:02

Great! Let's see. We have one from Jane, not related to nutrition at all. This is a complete shift. But Jane is wondering if you have a COI number that is definitely a no-go as far as breeding, and how many generations would that be based upon?

Dr. Francis Smith  48:18

I do not. 

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  48:20

It depends on how many numbers you have in your breed. You really should probably be doing at least an eight to 12 generation COI, which most of the COI generators aren't going back that far. That's a whole nother talk that Dr. Smith and I could probably get nuts on for a while. But there's no minimum. Yeah, you just need to realize what the average is for your breed, and then probably stay as close as you can to that. Diversity is important. We don't need to throw individuals out just because the COI is deemed a specific number.

Nicole Engelman  48:53

Perfect. That tells me maybe that's a good webinar to have in 2026 if there's so much to talk about there. 

Dr. Francis Smith  49:00

Let me just warn you, Nicole, that is beyond complicated.

Nicole Engelman  49:07

I'm sure we could figure something out for everyone. Awesome. We have another question about nutrition, this time for newborn puppies. Bev is wondering: When you tube feed a newborn puppy, what quantity of milk replacer would you recommend giving to that puppy, and at what frequency? 

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  49:25

So that’s directly tied to the size of the puppy. We know a maximum amount that their stomach can handle and what we would need to be able to provide them nutritionally. And so that's a little more difficult. If you're having to supplement, my recommendation would be make sure you're talking to your veterinarian, that they can help you, because we don't want to rupture their stomach, and we certainly don't want to cause regurgitation because we're overfilling them. And so there's definitely a maximum amount, but that also depends on the size of the puppy that you're feeding.

Dr. Carla Barstow  49:54

Yeah, but they need to be fed every two hours.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  49:57

There you go. Thanks, Carla. That’s the important part! They need to be fed often. And by the way, tube feeding is a lot faster and a lot safer if you're feeding multiple puppies than trying to bottle feed. So I'm putting my plug in there.

Nicole Engelman  50:11

Love it. Okay, just two more questions. This one is a quick one. Christine is wondering what can be done to help minimize coat loss during whelping, if anything?

Dr. Carla Barstow  50:24

I would love that. I have a double coated breed. Unfortunately, it's hormonal. And to my knowledge, there is nothing that we can do that we can, you know, stop that from happening. Take really good pictures to have to show the new owners before she has the puppies, so you can share what she actually looks like and not when she's in bikini mode and looks like crap.

Dr. Francis Smith  50:46

I would agree with that. Maybe we can get Nutriful to run a canine story. 

Nicole Engelman  50:54

Love that. Amazing. This last question is actually from me, and something that I think would be really nice to not just end this conversation on, but also our symposium in general, which is by like looking ahead to the future. I'm curious to hear from the three of you, if there are any emerging technologies or techniques that you're hearing about in canine reproduction that breeders should know about, or that you just feel particularly excited about, even if it's very early, things that just get you excited for what the future of breeding can look like.

Dr. Francis Smith  51:26

Well, I'm the oldest one, so I will say I am not hearing about anything new and exciting that is currently within our armamentarium or on the edges. But the reality is, in the world today, if you have unlimited resources, the world's our oyster. So our limitations, I think, in canine reproduction, is we are beyond horrifically underfunded. I mean, there are very few funding agencies for anything on canine reproduction, and even less specifically to the area of reproduction. So I wish there were. I invite anybody who wants to write a grant for reproduction, send it to the CHF and see if we can get it funded, and I know we can find a theriogenologist who will research it for you.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  52:23

Hey, thanks, Dr. Smith, I appreciate that. We have several projects that are going on here. I can't really give you any preliminary data, but I can echo that very, very wholeheartedly. We struggle to get funding, and we struggle to get people to even enroll in projects, and I know sometimes it's a pain, but it's the only way that we actually have good data. And with the restrictions that are being put place on us being able to have colonies anymore, where we can actually control a lot of things and have it in house, especially at academic institutions, it becomes very, very difficult for us to advance the knowledge that we have. So if you guys can, you know, put in a plug and help us out, that would be awesome. Like I said, we've got some andrology projects and some dystocia things that are happening here at Virginia Tech. We're hoping to have some papers come out in the next several years, but that's about all I can tell you, just because we're still in the preliminary and/or evaluation stages, but we're trying. We just need a little extra help.

Dr. Carla Barstow  53:22

I would say definitely the Canine Health Foundation has done a lot to help with our canine research, but definitely getting people to donate and to help with the funding. So, you know, really good projects can be, you know, taking off, because science is coming a long way, and it's evolving very quickly.

Dr. Julie T. Cecere  53:36

We're behind the cows and the horses. We need to get the dogs to catch back up.

Nicole Engelman  53:41

That's a good goal for all of us in 2026. I love that. Thank you so much for answering that and just for this conversation. I had so much fun. I hope the three of you did as well. I think our community is just so grateful for the three of you for guiding us through this entire symposium, not just today's conversation, but all of the individual presentations that you contributed to make this possible. So we cannot thank the three of you enough, and we hope to have all of you back here soon. This has just been such an amazing opportunity. I speak on behalf of myself, Good Dog, everyone who joined us in our community. So thank you so much, the three of you, and thank you so much, of course, to our amazing audience who have spent hours with us this month, learning, growing, asking questions. Your questions have been so instrumental in making this symposium what it was. So thank you all for participating. Please keep an eye out for all of the things I mentioned: the recording, the next quiz link, the winners of our giveaways, so all of these things that will kind of come in the next few days as we wrap up our symposium officially. But of course, we are not done with having webinars for 2025 because that would be boring, and we don't want to end the year of content here at Good Dog. And we're going to be rejoined by Dr. Andrea Hesser for a backstage pass to freezing semen and post-mortem sperm rescue, which I think is pretty appropriate given how many AI questions we had today. But until then, thank you again, everyone for being here. This was such an amazing experience, such a pleasure to do this for five years in a row now, and we're already excited for next year. Thank you all so much.

Nicole Engelman  55:19

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.