Q&A with Dr. Hutch, DVM

Watch the recording of this live Q&A to get Dr. Hutch's expert insight on supplements, common breeding myths, and more!

Transcript

Nicole Engelman [0:00] Hi, everyone! I’m Nicole. I’m Good Dog’s Breeder Community Lead. I just wanted to thank you all so much for joining us today for our webinar with Dr. Hutch. We are so excited about this. The Good Dog team has personally been waiting weeks for this webinar. We just can’t wait to learn from Dr. Hutch, and I’m sure all of you feel the same way. So if you want to drop any comments or questions, feel free to do so at any time in the little chat box on the right hand of your screen. I do see a ton of unfamiliar names, which is really exciting, so it’s a nice opportunity to talk about Good Dog—just very briefly—and what we do. For everyone new here, we just really want to welcome you. 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 dog ownership. We are a secure online community that was created just for dog breeders, and we are completely free for dog breeders as well. We use the power of technology to help our Good Breeders really level up their breeding programs and provide them with tools that they need to succeed, like our secure payment system, which is designed for dog breeders, to protect you from scammers. We have a best-in-class software that allows you to post your available litters and manage your buyer applications—really so much more. I know you’re not here today to hear from me, but if you aren’t yet a member of our community, we would love for you to learn more and join our mission and apply at gooddog.com/join. With that, I will pass things off to Dr. Judi Stella, who is Good Dog’s Head of Health Standards and Research, to get this webinar started.

Dr. Judi Stella [1:43] Hi, everyone! It’s so good to have everyone here and to have Dr. Hutchison join us again for our Q&A today for everything canine repro. Dr. Hutchison is a founding member and director of the Center for Canine and Feline Reproduction at Animal Clinic North U, and he’s a reproduction and genetics consultant for the Veterinary Information Network. He’s the president of the International Canine Semen Bank of Ohio and an advisor for the College of Veterinary Medicine students interested in small animal thereothenology from the Ohio State University, Virginia Tech, Purdue, Tufts, and Michigan State. Dr. Hutch is the author of many articles on canine reproduction in leading journals and magazines. So, welcome Dr. Hutch!

Dr. Robert Hutchison [2:25] Well, thank you! It’s nice to be here. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Wednesday afternoon than talking about canine reproduction. I’m glad there are so many people here. It indicates that the interest is abounding. There are so many new things. There are so many old myths. There are so many things that we need to talk about. I really don’t like to look at the questions much before, but just trying to get the theme: I thought there were really some well-thought-out questions that were presented for this seminar. 

JS [3:00] Before we get started, big thank you to everyone who submitted questions. We had so many amazing questions submitted. Unfortunately, we will not have time to get to all of them today. We have a limited amount of time to talk to Dr. Hutch. If your question is not addressed today, we encourage you to check out our Good Breeder Center, where we have recordings of other conversations that we’ve had with Dr. Hutch. Hopefully you can find your answers there. You can also always reach out to us at help@gooddog.com and a member of our team will be happy to answer your questions, chat with you, and help you in any way we can. With that, let’s get to it! We are going to start today by talking about progesterone supplementation. We’ve had several questions that were addressed around supplementing progesterone to maintain a pregnancy. We’d love to hear your thoughts on when you would start and stop the progesterone supplementation. How would you go about monitoring the levels? Are there any particular supplements that you would recommend?

RH [3:58] I think it’s something that we’re seeing a little bit more of than we did in the past. I think there probably is, in all honesty, a little bit of a genetic component to it. Certain breeds seem to be overrepresented. English Mastiffs, Leonbergers, Cavalier King Charles, Weims, English Bulldogs. But I see it in a number of other breeds. But what makes it so difficult is if you supplement progesterone when you don’t need it, there’s actually birth defects to the female puppies. So you don’t need a ton of progesterone. Let’s just review for a second how it goes. When the bitch gets ready to ovulate, there’s a little bit of a rise in progesterone from the follicle. Then when she ovulates, there’s what’s called the yellow body or the corpus luteum, which is on the ovary. This is the sole source of progesterone for the rest of the pregnancy. As it starts to go up (many times, it’s 20, 30, 40 nanograms; for the Canadians, nanomoles; you multiply nanograms by 3.14) you only need 2.5 nanograms of progesterone to maintain a pregnancy. Most bitches have 10-20 times what they need. But in these breeds, when the progesterone starts to drop, if it drops below 2.5, the bitch either (depending on where she’s at or what stage of the pregnancy) is going to reabsorb the puppies or she’s going to abort the puppies. Nothing is more disheartening than it gets to about day 50 and suddenly you go out and find all these pinkies that the bitch has passed. I want to emphasize that not every bitch needs to have progesterones checked during pregnancy. I named a few breeds, and those ones should probably do a check. Maybe put Bernese Mountain Dogs on that same list. What we’ll do is we’ll ultrasound and confirm pregnancy, and we’ll maybe run the progesterone. But it is not a set recipe for everyone. We’re looking at distinct numbers. Let’s pick Bitch A. She’s a breed that maybe is known to drop their progesterone prematurely. We run a progesterone. We ultrasound her and find out she’s pregnant. Her progesterone goes back 25. I may not run another progesterone for a couple of weeks on her. On the other hand, a female B who we ultrasound and find out she’s pregnant—her progesterone is only 10. That’s probably one we’re running again in 4-5 days. It’s based on the numbers, how often I treat and check in all honesty. As I said, it’s risky to treat if you don’t need it. So it’s not something you want to do. If you have horses, there’s a product called Regumate, which is synthetic progesterone. I’ve had stories told to me about people who just started their bitches on it like they do their mares and all the female puppies ended up deformed. You definitely do not want to do that. As I test them—and you rely some on your veterinarian—and you get to the point where the progesterone… Let’s say we have 10 days to go in the pregnancy. We’re at day 52-53, and the progesterone comes back 5 nanograms. That’s getting pretty close to abortion time. But my protocol, the practice of my department of our practice of reproduction—if you get around 5 nanograms with longer than 5 days to go, that’s when we supplement. We supplement using an ingestible medication of progesterone in oil, and we use that because it will show up on a progesterone test. You’re only supplementing progesterone. The bitch is still producing some, so you’re only supplementing. I want to be able to run a test in 2-3 days and see how high the progesterone is. I’ve got some bitches in need of progesterone supplemented every 3 days. Some every 5. A Borzoi—they actually need an injection once a week to maintain her numbers. You can use Regumate in the bitch, but being a synthetic, it doesn’t show up in a progesterone test. Once you start on it, you’re going with the: Is it taking me too high? Is it high enough? I myself—only for myself as a veterinarian—I like to treat with things that I can test and verify that your dog is getting enough, but your bitch isn’t getting too much. You rely on your veterinarian as to what products they use and then what you want to do is always still have the progesterone drop normally (come in almost like an airplane coming in for landing), so you never give progesterone past day 58, from ovulation now, within 5 days of whelping—that’s when we would never give any more. Bitch may go into labor a day or two early. That really is not a big deal. What you don’t want to do is give the progesterone and have it be too high, because then the bitch isn’t going into labor. The puppies continue to grow. You’re worried about the placenta. Again, it’s something not to be taken lightly. It’s interesting that a number of years ago, the pathologist at Cornell and I did some work on the ovaries on bitches that had a premature drop in their progesterone—and it looks like it’s more of an immune reaction against the ovary rather than ovarian failure. Usually, though, bitches that do it once, probably you’re going to want to watch them closer next time. A bitch that reabsorbs, where you’ve confirmed that she’s pregnant, check her progesterone. A bitch can reabsorb all the puppies up until day 38 with no discharge post-ovulation. After that, you’d expect to see tissue. 

JS [10:19] Thanks! That’s great. We’re getting really good comments. That was a great description—an excellent description of how to use that. Let’s switch topics a little bit. Let’s talk about folic acid supplementation. That was another common theme in the questions that were submitted. Can you tell us why folic acid is important during gestation and then do you recommend supplementation during pregnancy? If so, at what dose? 

RH [10:42] Everybody, hold onto your seats! It is not necessary to supplement folic acid during pregnancy in a bitch. Let’s find out where some of these old wives’ tales come from. Humans do not produce their own folic acid. They have to have folic acid supplemented because one of the defects in a woman that’s deficient in folic acid is the baby is born with spinal disorda. Dog people, being as innovative as they are, said, “Hey, if in human medicine, deficiency in folic acid causes a midline defect and I’ve been having a lot of problems with a couple of puppies having cleft palates in my litter, umbilical hernias—well, if I supplement folic acid in my bitch, maybe I can supplement away genetic defects.” And you can’t. You can’t! In the bitch, she makes her own folic acid. Actually, in all commercial dog foods, there’s some folic acid put in. It would be very difficult to make a bitch during pregnancy be folic acid deficient. One of the ways you could do it would be by giving sulfa drug. Sulfa drugs actually tie up folic acid, but we don’t use sulfa drugs during pregnancy. So, really, I think it’s one of those things that’s been transferred from one species (humans) to another species (canines) but it’s a totally different system that works that way. The other thing is that if you truly had a folic acid deficiency, all the puppies would be affected. All the puppies would have cleft palates. All the puppies would have open abdomens. All the puppies would have non-closure of the midline. That isn’t typically what happens. Most midline defects (cleft palates, umbilical hernias) are recessive genetic traits. Remember back in school—was it Punnett squares—where you put in your recessives and you find out if each of the parents are carriers, a quarter are normal, a half are carriers, and a quarter are affected? So anytime I see a litter where 2 out of 8, 2 out of 9, 1 out of 5 is affected—that usually fits the mathematics of a recessive genetic trait. Folic acid in the canine is not going to stop you from having midline defects, and it is a transfer over from human medicine. We wanted to believe we could. 

JS [13:33] That’s helpful. A couple of people did ask in the chat: what about for stud dogs? Same thing? 

RH [13:42] Same thing. The canine makes their own. Supplementation, in this day and age, in many cases, is unbalancing a balanced diet. Let’s talk for a minute on stud dogs. I get tons of questions on what supplements and all this kind of stuff for stud dogs. First of all, 80% of a stud dog’s sperm production is based on nothing more than the size of his testicles. The testicles are just a bunch of pipes stacked on each other. If they’re going through the 8 stages of spermatogenesis, the testicle has a good, firm feel. But a Patheon testicle is not going to put out the sperm of a Borzoi testicle, no matter what supplements you give, different things like that. Probably, in all honesty, talking of nutrition: the most absolute important thing for nutrition in your breeding males and breeding females is to feed them so they don’t get fat. It is overweight males that have poor sperm counts, because you get more insulation around the testicles. The testicles are hung outside the body because they need to be in a cooler temperature with free air around them. We know that bitches who are overweight have a tendency to be poor conceivers, absolutely poor whelpers, and (actually this always amazed me) poor milk producers. So if you’re feeding your dogs, it’s not so much what you’re feeding/what supplements: the absolute most important thing in breeding stock is to be sure they’re not overweight. I go by body condition score. You should, on any of your breeding individuals, be able to run your fingers over their ribcage and feel the ribs with gentle pressure and not see them. We use the 1-9 body condition score in our practice. Body condition score of 4-5 is what you should be shooting for. But as far as supplementations, things are going to make stud dogs more stud dogs: they only sell those in the back of men’s magazines. Honestly, there really is nothing that’s going to make a healthy stud dog healthier. Stud dogs do have problems. I see dogs have immune problems, genetic problems, infectious problems, infectious prostatitis. These are things, though, that have specific treatments. You have to get a diagnosis of that problem before you treat. As far as a healthy stud dog that’s in good body condition, getting adequate exercise, there’s probably not anything more. You’re not going to make his sperm super sperm. That just isn’t possible. The testicles can only react so much. 

JS [16:36] Interesting. We’re still getting a lot of questions. That was something I wanted to touch on with you because we did get a lot of questions about that. Nothing to the supplements. There’s nothing you can do to improve fertility, so all these things… 

RH [16:51] Let’s say this. There’s a big difference between fertility and improving fertility. A dog’s sperm count is genetic. When a dog is born, his sperm count is genetic. Basically, it equals about 10 million per pound of bodyweight. A 10-pound dog should have 100 million sperm. A 150-pound dog should have a billion and a half sperm. But there is absolutely no supplement that’s going to make that 10-pound dog have the sperm count of a 150-pound dog. That’s just not possible. But in a study done in Colorado State, they proved that 80% of your dog’s sperm count is based on nothing more than the size of his testicles. There’s really nothing that’s going to make testicles better. If so, you’ll probably have issues that you don’t want to be having. I get that because some of the breeds are using smaller stud dogs and larger bitches. A question I get is: How can we make the smaller stud dog have the sperm count of a big dog? You can’t do it. Again, have sperm counts done periodically. I have people say, “Well, I don’t need to do a sperm count. He just sired a litter last week.” Well, there’s a difference in your dog between reproductive normalcy (which is what we’re all talking about: what can I do to make my dog reproductively normal?) and fertility. Because the male dog can be shut down 70% and still be siring a litter. But there is no magic supplementation or anything on a male dog. If he’s having problems, then you need to diagnose what the problem is and see if it’s treatable. As far as just anything to put your stud dogs on other than fresh water, a good balanced diet, and good exercise and not letting him get fat? He’s going to be as good as he can be!

JS [18:55] Okay, good. Is there anything that should be avoided? Things that have been mentioned were flaxseed, yams, alfalfa—that have a negative effect on fertility/that could decrease their fertility?

RH [19:10] Let’s put that in the same category so we can understand it. Salt and chocolate are poisons, if you take them in high enough doses. It is absolutely true that things like flaxseed, peas, alfalfa have some anti-estrogen effect. But in the amounts in dog foods, it’s like eating a Hershey’s kiss. You aren’t worried about: Is this going to kill me? No. In the lower levels, no. Interestingly enough, in some of the human products, and we use some in dogs that are anti-estrogens or high concentrations of flaxseed, but they are much higher than would be in the dog food. We have to take it within realm. You would not supplement your dogs with flaxseed. I don’t know why anybody would do that anyway, but the dog foods that have a little bit of flaxseed, a little bit of alfalfa, some of the other products that are anti-estrogen—are not in high enough levels that they would be causing any problems. 

JS [20:10] Great. You mentioned weight, and you said keep them lean. You don’t want fat dogs because that does impact them. We did have quite a few questions about if you’ve got really athletic, really lean dogs—does that impact their fertility? Do these lean bitches cycle less frequently? Do they have longer cycles? We’ve had a couple of questions about that.

RH [20:33] No, actually. There’s the old adage that I think is from horses: lean, mean, breeding machine. Let’s face it. We’ve all seen that dog who is skinny as a rail, living under the garbage can, that just had 8 live puppies under the barn. That was a standard thing when a lot of us older people were young. No, the thing you would look at in thinner dogs and that are active dogs is how much stress they’re under. Stress can have an impact on fertility. Stress can prevent a bitch from ovulating. Things like that. Just in humans, some women that are overly athletic—it’ll have effects on their cycles. As far as just a dog being lean and active—give me that every time over a dog who lays around on the sofa and is ten pounds overweight. Reproductive cycle in the bitch is really not affected by a lot of things like activity, leanness, breed, things like that. It really is more of a—again, I hate to keep bringing it up, but most of what we’re talking about here are genetics. Are they born, like many bitches, to cycle every 10 months? Maybe natural for a bitch. We see many breeds that cycle every 4 months, which can be a cause of infertility because the uterus never gets a chance to rest. As far as bitches that are active, out field trialing, agility coursing—that probably is not going to have a huge effect on their cycles. Probably, some of these bitches in all honesty, if you start leaving them home when they’re used to jumping in the motorhome and heading for the show or activity for the weekend—they’re probably under more stress at home than taking them with you. I’ve spent my past 40 years in canine reproduction. So I can say I’ve probably seen a little bit of everything. But things that most people think about and worry about, I really don’t feel are the things to worry about. I just don’t see it. I think a lot of the time, what we want to do is believe we can get around our genetics without changing our sires or maybe even changing our lines, and that’s why we want to supplement different things like that. That’s really not the cause of it. I was giving a seminar somewhere and somebody asked me, “What is the thing that breeders worry most about which is the least important?” I think it’s feeding your dogs. If you have a good balanced diet, you don’t need to be changing all the time. It’s just so interesting. Why do you feed what you do? All of you! Why do you feed what you do? Some of you do it because you like the advertisement. Some of you feed it because you won it free by winning a best-in-show. Some of us because the color of the bag attracts you, which is genetic in humans. It’s been shown that when you go shopping, you’re attracted to certain colors. But it doesn’t matter what the situation is, the first question I’m asked is: Do you think it’s the food? I always say, “I wish it were the food. That would be easiest to change.” But very rarely, except in dogs that are fat, because so many foods now are so high in calories and fat and protein. But I don’t think that just the brand of food you feed has any effect on your breeding program and all that.

JS [24:17] Can you speak to morphology? Sperm morphology and anything that will affect that? Because that does change, right? Based on environmental factors in some cases. 

RH [24:31] When I look at a sperm count, the most absolute important thing when my technicians hand me a sperm count, is what is the morphology? Because you can have a billion sperm, but if you have no normals, you’ve got zero. The different morphology changes indicate different problems. I’ll see a fair number of dogs in certain breeds that have immune mediated orchitis, which is when the body attacks their testicle basically. On a testicular biopsy, I find all these lymphocytes and everything infiltrating. On those, you’ll see a lot of coiled tails. You’ll see some sperms that have mega-heads and all this. These are primary defects which indicates there’s something going on in the testicle that’s not allowing them to form properly. Now, there’s what are called secondary defects. These are sperm that are formed normally. Either one of two things: one is the heads and tails are popped apart. That is usually a sign of some type of inflammation. It’s from overheating. It’s from laying on the blacktop when it’s 100 degrees outside. It’s from getting the testicles frostbit. One of my most famous cases ever was the dog whose testicles were being cooked with a hairdryer every day, and he had 60% detached heads. It turned out all we had to do was start shielding the testicles from the hairdryer and within 3 months, he was back to a normal sperm count. Immature sperm are also interesting because immature sperm don’t freeze, they don’t chill, they don’t cause puppies. But they’re released before they’re ready. That can be a sign, to me, that the male is being overused. It can be a sign that the male is trying to shut down his sperm production. Remember, the sperm numbers as I said a few minutes ago, are genetically programmed. When the dog is born, he’s genetically programmed for his body to maintain a certain amount of sperm. If he can’t do it with mature sperm, he starts putting out immature sperm. Oftentimes, we’ll be looking for what is the cause of that. Certain Briards, for example, will have a high number of immature sperm genetically. But for the most part, the morphology tells me where we’re looking, but especially the detached heads. They’re a great sign that your dog’s testicles are being overheated. I had another one that laid on the old floor grate in an old farm house and basically wanted to stay warm and was cooking his testicles through the winter. This also goes back—let’s take another legend and poof it! Back in the old days, they always told me in college that heartworm medication caused them to go sterile. Because Collies, when they were on heartworm medication, they were missing bitches. What it turns out is when do you give heartworm? During the summer months. When do these Collies with these big, heavy coats, get their testicles overheated? In the summer. Again, A did not equal B at all. Again, you have to be looking for it. To answer your question, morphology is absolutely critical. As to when we’re looking at a sperm count, it’s what your dog’s total sperm is? What’s the usable number for freezing or fresh chilling? Especially the detached heads is a sign that maybe your dog needs better management, whether that being the summer heat or the winter cold. 

JS [28:03] That’s great. Back to supplements a little bit. Calcium is a frequent hot topic. What are your thoughts on calcium supplementation? When? How often? How much? Are there any breed differences that need to be considered when you’re talking about that? 

RH [28:22] I very rarely use calcium. Let’s go back. Why do we use calcium? This goes back to 50 years ago, or maybe longer now. Let’s talk about dog food. They originally were what was left over from the grain mills for making cow and horse feed. They started making dog food. And then we came on and said, “Well, wait a minute. Aren’t dogs carnivores?” We know they aren’t. They’re omnivores. They eat both grass and meat. But then there was the dog food that came out in the 1960s. It was the rage. It had a great advertising campaign. It was an all-meat dog food. Everybody started feeding their dogs this. What happened then is because meat is high in phosphorus and low in calcium, dogs would be running down the steps, and their legs would break because the body absorbed all the calcium out of their bones. The body is, again, pre-programmed to keep a ratio of 1.2 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus. After, we said, “Wow, these dogs whose legs are breaking! We need to supplement calcium.” That’s how we got the bitches, in the 1960s-70s—there are all these pet tablets called Pet Cal. You put bitches who were pregnant on it. We sent them home with calcium tablets. Because we thought, going back to this all-meat dog food thing and dogs having calcium deficiency, if this bitch is pregnant, I’d better put her on calcium! Back then, it was amazing because we gave this calcium during pregnancy, and these bitches then would have the calcium program, as you call it: fevery, eclampsia, carpal tetany, all the same disease. We then found out that there’s a little gland in your neck that’s called the parathyroid gland. This is not the thyroid gland, but it’s right there, and it’s called the parathyroid gland, around the thyroid, that actually controls the calcium metabolism in the body. What we’re doing is we’re giving calcium during pregnancy. The negative feedback said to the parathyroid gland, “Hey, go to sleep. There’s nothing for you to do because we’re giving the calcium.” Then, when the bitch went into labor, she started needing calcium moving into the muscle cells for uterine contraction. We had milk letdown. We needed calcium. Then we started giving calcium and all that. Flash forward to 2022. Research over the last 50 years in dog food has just been amazing, the things that have been shown. All dog foods now with any repute at all are balanced: 1.2 calcium to 1 part phosphorus. They supplement, basically, your dog with the proper calcium / phosphorus ratio when you feed them every day. If you’re given something (once again we’re back to throwing that ratio off), that is unbalancing a balanced diet. Last year, in my practice, we did over 700 C-sections. On every one of these, I knew what their ionized calcium (this is going to be an important part here) was before labor and very, very, very rarely (unless the bitch had been in labor for multiple days) do we find any calcium deficiencies. Why I mention that is because when you get your chemistry done for your dog’s general health, there’s a calcium level that’s on there. That’s what’s called non-ionized calcium. That is directly proportional to the albumin level and other things on that chemistry. You can’t go by that number on a bitch to tell whether she’s calcium deficient or not. Now, it is quite rare in a practice (where I have four doctors that do pretty much nothing but reproduction) to see a bitch that has calcium problems that isn’t induced by supplemented calcium during pregnancy or something like that. It’s interesting that when you give oxytocin, for example—how does oxytocin work? Why does that make the uterus contract? It causes the calcium to move into the cells. Myself and the doctor at one of the universities had a discussion. We said, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t be giving oxytocin. Maybe the dog needs more calcium.” So we went through a period of time where we said we won’t give oxytocin; we’ll just give calcium. And then we found out it didn’t do diddly-bop because most bitches weren’t calcium deficient. In the old days, people said, “Bitches who don’t want to take care of their puppies are calcium-deficient.” We run ionized calcium. They aren’t deficient. As a matter of fact, most bitches, when they’re getting ready to go into labor and produce milk, their bodies adjusted for this. For many of them, their calcium levels are higher than they were when they weren’t bred. So to just arbitrarily supplement calcium makes no sense at all. Probably bitches that are nursing need calories. They don’t need calcium. If you need to give calcium, remember: calcium is a difficult drug to dose because what may be an overdose on a German Shepherd may be an underdose on a Dachshund. You can kill an animal. I don’t do any large animals, but when I was in vet school, you’d have these cows and you’re giving them calcium; the other is listening to the heart to make sure you didn’t kill the cow with calcium. To just arbitrarily be injecting it or something—we no longer use any injectable calcium in our practice. I don’t even think we have any. Maybe the bird department does. So calcium just isn’t a big part, now that the dog foods are all balanced: 1.2 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus. They’ve taken care of that for us. If you do need it, if you verify you have a low ionized calcium and your bitch is showing signs… Usually the first sign of a bitch going to have problems is they start rubbing their face. I don’t know what makes them do that. But they start digging at their face. It used to be, in the old days, Pomeranians, Yorkies. The last two dogs I saw that had true, verified, low ionized calcium were both Labradors. I don’t know whether that had something to do with supplementation—I don’t remember if the owners were supplementing raw meat and the raw meat had the high phosphorus and therefore drove down the calcium; I don’t remember the exact story. If I do need to use calcium, I use Calsorb, the calcium gel, because still those cows are in my mind. I just don’t want to give a big slug of calcium and have to be listening to your bitch’s heart to see if it’s slowing down. The good thing about Calsorb is it’s absorbed almost as quickly as injectable calcium but giving small amounts more frequently probably does a better job. I’m an evidence-based person. I love a story, just like anybody else. I want to believe that the things I was told back in the 1950s were true. Most of them, I don’t think are. Now that I can check an ionized calcium, now that I do it (and many of these bitches are having C-sections because they’ve been in labor)—not verifying it just makes me question how much calcium really needs to be supplemented. 

JS [36:10] Interesting. I want to get to lifetime litters and min and max breeding ages, because we have a lot around that, but before we get there, we had several people ask about mycoplasma. If you could talk about that and whether or not you should be putting bitches on antibiotics proactively just in case, that kind of thing? 

RH [36:35] The answer is absolutely not. Another story. Back in the 1980s—I think this is a great story. It’s snowy here in Ohio. We’ll sit around the fireplace and tell stories. There was an article in the AKC Gazette. This was back maybe in the late 1970s, early/late 1980s. A lady had a couple of bitches that missed and one of her stud dogs went sterile. She was a breeder, so she and her veterinarian said, “We’re going to find out what it was!” They went ahead and did all these tests and everything, and she found mycoplasma. “We found out my males had mycoplasma, my bitches had mycoplasma.” She blamed the whole problem. Every so often, us dog breeders grab something like a runaway horse with a bit in our teeth. We like the word mycoplasma. We ran with it. I was in a conference in the late 1980s when a person stood up and said, “We’re probably going to have to destroy all the semen we froze because it wasn’t tested for mycoplasma.” Well, flash forward. Mycoplasma? Everybody has! I have it, you have it. That’s why it’s so easy to find. It is not a pathogen. It does not cause any problems in your bitches. It does not cause any problems in your males. It is not a worry. It grows at all body openings. I remember my Boxer people back then—they were so into mycoplasma, and I was speaking to them, and they were crowded in this room. I remember saying to them, “The guy sitting next to you has mycoplasma.” These people suck in their shoulders and look at the guy next door. And then I hit them with the big one: “And you yourself have mycoplasma!” And they say, “I took a shower today. It can’t be me!” But everybody has it. It’s a normal organism. It’s not a worry at all. It’s interesting. I look back, and we talk about the things now. Life was easy back in the 1980s. You blamed everything on vaginal bacteria and thyroid—two things that we now know have no importance all in canine reproduction. No importance at all! But it was easy back then. You put everybody on antibiotics. But there’s been a number of studies, the last one in Europe, a big study that showed that putting bitches on pre-breeding antibiotics had no effect on either conception rate nor litter size. That was kind of the final nail. There’s no reason to be culturing bitches. You don’t worry about mycoplasma at all. These are the stories! I’ve traveled the world speaking on canine reproduction. I had a guy say to me, “Dr. Hutch, they cultured my male, and he had mycoplasma. The veterinarian told me I had to treat every dog in the kennel.” I said, “How many dogs do you have?” The guy said, “I’ve got 26.” I said, “Well, what did he treat them with?” He said, “He treated them with Baytril.” And I said, “Are you rich?” And the guy said, “I used to be!” So, save your money. Not anything to worry about. I do want to mention, if I can throw in: people will still ask me about raspberry tea leaves as a supplement. I do want to mention that because raspberry tea leaves were a hot-button item back in the 1990s. It is truly a fact that natural raspberry tea levels have a product in them called ergotamine. Ergotamine is a strong, smooth muscle contractant. Back in the 1950s-60s, if you had a bitch that whelped, and you took her to the veterinarian for a post-whelping injection, you gave them ergotamine. Very potent uterine contractor. But the trouble was if you had a puppy stuck in there, it trapped it in instead of expelling. So we don’t use ergotamine anymore. But the thought was, on the raspberry tea levels—these are natural. Synthetic raspberry tea leaves do not have this in it. But it was thought that if I give raspberry tea leaves to my bitch towards the end of pregnancy, would it make her have stronger contractions? I can honestly say I never did a C-section on a bitch that I thought was due to a raspberry tea leaf deficiency. But anyway, we said, “It doesn’t hurt anything.” But there’s a company that monitors whelping. It’s one of those where you put the belt on your bitch, and you transfer over the phone lines, and they monitor uterine contractions. They published a paper that said the number one cause of premature uterine contractions in bitches were bitches that were on raspberry tea leaves. I said, “Are you saying these bitches abort?” They said, “No, but we see this reaction to it.” Remember: the bitch’s uterus will not contract when it’s under the effects of progesterone. That’s why it doesn’t matter, if you have a bitch with pyometritis, if the cervix is closed, you can still treat her medically. It doesn’t make a difference. She doesn’t have to be spayed. Same thing. After that, I told my clients, “Here’s a paper that says they could cause premature uterine contractions, even though I don’t know how important that is.” Raspberry tea levels did have a reason to maybe be considered. As I said, I don’t think I ever saw a bitch that was raspberry tea leaf deficient. But that’s the story behind the raspberry tea leaves anyway. 

JS [42:44] That’s great. That does come up, and we just didn’t get to it. 

RH [42:52] It’s a good story. 

JS [42:53] Can we talk a little bit about the recommended number of lifetime litters and breeding age onset and when we want to retire? That is something that all the breeders are really concerned about, making sure that they do the best thing that they can by their dogs. There’s a lot of controversy, as you know, about starting and stopping. 

RH [43:18] Let me emphasize: all of us are 100% in agreement that we want to do our best for our individuals. Hopefully I can honestly say, in doing this for as long as I have, I have never done anything that was detrimental to a bitch to get her pregnant. That said, we have to go back and look. Remember, dogs go back a long, long time before we domesticated them and things like that. Just like a mare is made to have one foal a year, things like that, a bitch is made biologically in a reproductive cycle to have two litters a year. They come in season every six months. Uterus is totally healed 12 weeks after the puppies are born. I think there’s two answers to the question. One is appreciating reproductive biology. The bitch is made that way. We didn’t make her. We tend to humanize our dogs. I’m as bad as anybody else! I hope I didn’t tell y’all this story before, but it’s one of my favorites: I was talking about this at a seminar I was giving somewhere. I said, “In the bitch, there’s not a reason—no biological benefit—to a bitch to skip a cycle.” A lady in the front row threw her hand up and said, “Dr. Hutchison, I would not want to have a baby every year!” Female dog terms are running through my mind. Anyway, I said, “What about this: bitches don’t live with their puppies for the whole life. What would happen if that baby you had every year—at 8 weeks, they gave it to somebody else to raise for the rest of its life?” And she said, “My god! What a great idea!” That’s when I knew she had teenagers at home. Anyways, we can’t make a bitch a little person, as much as we do. My dogs know secrets that I’ve never told anybody else. But biologically, a bitch is made to have two litters a year. If you’re skipping a cycle that benefits your bitch, that’s great. If she’s coming in season, that uterus is wearing out, because the progesterone in the bitch lasts as long if she ovulates and is not pregnant as if she ovulates and is pregnant. There’s no difference. That’s why we use ultrasound to diagnose pregnancy; this is why we don't use progesterone. Uterus is damaged by progesterone. Progesterone causes inflammation, so much so that after the progesterone drops, it takes 2 to 2.5 months for the uterus to heal before it can come back in season and consider pregnancy. That’s why these bitches that cycle every 3-4 months never quiet down, and these bitches seldom have successful breedings. Now that mibolerone is not available in North America anymore, that’s a real hindrance to those of us who want to have bitches that we want to get titles on and all that before we breed them. The first cycle—usually I don’t recommend breeding them, even though if a bitch is 18 months or 2 years on their first cycle, I’d maybe consider it. But it almost seems like the uterus needs that first cycle to get itself primed by hormones. People that try to breed bitches on that first cycle, many of these bitches just aren’t successful and pregnant. I think it’s just the uterus was immature and needed to be primed. After that, how often a bitch cycles is almost genetic. The average of all bitches around the world is actually 7 months. If it’s 6 months and 1 day, they call me: “What’s wrong with my bitch?” Also, I think we mentioned this before but just to reiterate: when should a bitch have her first heat cycle? It’s up to her! Any time up until 2 years of age, I don’t worry about it for the first cycle. But then how long can you breed them? I don’t know that there is a limit. It’s up to the bitch’s health. Of course, you wouldn’t breed a bitch you see is unhealthy. But as you get around 6, that is when conception rates drop by about a third. Litter sizes start to drop off at that time. In many instances, this is telling you, as a breeder or a person who wants to breed their bitch: boy, if I’m getting to the point now where I went through all this and she’s 7, and she just had 2 puppies, it just isn’t worthwhile. The bitch usually limits herself. There are smaller bitches who can maybe breed later. There’s actually mathematical formulas about how big a litter a bitch has based on her body weight and this kind of stuff. Usually, the prime reproductive cycles in a bitch is (if you aren’t worried about health clearances, you aren’t a hip breed, for example) probably 18 months to 5 years is the prime time. Should you breed them every time? That’s really up to you. The bitch, if she were on her own, would be being bred twice a year and having two litters. But there is no advantage to skipping. So if you bring me a bitch, and you say, “Wow, Dr. Hutchison. She’s six years of age, and we’ve kept her in a locked room all this time, so she can have her first litter.” Well, she’s no better off than the bitch who’s had ten litters. 

JS [49:22] That’s really interesting. I think that’s super helpful because obviously these are big questions and this is something that’s completely under the control of the breeders. We get lots of questions as well about: Can you bring them into heat? Can you shorten cycles or lengthen cycles? Is that just genetic, or are there things that the breeders can do to get their bitches cycling every 6 months or roughly twice a year?

RH [49:49] Yes! Again, just like I’m bemoaning the lack of mibolerone for delaying heat cycles, probably the number one go-to I was using for years was 2.1 deslorelin implants. I could put them in a bitch, and she’d come in season in 5 days and ovulate in 5 days. Right now, those are not legal in North America. Even though I had FDA approval for them, the 2.1 size (which you’d want to use in the bitch) is not being manufactured right now. There is one that’s used for ferrets, but it’s absolutely black-box-warned-against, using them in canines. I know some veterinarians are using them. I’m not one of them. But you can have some issues with cystic ovaries with them. The best delaying heating cycle stuff and the best inducing heat cycle stuff that we’d have talked about two years ago are not available right now. If you want to try short-cycling a bitch, when a bitch ovulates, her progesterone stays up for 2 months. Then we say, “Okay, the progesterone drops down to baseline. Why doesn’t the bitch come in then?” You would think the bitch would cycle every 2 months. There’s another hormone in the brain called prolactin. It’s prolactin that maintains this interestrus interval after progesterone drops. It’s the prolactin that drops eventually when the bitch comes in season. We do use products. There’s an anti-prolactin drug called cabergoline. Cabergoline, by cutting the prolactin, is basically fooling the bitch to come into season. I’d like using cabergoline because the heat cycle the bitch comes in on is her true normal heat cycle. It’s not induced at all. She came in on her own. It works about 70% of the time. If I just want to short-cycle a bitch or something, I’ll try. The one that’s difficult right now are the bitches where they’re 18 months of age, and you’re saying, “I want to put them with a handler. I want to special this bitch, but I don’t want to do it if she doesn’t have a uterus and ovaries.” In the old days, we’d just pop in one of the deslorelin implants, and she’d come in season. You’d say, “Great. I can now do it with confidence.” It usually isn’t prolactin that’s keeping them from their first heat cycle. That’s a little more difficult right now. But that’s what we have in North America. That’s what we’re using now. Cabergolin to short-cycle a bitch is a safe product. You give it once a day. I usually put them on for two weeks, and then many of them will come in while they’re on the drug. Some will come in a couple of weeks afterward. It’s nowhere near as reliable for timing a bitch the way the Deslorelin was. But it’s a viable option. 

JS [52:50] Great. Two more questions, and then I think we’re going to have to wrap it up, because we’re getting close to the end here. We had a couple of people ask about freezing eggs. They want to know if that technology is going to be available soon, if it’s going to be viable.

RH [53:06] Tell me! I’ve been freezing ovaries. I actually have some bitch’s ovaries I froze at least in the 1990s. There was a study done at Cornell. There was a gentleman there from South America, and that looked like it was going to be his field of interest. And then he left and went back to South America. I just had a client call Cornell, and they said they were doing some embryo transfer work, but it was so unsuccessful in the bitch that they stopped doing it. The trouble is with the bitch, that all the things like—I race horses, and we have mares that we breed and they have an embryo transferred to another mare. They’re racing on the day they had a foal and they didn’t even have a labor pain. The bitch is just so different. Even her coming in, she’s progesterone-driven instead of estrogen-driven, like other species. That’s why developing a clone dog was so difficult, because of the fact that everything that worked in other species didn’t work in the dog and shouldn't have worked in the dog. I lost my train of thought… must be getting close to cocktail time! But anyway, in the bitch, it’s difficult to flush the embryo. So if you want to even talk about embryo transfer, the thoughts on using the ovaries—and we freeze the ovaries because they have unlimited eggs instead of freezing eggs, and that’s been changed in some of the other species, too. Eventually, you’ll take a piece of that ovary and put it around the ovary of another bitch and see if it’ll vitalize. There’s going to be a time when we can actually do in vitro fertilization on just an egg out of that and implant it in another bitch. There are so many things that are being done in other species. A friend of mine was trying to do some embryo flushing in the bitch and found out that you really can’t flush them the way that they do in cows and horses. For her to get the embryo—she was using them for more stem cell research—she had to spay the bitch, open the uterus to get the embryos out. Three things: 1) The bitch is so unique. 2) The things that have already been perfected for other species don’t work on the bitch. 3) We all want this, but there’s not the economic demand that there was in cattle and horses and women and things like that. Someday it will be done, but by now, I would have bet money a long time ago that we’d be doing it by now, especially the embryo transfers, and it just seems like everything we look at in the bitches is throwing up a roadblock to us. But it’s definitely something we need because in the bitch, the ovaries never stop working. The bitch doesn’t go into menopause. It’s the uterus that wears out. How great would it be if we could breed a 9-year-old bitch, flush the embryos, and put them in a 2-year-old bitch of any breed?! That’s what they do in other species. It just, right now, isn’t there in the bitch. How soon the eggs and embryo transfer will be done—I don’t know. It’s been a road block, everything we’ve tried. 

JS [56:41] That’s great. That was really interesting. I did not know all of that! One last question: if you had any recommendations or limitations regarding reproduction that you think every parent club should include in their breeder code of ethics? 

RH [57:01] I’m probably the one who is more worried about health than I am about that. I’m probably on the other side of these breeder code of ethics that say: after two litters, you have to skip a cycle because that isn’t biologically accurate. If you don’t breed your bitch for the first time till she’s 5 and you breed her at 5.5, you have to skip the next one, you may be saying her breeding career is over after just two litters. To me, I still think it’s important that we breed dogs who are healthy dogs, meaning the dogs can live a normal life. I think we do a lot of genetic testing on diseases that don’t mean anything. People get so cranked up on DM, IVDD—which really aren’t that big a deal. But a dog that is going to not be able to walk, a dog that is not going to be able to see, different things like that—I think that’s where we need to focus on. Codes of ethics should be as far as working towards the same: what do we recommend that our people uniformly test for? I think sometimes it’s up to the breed. They should be saying, “Okay, you can test for this but that really isn’t a critical thing.” Most of the codes of ethics I see seem to be human-driven rather than driven for the benefit of the dog. That’s a blanket statement which probably isn’t fair. Most of you out there, most of your breed clubs are great people. On the other hand, a lot of the codes of ethics don’t address the important things. 

JS [58:47] Thank you so much! That was great! That was an interesting talk today. We had lots of great comments. Everyone really appreciates it. Thank you to everybody who joined us! Yes, this is going to be recorded so you’ll be able to access it (or at least Good Breeders will be).

MD [59:09] Dr. Hutch put his hat on! That reminds me I have to get a Good Dog hat. 

RH [59:15] Remember, there’s never enough good dogs, right? 

MD [59:19] Love it! That’s such a statement. Thank you so much, Dr. Hutch. This was so great. I can’t be the only person that wishes this was a weekly series. Everyone, again, like Judi said, please keep a lookout for an email from Good Dog with a recording of today’s webinar. I’m sure everyone will want to watch again. If you aren’t yet a member of our community, please apply to join us at gooddog.com/join so you can stay up to date on all of our future webinars and events, which hopefully include you, Dr. Hutch!

RH [59:51] Thank you! Great seeing everybody!