 Welcome, welcome everyone. You have made it to Pure Dog Talk Live at Five. Lightning round with Laura. And I am so excited you guys are here. Pure Dog Talk is the voice of purebred dogs where your passion is our purpose. So I wanted to make sure to drop a few links in the chat for you guys today. I know I'm not always really good at this multitasking thing, but I'm gonna give it my best shot. These are our sponsors who you should give some love. Hi, Isabel. If today we're talking about breeding programs, I'm not sure is this the topic, but if it does, I'd like to know about guardian programs. Okay, guardian programs are a thing we can talk about for sure, Isabel. Hi, Susan, great to see you. Just trying to get all of these links in here for you guys to show a little bit of love to our sponsors. These are the people who make it. So Pure Dog Talk exists, frankly. So if that matters to you, go check it out, buy a little something, sign up for some insurance, all that kind of good stuff. This is real, not Memorex. So wanna make sure everybody has these. They're all on the Pure Dog Talk website, but this is quick and easy. So there we go, boom. All right, business out of the way. As always, don't forget, there is always a podcast for that. Tonight's topic is a live discussion and conversation about the dogmanship program, the section on breeding. Pardon me. Covered in this conversation is if and when to breed your dog. And we just had a question from Isabel about looking at guardian homes. So that's something we can talk about as well. An extended version of this particular presentation is slated for the NAVDA annual meeting next January, North American Versal Hunting Dog Association for any of you who might be attending that. This will be a continuation of this conversation. For more on this topic with some of our amazing Pure Dog Talk guests, you can always keyword search the archives of more than 500 episodes on the website, puredogtalk.com. Quick shameless plug listeners here can find it now. It's live up on the Facebook page, 2022 Pure Dog Talk patrons retreat and workshops. Hands on handler clinic, you guys. Everybody tells me I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying. I can't get one, I can't get one. Okay, well, I got one for you. We're coming to the Chicago suburbs. Workshops are set. Workshops themselves will be June 1st. You'll get a handler hands on handler clinic with your dog as well as access to the dog savvy lawyer, Jen Amundsen that we will be picking her brain on contracts and lots of lots of good legal resources at your fingertips. So the event is in the Chain of Lakes region, Northwest of Chicago. Details and sign up on the website. It is an amazing opportunity for us to all hang out together. All right, welcome everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We are now into the concept of breeding programs. And I'm gonna see what I can do here. I'm smart enough. Smart enough is a big question. Yeah, no. Share the screen doesn't appear to be a thing that YouTube has to offer. Beardies and bullies, yeah, hey. I know, I'm super excited, Susan. I wish that you could be there as well. We'll keep working on it. Hi, hi in Ontario, Canada. Super glad to have you here. All right, so here we go. Breeding dogs is, as we all know, something of, to put it mildly, a passion project, right? And doing it well and better than average is something we all strive for. And there are some tools that we can use to accomplish that goal. No matter what type of breeding program we have, we can all use these same tools to achieve success. So number one, breeding pedigrees. This is sort of the theory side of breeding, right? Breeding pedigrees, breeding concepts, and health testing. And that's the first thing that we're gonna talk about. And you guys, go ahead, keep dropping the questions in. I'm gonna toggle back and forth between this presentation and the chat. So I don't feel like I have ignored you if I haven't gotten right back to you. And I wish I could share my screen, but YouTube Live has many features. That's not one of them. All right, reading pedigrees. Talking about how to look at the pedigree programs, talking about the coefficient of inbreeding. One of the nice things about many of the programs is that they use a color coding to highlight dogs that appear more than once in the pedigree. And many of these programs will also offer you a pedigree COI, right? So the coefficient of inbreeding is frequently shortened to COI. One of the great things about one of our sponsors, Embark, is if you Embark test both the sire and the dam of your litter, you will be able to get a predicted genetic COI based on the actual DNA. And then if you DNA test each of the puppies in your litter, you will be able to get an exact genetic DNA coefficient of inbreeding that will tell you exactly. And I think one of the things that many of us find sort of mind blown, right? Puppies in a litter do not all have the same COI. They don't all have the same genetics. And so when I did a half brother, half sister, a straight up inbreeding that I've been planning for quite some time, and I knew what the pedigree COI was, I knew what the estimated or expected genetic COI was gonna be, and I embarked each of the 13 puppies. And the actual COI in each of those puppies varied by as much as 10 basis points. So it's really, really important to look at some of the tools that are now available to us. And dog breeding has always been a little bit of art and a little bit of science, right? Science is coming to the forefront. And I don't want us to lose the art, but I want us to be able to make good use of the science. And so pedigree, genetic and actual COI is a very, very useful tool in our breeding program as we're going forward. One of the things that makes purebred dogs purebred is a level of inbreeding, right? That's what makes it purebred. Having a higher or lower level and how you use that and the healthy genes that you're doubling up on or the unhealthy genes that you're doubling up on, make an enormous difference in your breeding program going forward. So I think that's really, really critical to understand. Okay, how are we doing here? When to breed and why? What is your breed's function and will you be participating in that function with your dog? Absolutely a great, great topic, Susan. Also use the resources of older breeders who knew the dogs and they will also be able to talk about traits that genetic testing and COI does not give you. Susan, those are super phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal insights and ones that I think people should heed, okay? So like I said, this is an art and a science. And part of the art is finding your mentors and being able and willing to talk to a lot of different people, not just the same people all the time, not everybody has all the answers. I don't have all the answers. I think there are people that are smarter than me and there are people that, you know, could use some more talking to people. But the important part is that the more input you get, the more information you have to work with, the better able you are to create an answer that is your own and that is specific to your breeding program. So if you have a breed that had a historic purpose, for example, herding or hunting or whatever it might have been, companionship, right? Many of our breeds were companions. And so knowing what those are and participating with our dogs when we're able at that at some level in those historical functions is super important in terms of maintaining breed type. And if a golden retriever doesn't retrieve, just saying that's part of breed type. And it doesn't matter how pretty they are if they don't fulfill the basic function for which they were originally designed and for which most buyers will be seeking that skill set. So it's definitely something to keep in the back of your head. Okay, back to where we're going about pedigrees. You can see all kinds of different pedigrees. You've got the pedigree programs. You've got photo pedigrees. My mom used to hand write all of her pedigrees. I wish I could screen share and show you the photos of my mom's handwritten pedigrees. It just breaks my heart to this day. And then when we're talking about breeding dogs, we have to think about the process that we intend to follow. And it's ideal if you can create a plan and is your plan to do consistent inbreeding? Maybe that's not such a great idea. Consistent line breeding, that's probably pretty safe. Consistent outcrossing is really safe from a certain perspective in terms of health. You're not as liable to double up on a particular recessive. But at the same time, I can tell you from personal experience every single time I go out to get one thing, I get three things I did not want. So balancing those three breeding theories is absolutely critical to your mission in your breeding program and knowing what you will consider and what you won't and how you plan to get where you're going when you start is gonna be really important. And so this is a place where we can talk about the concept. Okay, so beardies and bullies, what are the concept behind the line breeding, inbreeding and outcrossing? Great question, just about to get to that. So totally ahead of me. So we're gonna start with that. Let's start with inbreeding, okay? So the most extreme on one side. Inbreeding is generally by most geneticists considered to be father, daughter, mother, son, brother, sister, half brother, half sister also. After that, there can be arguments. Is it then line breeding or inbreeding? I personally have had great success on many of the great breeding theories. If you read about Lloyd's bracket and if you read Pat Trotter's Born to Win book and all of these sorts of things, the tail female and the tail male line and all of that concept, you're generally talking about line breeding. And so an uncle niece. So I have Henry and sale or litter mates. Sale is bred to topper, which is a complete outcross. And I take one of those puppies and breed it back to Henry that was sales brother. That's an uncle niece breeding. Happened to be one of my most successful dogs, okay? So that's the basic concept of line breeding and line breeding can be tight, right? Like that, or it can be very, very loose where every dog that I've looked or not every dog, many of the dogs that I've used in outcrosses track back within three to five generations to a particular stud dog in my breed in German wire hair pointers. That was a dog called Cascade Rogue. He was a dual champion. He was a national field champion. He was a master hunter. He was a UT was all of these things. He was also and remains to this day and he's been dead for 20 years on the list of top producing sires of all time on show, hunt test and field trial lists. So that was a particular goal of mine. So this is what I'm saying. You can take that and build a breeding program from that. I want to find progeny that come down from Cade and have these other characteristics, okay? And then outcrossing is like what I did just recently. I have a young stud dog. He's from a very loose line breeding and I wanted to test him to test a theory of how he would do as a sire. I bred him in an inbreeding, half brother, half sister and I brought him in an outcross to a bitch that was a mother that you couldn't find two similar dogs, two same dogs, two related dogs in the entire pedigree going back to the founders, okay? That's a real outcross. And so most successful breeders will use some combination of all three of these as they're moving towards a specific goal. So the most important thing is to have a goal. Do not just say, I want pretty ribbons. That's not your goal. Your goal is I want to make a Peruvian frog hound that has phenomenal ears, beautiful front, level back, perfect tail set, still hunts frogs and has no health problems, okay? Making things up. That's your goal. And then how you achieve that goal depends on what you start with. What does your foundation bitch look like? Does she have those three, four things? Or does she only have two or one or however many, right? So which sires am I gonna bring in? Which sides of her pedigree are strong for which of these features? And this is where Susan's advice is critical. You as a new person will not be able to see all of the dogs that are in your pedigree. It's the beautiful thing about purebred dogs, right? This is history. This is art. This is time immemorial. You can't know all these dogs. But if you talk to the people that came before you, they saw these dogs and they can tell you. And if you can talk to more than one person that saw the same dog and get two different opinions, oh my God, what kind of heaven is that, right? And so that's what we're trying to build on. We're trying to build on this concept of I have a goal, I have a stated goal, I have written it down, I have cemented it in my brain. And I have had a very careful evaluation of the bitch that I'm working with, my foundation bitch. I know what I want to improve upon in her, pick a thing. I know what I will not give on, what I will give on and what is not a concern, right? Those are the kinds of questions that need to be addressed as you are getting started, deciding if and when to breed your dog, male or female. We've had a lot of conversations. I was just recently talking to one of my mentees who's taking my breeding program and moving forward with it, somebody had contacted her about a stud dog that they were interested in using one of our stud dogs and they have this particular bitch and they sent the pedigree and they sent the health testing and as we spoke about this by mentee and I and looked at the particular dog, the dog herself was not a particularly great example of the breed. Okay, so she's a nice hunting dog, but she doesn't meet the breed standard particularly well. Her pedigree is average to maybe slightly below average and she herself has no titles. She has not proven herself in a titling situation. And one of the reasons we have titles, whether it's in the field or in the show ring is that I can say my dog is the most beautiful thing that ever walked and never missed a bird and points on two legs, but until six other people say that, it kind of doesn't matter what I say, right? I love my dog. I think it's great. So that's the point of titles. And then the final straw was this particular female's health testing was average at best. And so you pull all these things together and you say, am I gonna breed my dog to that female? Am I gonna breed my female who doesn't, who has these, these and these things? No, right? So those are the kinds of yes and no decisions that you're gonna start making as you start thinking about starting a breeding program. Okay, welcome, Matt Stelter. Great to have you here. It is the master breeder that knows just which tool to pull out of the tool chest in breed line breed outcross at each crossroads to move their program forward and then selection is critical. Hey, now, Matt, that is an absolutely fabulous point that I'm about to get to, but thank you for bringing it up now because that is absolutely mission critical, right? So I did this breeding because I wanted better upper arm return. Okay, but the dog in the litter that has the best upper arm return has the ugliest head and I just have a thing about heads and I couldn't possibly have an ugly head. And yet I did the entire breeding to get this one puppy that has this upper arm return that I was looking for. And why am I not keeping it? Because I'm stuck on whatever other thing. So selection, if you guys go back and listen to the podcast that I did with Cordmaker Pooley's unbelievable, absolutely imperative listening in terms of building a breeding program, keyword search it on the website, they're incredible. Susan, phenotype to phenotype versus genotype to genotype. Ooh, great question, super deep. Having done the most amazing breeding on paper, remember that what you see in the litter box may or may not produce what you expected. Oh, hell, isn't that the truth? So this is a really interesting sort of deep dive on this concept. And most of us, I would say breed on genotype. So for those of you who are not keeping up with a lingo here, I know that we get a little in the weeds sometimes. Genotype is the pedigree. That's what talks about the actual genetic involvement in each individual dog. Phenotype is what does the dog look like? And so I may have on pedigree, King Zeus from King Zeus from King Zeus from King Zeus. And that dog might look like Prince Toad, right? And so that's an important thing to keep in mind. When you make breeding decisions, whether you breed on a pedigree or whether you breed on dogs that look alike, no matter what their genetics are, no matter what pedigree is behind them, is in my opinion, sort of a personal decision. I personally am a genotype freak. I am a pedigree guru. I love it, I research it, I live and die by it. And yet I know there are lots and lots and lots and lots of people out there who breed on phenotype. I want a dog that looks like this. And this is what my dog looks like. I think this is what the breed looks like. I want another dog that looks just like this. My opinion of the short falling in that is that if you have a phenotype, a picture that you like in your mind, there are instances in which that picture in your mind has shortcomings. And if that's the only picture you ever have in your mind, all you're gonna do is make more of those same shortcomings. So if you wanna see a wire hair pointer that's got a super exaggerated top line and super upright and super almost terrier-esque in appearance, and you're just gonna keep breeding to that picture, that silhouette, pretty soon you're gonna have a one-dimensional dog. And I see this a lot, like a lot, a lot. And so that's why I am such a fan of genotype and breeding on pedigrees, breeding on paper. And no matter whether you breed by genotype or phenotype, it doesn't matter. What you get may not match what you expected. Welcome to being a dog breeder. It's so cool. So that I think is so important to keep in mind as we decide, again, am I gonna breed my dog? Should I breed my dog? Should I breed my dog? Should I breed my bitch? Understand that master breeders, as Matt was mentioning, we all make plans, we all have things that we've been planning for five, 10, 20 years that when it lands on the ground, you're like, that didn't work. And welcome to Mother Nature. And that's sort of part of the deal with being a dog breeder. I can give you a perfect example. I had way back in the day, a very fabulous dog that I loved very much that for a variety of reasons, I had one frozen semen breeding on the dog been dead for years. And it was a particular pedigree piece that I really desperately wanted to bring forward because I like so many things about it. And I had waited and waited and waited and waited all those 20 years to find just the right bitch that I was sure that I was gonna get what I wanted from this particular combination of this particular dog that I had been paying for the frozen semen for 20 years. For real, I was just like, and so I finally had this female, a fabulous bitch. She was Winner's Bitch at the National. She was Dual Futurity, a winner. So she won both the show and the Field Futurity. Like I was really excited about this bitch. I thought she had great potential. She'd had two phenomenal litter spread live cover. Great, great, this is gonna be awesome. And so I thought out the one and only breeding to this dog in the universe. And I spend billions of dollars to have it shipped to my vet, to have it surgically inseminated to my dog, and she has one puppy. So we can talk about the joys of dog breeding. So my frozen semen surgical implant single 10 C-section puppy who absolutely is 110% not what I wanted. He's neutered and he lives in my backyard. Welcome to it, people. And I've been doing this for a really long time. Yes, and Susan, you are right. That's what I was mentioning earlier. Each puppy is its own genetic miracle or lack thereof. So when you have one, it's a little depressing, particularly when it's not the genetic miracle you're hoping for. Hi, Bethany. Oh my gosh, all the way from Australia. So excited to see you. I'm so glad you guys are able to join us. Had your old boy tested. The vet said his sperm was not quite good enough to freeze due to his age. He thinks we would have had a good chance with life cover any way to increase the sperm quality. Oh my goodness, this is a great, great question, Bethany. So go back, go back on the website. You're gonna need to do a keyword search on the Pure Dog Talk website. And I did a series of four interviews with the people at a particular frozen semen company, sorry, my brain. And they talk a lot about that. There are some things, green-lip muscles, I can't remember all of them off the top of my head. But if you go back and do a keyword search for stud dog, you're gonna find a variety of different topics and they were gonna give you some of that information. And oftentimes, yes, life cover is gonna do a lot better. Here's another little known topic except to me. Not every dog freezes. Not every dog freezes and ask me how I know. Some dogs simply do not extend. Their semen does not jive with the extender in either fresh chilled or frozen. And I have lost out on a number of really, tragically, really great stud dogs over the years because they had semen that did not extend. So my best advice, Marty Greer's best advice, everybody from every semen or bank I can talk to, freeze them young, freeze them early. I don't care if they've had their health testing, collect them at like 18 months old. If their health tests are crap, dump it. It doesn't matter. Do the collection and have it available because if you try to collect that fabulous dog when they're 10 years old and somebody wants to breed to them 10 years later, you're not gonna have it. So vitamin E and increased protein, yes. Bethany, honestly, without going back and listening, I'm just gonna say go find those episodes. I know Greenlit Muscle is one that they use and recommend from a number of the sites here. So you can get more information on those previous podcasts. Yes, Pernum Muscle, there you go, Susan. Some interesting studies on cold pressed wheat germ oil. Interesting, that's a good one. Yes, Matt, they really do struggle with extender. Trust me, I've had one, two, three, four. Four really important stud dogs, sadly, all in the same line, all dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And none of them extended, none of them froze, none of them could be fresh chilled. I had one particular dog that was so tragic. He, every time you put his swimmers in an extender, they just kind of rolled over and died. And so the woman that desperately wanted to breed to him drove from Michigan to North Dakota. And the woman who owned him drove from Seattle to North Dakota and they met and their dogs had sex on a motel six bed and they went their separate ways. So I'm just saying the tragicness is real. And, you know, Marty Greer makes some good points in some of the episodes I've done with her recently that we as dog breeders have got to pay attention to this because it's genetic. And when I say I had four dogs that didn't extend that were all related, I'm talking father, son, grandson, half brother, like for real. So it is absolutely mission critical that we pay attention to that stuff and really try to make great choices about the dogs that we use in our breeding programs. And that is a consideration, free-welping. Will the semen freeze? Are they a natural whelper? Are they a natural breeder? You know, all of those things too often as breeders we get wrapped up in, put it as a best in show. It was ranked number one. It's really beautiful. It can't get puppies out of it, Susan, dude. So that's something to consider. And I think it's absolutely important that we consider it. And I have built in, I've spent the last 10 years developing an entire second bitch line because I didn't like how my bitches whelped. And I had strictures and I had whatever weirdness and all this. And so I spent all this time adding a second bitch line so that I could add bitches that would free-welp. And so these kinds of discussions and considerations are absolutely imperative as you go forward and think about your breeding program. Okay, really beautiful. Okay, sorry, momentary pause. Keep sending the questions, you guys. This is fabulous. I'm gonna go back here and talk about this a little bit. All right, so we talked about inbreeding, I think we went through my entire thing without even looking at my notes. Oh, here's one. This is super important. Listen up, kids. Health testing, healthy dogs. Right, before we do health and temperament, health and temperament, health and temperament. I don't care how many damn best-in-shows your dog has. If it bites me and has seizures, I'm not breeding to it. Pausing to let that sink in. Health and temperament. If you don't wanna live with it, nobody else does. If it's gonna die early, why? I don't care how pretty it is. Pay attention, health and temperament are the single most important decisions that you will make. Because 50%, 90%, however many percent of your puppies aren't gonna go be best-in-show dogs. They're gonna go live on somebody's couch. And they need to be healthy and they need to be temperamentally sound. And yes, temperament is genetic. There's podcasts for that too. All right, so when you're researching a new stud dog or in my case, bringing a bitch line in or whatever it is, OFA has an amazing tool called a vertical pedigree. And you can go to the OFA website. You can pick whatever it is. I'll just use thyroid in Wear Hair Pointers is my big bugaboo. And you can go to the page of the dog that you're considering on the OFA website, okay? And then you go to the top and you look at all the tests that are available and you pick thyroid, because that's the one you're all jacked up about. And then you go to the top of that page and there's gonna be an orange rectangle that says vertical pedigree. And you pull that up and it is going to show you the dog that you're considering, what his result was, what his siblings were, what his offspring were. And it will do that for three generations on that one page and it will continue back. And anybody who listened to the interview I did with Jimmy Moses, I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was absolutely genius. And talking about hips and German Shepherd dogs and what have you and that he would rather breed to a mild or a moderately dysplastic dog from a family of dogs, not just a siren dam, a family. The breadth of the pedigree was good or excellent than he would to breed to an excellent dog that the breadth of the pedigree was all fair and dysplastic. That is so important. And it is absolutely critical to use the tools that we have at our fingertips today that we didn't used to have. Use them, they're there for this purpose, okay? The Vertical Pedigree System at OFA's website is one of the greatest gifts to dog breeders that exist today. Okay, what do we got here? And some, okay, so Susan's saying some breeds extend better, agreed. All right, okay. New extender, pure pup, interesting. There's a lot, and that's actually a really good point, Susan, and one that you'll hear discussed in some of these previous podcasts. There are different brands of semen extender moving back to this concept of extending your dogs in either fresh or frozen. ICSB, ICG, clone, you name it, there's so many different options. And so it's really, really important to try different ones. And I think that when we do that, we sometimes will find success with one that we did not find with others. And so that is, with some of the mini tube, whole bunches of those sorts of different options, this pure pup I don't know. I had a therogenologist in Nebraska that used to make her own extender, like she'd use eggs and she'd just bring me in and say, here, let me test your dog semen in this extender. I'm like, okay, right. So there's lots and lots and lots of different options. So consider, if your dog doesn't extend in one, consider trying another. And that is something, again, from experience that I think is worth discussing. Yeah, test a variety of extenders. It is totally worth the investment. Absolutely, Susan. Okay, so back to dog breeding. Back to should I breed my dog? When should I breed my dog? That kind of stuff. So now we've done the theory bit. Now we get to the hands-on bit, right? So heat cycles, I think everybody on this call probably is pretty comfortable with this, but I'm gonna kind of spin through it super fast. Dogs are gonna have their first reproductive heat cycle when they reach puberty. This consists of several stages, including estrus, which is when the female is actually receptive to become pregnant. It is different from different breeds, a Chihuahua's heat cycle and a St. Bernard's heat cycle are gonna be slightly different. On average, sexual maturity is reached at about six months of age, but this can vary. Most dogs come into heat twice a year, roughly every six months, although the interval can vary, notably Basenji's, some of the more, if you will, sort of feral dogs come in season once a year. I've had a lot, a lot, a lot of bitches that came in season every eight months. If your dog is not six months on the nose, then it's not a crisis, just keep at it. And so then the full heat cycle, most bitches is gonna be about three weeks. I just had one of my puppy people tell me, this bitch is never gonna go out of season. She's been in season for 30 days. Everything happens, right? Pay attention, try to make sure that your dogs and bitches are separated. If you want to successfully accomplish a plan breeding, it helps if you don't have everybody doing the wing thing when you're not looking, right? Okay, females are pregnant for nine weeks. That is nine weeks from ovulation. That is not nine weeks from when you bred her. It is not nine weeks from the first tie or the last tie. It is nine weeks from ovulation. That is very important. Sorry, I have a dog crisis. I see people all the time, well, she's goo and the last breeding was blah, blah, blah, it really doesn't matter. If you're not tracking ovulation timing on your dog, you have no idea when she's due to have her puppies. Literally, you can guess, you can pretend, but you don't have any idea. Spend the money, get the progesterone drawn. It's a blood draw at your vet. If you're really lucky, you have a repro vet that has a machine that can run the test in house. If you're not, they have to send it out. It's the next day, whatever. It doesn't matter if you're doing life cover or artificial insemination of any kind. Knowing when your bitch ovulated tells you when your bitch will have puppies. That is important. Ultrasound, a lot of people like to do that around 30 days from ovulation. Again, not the tie, from ovulation. Nutrition, supplements, exercise, please, please, please, please do not like put your bitches in a box and not let them do anything while they're pregnant. They're pregnant, they're not crippled. They need muscle tone. They need the ability for their uterus to push out 14 one-pound puppies for Pete's sake. Let them be fit, don't let them be crazy, but let them be fit. Okay, blah, blah, all right. So still no more questions. So next up, well-ping. All right, most dogs, not mine, most dogs well-peasly and naturally. Some of us are star-crossed, but there you go. Stay close to assist where you're needed. When you have a bitch well-ping, you should, in my opinion, be hands-on. There are some breeds that are able to do it all on their own and don't need the intervention and Merry Christmas. That's not everybody. Pay attention, know what's going on, make sure that your bitch has a quiet, dim space that is warm and properly moist, right? So humidity is actually a big piece of it. It doesn't need to be 100 degrees unless extreme situations that we'll talk about another time, but it needs to be 68, 70 degrees warm enough that the puppies will not freeze to death, but cool enough that they will go up to their mother to receive the body heat that they need. And those of you who haven't should absolutely go back to the sort of foundational episodes that we did with Gail Watkins way at the beginning, just keyword search Gail Watkins name. There's some incredible stuff in there that completely changed the way that I welp and raise puppies and I am eternally grateful to her for that. So go check that out. C-section is always a possibility. Depends, you get somebody sideways, you get somebody backwards, whatever. If you wanna save your dog's life, you may have to have a C-section. I might suggest that Troupanian has a really great breeding rider that you might consider adding to your bitches during the time that they're being bred. Welping can last a couple hours or it could last 24 hours. I've literally been involved in several 24-hour welpings. It is a nightmare, trust me. It depends on your breed, depends on your dam, it depends on the number of puppies you have. I had a female that started at eight o'clock in the morning and at one o'clock in the morning the next day finished up with puppy number 13 and it was a nightmare. So I'm just saying, know that this isn't easy and it isn't quick. And if you thought that this was gonna be a quick buck maker, I would think again. Neonatal period. Let me see how am I doing on time? Good. Hey, Elliot, super glad that you are here, Susan. Have a slush fund for C-sections or a breeding rider. Yep, one or both. We just had another Aspinoni with a Singleton $3,500 later to get that one Singleton that will not cost $3,500 for anybody to buy. So understand that breeding dogs is not a moneymaker, people. There it is. That's a reality check. Sometimes, great, but yes, I absolutely agree. Get your X-rays done at about 54, 56 days, something like that with a couple days left so that writing to the vet isn't gonna put her into labor, but so that you can see if you've got somebody crosswise on the uterine horn where it can be a mess, it can block things up and there's a lot of things but it can really give you a good idea and know that as you're welping the puppies, if you know that you have at least 11 and she stalled out at nine, you need to do something. And so we can do how to make a million dollars in dogs start with two million valid. We can do a whole, whole live podcast on this topic. It is very deep, it is very full and rich. Susan, Gal Watkins, we can get a lot of people involved in this conversation, but just know that this is not, doesn't always go according to plan. So that's the important part of that equation, does not always go according to plan. So neonatal period, this is right after they're born, their eyes and ears are closed, those puppies cannot regulate their own body temperature for the first seven to 10 days. That's why it's so imperative that you have some kind of heat source in the box and have it in a position that the puppies can go to it or away from it and the mom can be away from it. That's the most important piece of that and the puppies will regulate their body temperature by going to the heat source they need, okay? They can smell and they can feel warm and cold. That's about it. That's that first, about week or 10 days. And then they start to turn into puppies, not potatoes, right? Their eyes and their ears start to open, they start playing, you know, that weevils wobble but they don't fall down age, it's fabulous. It's about three weeks. Love that age, my personal favorite. And then they get to the explorer age and they start testing boundaries and experiences, sounds, smells, textures. They start to investigate outside their area. There is so much development work that we can do during this time as dog breeders that will make our dogs far, far, far, far superior to any random bred street dog that somebody's gonna pull from the shelter. That's just a fact. It's why purebred dogs are amazing. Or purpose bred dogs, however you wanna go with that. Okay, end of the wild blue yonder, eight weeks. They're ready to go to their new homes. Your job during that two months is to make sure that every single day that dog's been tested, it's been challenged, it's been safe, it's been introduced to everything you can think of in terms of sounds and smells and textures and people and dogs, safe dogs, all those things in a way that is beneficial to the puppies that will stand them in good stead going forward. Neo-Natal puppies should feel vital, not limp. Ooh, super good point. Susan, and definitely you and I will plan, this might be a good one for next month, you and I can plan to do the puppy-welping live podcast, and you can call in and we'll have a conversation about this, but this was mostly to give some ideas, some traction for people that had questions. Anybody who has questions now is a super great time. I have about 10 minutes left. Shoot me questions, what are you worried about? What are you excited about? What are your plans going forward? I can tell you that I'm involved with a group of people that we are starting to look at an entirely new breed to three of the four of us and starting to build a breeding program from scratch with the knowledge I have today instead of what I had 25 or 40 years ago is really exciting, like I have to tell you the idea of diving into a new breed and developing a breeding program based on what I have learned. I'm kind of excited, you guys, I'm not gonna lie to you. I, it's, you know, things get to be a little much sometimes and a new challenge is for me very, very welcome. So that's what I'm excited about. Elliot, the new baby arrives in two weeks, basically. I'm flying to Utah to do a dogmanship presentation for 4-H students and I will meet the new baby and fly him home with me. So right before the Spannone National. Yay. Hey, Bethany, let's see. Bethany says she left it too late to breed. 12 years old has done no matings to date. Yeah, 12 is really tough. Bethany, even in a whip-it, that's a pretty healthy long-lived breed. I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed. I will tell you there is one way that you can find out. You said you'd had him collected and the vet said that he wasn't good enough to collect but he should be able to give you an idea if he has viable semen, right? What that semen's motility looks like, what the quantity and quality looks like, all of those things so that if you had a bitch that you wanted to breed him to that he might be able to do life cover, that that would be something to think about. But being able to get a collection by a certified reproductive specialist is gonna give you your best idea on that. Doing a litter using Fresh Chilt this year, first time doing this, so worried. Okay, so, Kid Carnage, I think you were coming to us from Canada. I understand your fear, not gonna lie to you. I have had phenomenal success with frozen semen. I have had limited success with Fresh Chilt. That's me, so I understand your concern. Timing, timing, timing, timing, timing. Know what your timing is and make sure that your vet knows what the timing is also. Make sure that the person sending the semen knows what the timing is. Really good communication, really on the bull veterinarians and make sure that that dog has been collected previously, has been shipped previously. They've had successful breedings via Fresh Chilt semen. Know those things going in. That is my strongest advice because ask me how I know. Okay, good semen first. Okay, hi, Nicole, how are you? Don't worry about it. I don't mind the hitting, the hitting introduced soon. That premature ejaculation is so good. How do I make sure the vet is good at performing these tests? One thing I'm concerned with is the vet being too rough and not getting good pictures for OFA and PNHIP. Okay, so Nicole, that's a great question. And I would recommend what I just did and I've had the same veterinarian for 12, 15 years. And I just needed to add someone to the team and I went to a veterinarian in my area and booked an appointment, paid for an appointment, paid good money for this person's time because their time is valuable, right? So don't expect to just get it for free. Book an appointment, pay for the appointment, talk to the veterinarian. How many OFA x-rays do you do? How do you handle them? Do you do them with or without sedation? Do you use a VPELO or not? All of these are questions that you can ask and the veterinarian, if you give them respect, respect their time by booking that appointment ahead, they'll totally answer those questions for you. Yes, that's Susan in response to Kidd, that progesterone timing is 100% the best thing and I have to tell you, even with that, I've had terrible success with Fresh Child, but that's me. I've had 95% success with Frozen. My Fresh Child success rate is more like 50, so that's me. Everybody has a thing. Mine is I stress about Fresh Child and I completely understand. Good job, Susan, thank you very much for doing that. Okay, so that's my answer to most things is be respectful, plan ahead, test for it, even if you don't think you have to. Temperament and health, number one, if you have any question as to whether temperament is genetic, you need to go back and listen to the podcast that I did with Dr. Karen Overall. It is absolutely amazing. There are a variety of interviews on that topic. For those of you who have not really spent any time on the Pure Dog Tech website, understand that there's 530-some-odd episodes and only 200 and some of those are available to you on iTunes or any of your RSS feeds. The rest of them are only available on Archive, on the website. I am in process, so this is like breaking news. I am in process. I'm putting together what I will be calling albums. There will be albums of everything you need to know about well-being your first litter, whatever it is. Pulling together curated content minus advertising that you'll be able to buy for a nominal fee. And so that is something that I would love for you guys to weigh in on if you have a thought as to if I could purchase an album of material on puppy raising or dog handling or you name a topic. There's literally gonna be a couple hours worth of material for you. How much would you pay for that? So that's my thing to you. Drop me a PM, drop me a note here. Drop me a note on the Facebook page because these albums are forthcoming in the next month or so. So keep an eye out on the Facebook page. I'll announce them there on the website. I'll announce them there. Very, very excited about that. Oh, look at that. Kid Carnage and Susan Patterson are now besties in Quebec. Love it. What a way to connect. This is what Pure Dog Talk is about. We are here to make your life better. And that's my entire raison d'être just for you and Quebec, Susan. Thank you all for joining us. If you have not yet had the opportunity, please do stop by all of our sponsors pages. Give them a shout out. Say, hey, we love Pure Dog Talk, we love that. Join us on the Facebook page. If you can join us for the retreat and workshops in Northwest Illinois in the first week of June. And I am so, so, so, so, so excited for all of you and for these live podcasts. And Susan, I'm very thrilled that you and Renee are gonna go have a literary val. Enjoy visiting with my friends. I love them and miss them madly. All right, everybody. Thank you. Thank you all for joining us on Pure Dog Talk live at five. And next month, next month, first Tuesday of the month, every month, live at five. Next month, I think we will bring Susan back. She's joined us at least once or twice before. And we're gonna talk about some basic Welping and Neonatal stuff. So I think that'll be a great, great, great live. Meanwhile, y'all have a great night. Thanks for joining us. I'm your host, Laura Reeves.