Lovesick
We got a great shipment on Tuesday – 15 mls! – so we did one breeding already and we’ll do the last on Wednesday, then box everything back up and send it back to Betty Ann. Her boxes are well-used and must smell like absolutely terrific excitement, because I have to put them way up high so the dogs don’t pile on them and chew them to bits.
Clue was actively trying to get Bramble to breed today, and he – who obviously has no idea he’s neutered – got so heated that he ended up with an external tie and had to take a cold shower while I laughed at him. After all was back to normal he ran around the house a zillion miles an hour and rolled luxuriously all over the floor. Crazy dog. He has achieved total mind-over-matter triumph, completely ignoring the fact that he shouldn’t have any desire to breed anything.
The good news is that the fact that she was so flirty means that we’ve got the timing perfect. The eggs should be ripe today, possibly yesterday (which the Sunday insemination would have covered) and tomorrow’s will be insurance. Chilled breeding is never a sure thing, because the sperm, while still very much alive, are more fragile than fresh. They begin to lose their tails within a few hours of insemination and are dead within 24. The eggs ripen 48-72 hours after ovulation and are able to be fertilized for only another 24 hours or so. So I am not promising a thing; any little glitch in timing or motility can throw the whole thing off the bridge. But I feel good that we’re at least covering the right days and Betty Ann has had fantastic success rates and big litters with this method.
(As an aside, chilled has a terrible reputation in Danes. It seems like half or more bitches “miss” and you end up with smaller litters too. My guess as to the breed difference is simply distance to travel; the weaker chilled sperm only have to go a few inches in Cardigans and at least a foot in Danes. If I were ever doing AI with Danes again I’d probably still have chilled sent, but I’d do a surgical or transcervical insemination - in other words, pretend the chilled semen is frozen semen. That seems to be the only way to get the little swimmers where they need to be.)
IF this worked, I think the likely c-section scheduling will be in the third week of January. Based on a Friday/Saturday ovulation she’s due on a Saturday and we’ll probably do the c-section the day before. But I have to get through the next four weeks and see if she’s actually pregnant first ;).
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I might have missed this in a previous post, but are you planning a c-section because of her pelvic injuries, or is there another reason?
Just curious :)
.-= K.B.´s last blog ..Dancing with your dogs. =-.
Yes, exactly. We did x-rays 10 weeks after the accident to verify what was going on in there. The fracture under her left hip socket healed by throwing a whole bunch of bone all around the entire area, and several of the other fractures were putting out tendrils of bone too. By this point, a year later, it’s sure to be even more dramatic. Since the fractures were displaced and had to build bridges to close up the bone, the delicate structures are vastly thickened and would not be able to flex and move apart to let a puppy out.
It’s amazing, because to look at her you’d think absolutely nothing was hinky in there. She can still take the stairs two at a time and jump on the beds and the backs of the couches. She’s still super athletic and moves beautifully. But inside it looks like someone took their thumb and smeared the bone from side to side. So a c-section was a must from the very beginning.
LOL! Poor Bramble. Where there’s a will…
Fingers crossed that everything goes, uh, swimmingly.
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