After months of agonizing about whether to breed both Emma and Evie when they next came into season, since they’re always only a couple of weeks apart, and debating whether we could manage two litters at once, we are extremely disappointed to say that we took the leap to breed both of them and neither Emma’s nor Evie’s breeding took this time around.
We are evaluating things on our end – diet, water, environment, etc. – but nothing has really changed since Emma’s litter with Harley so we’re not convinced that’s the problem. We did not, however, do serious progesterone testing with either girl, and we think that may be part of the problem – our timing was off. (Even if not, I can’t imagine having another litter without progesterone testing to pinpoint ovulation. The whelping dates are far too flexible – we were looking at a week-long window for each girl. I don’t do well with that kind of ambiguity – with Emma’s last litter we knew she ovulated on one of two days, so we knew within a three-day window when the puppies would come. Far less stressful for all involved.)
We quite honestly almost took this as a sign that we should just give up. After all, over the years we’ve had five potential breeding bitches (owned and co-owned) and from them we’ve had three litters and two singleton puppies. Those are not great odds. Granted, one bitch we never ended up breeding because of her health, but still. Even just looking at Emma and Evie, we’ve bred them both three times now; Emma had one litter and Evie had a singleton puppy. (What’s most frustrating, of course, is that the breeders who really don’t care about the breed, don’t health test, have never heard of ARVC or AS or the breed standard – those are the breeders whose bitches get pregnant every single time and produce 8 puppies each litter.)
Anyway, we almost quit, but then the Universe gave us a sign that it wasn’t yet time for us to hang it up. So we will try one more time with the girls, and we have co-ownerships on two of Emma’s daughters with breeding/puppy back options – but honestly, positive signs from the Universe notwithstanding, if our luck continues the way it has we may just own stud dogs in the future. (I love my Boxer boys, and in fact prefer males to females in general, but I really hope it doesn’t come to that!)
