Am.Can.Ch.
Tweedcroft's Debonair (Fred)Presents
PUPSICLES!
THIS PAGE IS PHOTO INTENSIVE - PLEASE ALLOW TIME FOR LOADING - WE THINK YOU'LL FIND IT WORTH THE WAIT!
In the spring of 1999 we decided it was time to bring in an infusion of new blood to our breeding program. Finding the bloodlines we wanted was not an easy task and when the dust settled - seems I still liked best a dog that has been dead since 1995.
What to do?
Knowing what was in the pedigree of this dog, I decided it was worth a try at using frozen sperm - if it worked I'd be thrilled - if it didn't - well, there was always a next time. The litter would be an outcross - but with the dogs behind both mom and dad - there had to be more than enough of a good thing to make this worth trying!
We contacted the owner of the dog (in this case the dog's sperm) and discussed our desires with her - and got the go ahead to plan this breeding. We were set! Little did I know what would be entailed before we were through!
The dog we decided on was Am.Can.Ch. TWEEDCROFT'S DEBONAIR (better known as 'Fred'.) Looking for his type, soundness, and his lovely Lab attributes (head, coat and tail) seemed like the place to go was the source. Fred has produced outstanding offspring including currently working narcotics dogs in the U.S., a son who is the top producing sire in one of the U.S. guide dog breeding programs, hunting and show dogs in the U.S. and a nice gene pool of BOB and BISS winners in Sweden from frozen semen sent there some years back. Truly a dog who could do and did it all!
Am.Can.Ch.
Tweedcroft's Debonair (Fred)
Fred was the son of Am.Can.Ch. Waterdog's Raine Dancer Ch. Anderscroft Mijan's Bravo X Ch. Waterdogs Raine Storm, CDX - bred and owned by Michael Woods - a respected Canadian breeder/judge.) His dam was Ch. Shadowvales Just So - litter sister to Am.Can.Ch. Shadowvales Just Reward (J.R.)
At the grand old age of 11 Fred went BOS at the Golden Gate Labrador Retriever specialty in the Veteran Sweeps - proving he still had what it takes, even in his golden years!
Fred was exactly what I was looking for!
Our heartfelt thanks to his owner Linda Squires (while he was alive, Linda co-owned Fred with his breeder, Prescott Powell Chubet - however she is the sole owner of his sperm) - without her agreement and support - this breeding would never have taken place. But happen it has! I started writing this while I waited for puppies to be born!
The bitch is our
yellow girl - Can.Ch. Snowyriver's Juliet. 
Juliet (Blackthorn's Imminent Thunder (15 pts in U.S. - lacking one major) X Rickway's Magic Moments (7 pts in Canada - but a most reluctant show dog!) had the misfortune while just 7 weeks old of being bitten, on the face, by one of our older dogs. She learned fast to NEVER try to take a Kong away from anyone! But the bite left her face re-arranged - the other dog's canine tooth went right through the soft jawbone and the artery - quick thinking on my husband's part kept her from bleeding to death but what none of us expected was the remodeling of the jawline caused by the bite. Juliet's top jawline took a detour around her face, with a large scar as the centre of attraction. We had three different vets, including the vet who had treated the bite, examine her; and in the opinion of all three, the jawline was not an inherited problem but a direct result of the bite. Whew!
Despite the face, Juliet finished her Canadian Championship in two weekends - however, in the specialty ring, breeder/judges put her consistently 2nd in the class and usually said "and you know why". All-breed judges felt that as the scar was quite visible and as one judge said "she can still retrieve a duck!" - they could handle the face. As a result, Juliet sat home while her littermates went to specialties! But Juliet has proven that despite the face, she can produce!
She has had two large litters (8 and 9 puppies) that have produced 8 champions to date with others to come- so we knew she was a fertile girl who could give us what we wanted - it was up to us to do the rest and get it right.
Once the arrangements were agreed upon, the first step was to get the semen shipped to us. It was being shipped by the International Canine Semen Bank in Portland, Oregon - using Fed-Ex overnight. It was shipped on day 7 of Juliet's heat cycle - left Portland late in the afternoon and had cleared customs and was waiting for me to pick up the next morning by 11 a.m.. I must admit I was a bit surprised at the size of the parcel I collected - nearly 2 feet high and approx. 12 inchs square. And it was heavy!
1. Shipping tank
The box contained a "dry shipping tank" - a metal canister charged with nitrogen - keeping the four tiny vials solidly frozen. We had been instructed to add nitrogen to the tank as soon as it got here - or better still to move the vials to a tank that could hold more nitrogen. This was the plan til we tried to fit the "canes" into the other tank - they didn't fit. So the dry shipping tank became the storage tank for what turned out to be another 10 days.
After delivering the tank to my Vet, Denise Schlingman DVM, of Uncas Veterinary Clinic, Ardrossan, Alberta - we sat around and discussed the plan for the rest of the production - and somewhere along the line I referred to the dog as "Fred" - somehow, with absolutely no disrespect intended - somebody remarked that "Dead Fred" was safe in his tank with the levels topped off. The name stuck - ghoulish but cute!
Testing for the exact moment to breed is a rather perplexing series of blood tests - looking specifically for a particular level of progesterone in the bitch's blood. .
Progesterone in bitches is measured in nanograms per millilitre - theTarget test is set for 5 ng/ml - the Ovucheck (Premate) is set at 10. But, according to the International Canine Semen Bank - they that freeze, store and send out semen - the optimum time to breed is at 15 ng/ml. And this is where it gets tricky!
Many bitches get to the 5 and 10 levels - BUT then they slow down - or stop their progression - and may take as many as 6-7 days to actually be ready to breed. (this is one reason why many bitches don't get pregnant when bred - they were bred too soon!) That's what happened with Juliet. Her smears on day 5 showed her at 99% cornified - but she was nowhere near the 5 ng/ml of the Target test - that happened 3 days later. Then we switched to Ovucheck - and spent 5 days doing tests every second day til she reached the 10 ng/ml level. Then we had to resort to a human test and go to a local lab to get the 15 ng/ml results. That test was done twice - once on a Saturday and then the following Tuesday - on the Tuesday we were at 14.7 - the advice from ICSB - breed her Wednesday and Friday.
My Veterinarian does a lot of artificial inseminations of cattle and horse using frozen semen and had bred dogs using fresh chilled but had never done the AI of a dog using frozen. She spent a lot of time on the phone with ICSB getting advice and making sure she was ready for this - her interest in breeding and the fact that she is a breeder herself made everything easier for me - for which I cannot thank her enough.
Prof. Carrol Platz from ICSB also gave us his invaluable advice - without his help we could have been in a quandry on a couple of occasions!
One of the pieces of equipment my Vet didn't have but did get was the bath used for thawing sperm. It thermostatically keeps the water at EXACTLY 99 degrees - and is the water bath container for the bags that would hold the thaw medium and the sperm.
The steps for our process were the same for both days - outlined below with photos and starting with the vaginal smear to establish cornification.
Juliet's slide
showing her 99% cornified on day 5 - from then til she tested to
15 ng/ml - we waited. Poor Juliet must have felt like a
pincushion by the time we finished testing!
Water bath for thaw
medium & sperm.
Removing thaw medium
from nitrogen tanks - gloves keep fingers from becoming instantly
frozen (I believe the number I heard was minus196 degrees
fahrenheit.)
Putting the thaw
medium in the "defrosting" bag to go into the water
bath.
Removing the sperm
from the tank - the fear here was of dropping the tube and losing
all those little precious little pellets.
Adding sperm pellets
to thaw medium - the medium is the mixture which allows the sperm
to survive the thawing process - without the proper medium, the
sperm would perish.
Drawing semen into
syringe for injection. At this point Juliet entered the
procedure.
Using a short
speculum and slightly longer pipette - Juliet was readied to
receive the now-thawed sperm. Having the speculum shorter than
the pipette allowed a trans-cervical AI as the pipette crossed
the cervix at the moment of "injecting" the sperm.
Juliet's butt was aimed
skyward to make sure none of the precious fluid had any chance to
escape! Then her next 15 minutes was spent in a most undignified
(for her) position - but one that let gravity help with the
process! Bless her heart - she never even tried to move!
Then we waited - with fingers crossed
Twenty-eight days later,the screen on the ultrasound proclaimed it's good news!
The black shadow
in the center of the screen is a puppy - when looking at the
ultrasound machine during the test you could see the actual body
shape of the embryo.
Needless to say - this moment had all of us whooping, shouting and cheering like crazy - a lot of work by a lot of people had gone into making this happen! Now it. was a case of wait - not so patiently - for the big day
The outcome - Born on the 4th of July (she waited for the U.S. Independence Day I'm sure - out of respect for the American father of the lot!) - 9 black babies - 3 girls, 6 boys - all healthy and extremely vigourous!
We will be adding photos to this page as the puppies grow - progress reports will follow!
Progress Report #1
Things took a turn for the worse here during the puppies' second week. On Sunday, July 11, a bitch puppy became ill and died during the night. We sent her body for autopsy but the results were slow coming back as it hadn't been marked a rush. There were no other puppies in distress or showing signs of illness. All we wanted was to find out why she had died.
I left for a specialty on Tuesday thinking all was under control but I was way off line there!
Unfortunately, on Thursday night, one of the boys started acting ill and unresponsive and by Friday morning he was dead and a second boy was ill. It took only two hours for the lab to diagnose Toxic Milk Syndrome - Juliet was basically poisoning her puppies. Or so we thought! By that time, the third puppy was too far gone to save. No one knows why there was such a space between the first puppy dying and the other two. Then we got a second message from the lab - the culture had not proven the Toxic Milk Syndrome - it had grown E coli bacteria. It was just plain dumb luck that the strain that was produced was sensitive to the same antibiotics used for the Toxic Milk Syndrome -or we could have lost all of the puppies.
Again I have to thank the staff at my vet clinic - they had my husband bring the litter in and put them in an incubator and got the temperature up to over 101 degrees Fahrenheit - just in case it was Herpes Virus - and they kept them there until the lab results came back. He, in the meantime, was driving forty miles to the lab with the body of the second puppy for an immediate autopsy - coming back to pick up the puppies and bring them home and try to figure out how to keep these puppies alive and keep them fed. Enter Ch. Snowyriver's Cleopatra - better known as Dallas - and now our heroine!
Dallas had a litter of four boys that were born 10 days earlier and enough milk for an army! All he had to do was convince her that these little black blobs were hers too! A muzzle just in case and she was led to the box - not too sure if she wanted these little guys nursing or not - but suddenly she was trying to clean them - so he slowly and VERY carefully removed the muzzle and away she went! She now whines to get in with them and cleans them up as well as their own mom did and lets them drink away til they're done. She must be doing an outstanding job - they are all gaining weight like mad! Real-mom Juliet, in the meantime, has dried up nicely without a hint of the mastitis I feared.
As far as we're concerned this little girl deserves any steak she can talk me out of! We owe her a lot for six little lives
Progress Report #2
Everyone is doing fine as these photos will attest! Taken at 3 weeks old.
Progress Report #3 - August 18/99
Six very healthy puppies went for shots and tattooing Monday - all looking good and all weighing in at 7.5 pounds plus at six weeks and one day. Considering what these puppies went through - I'm very pleased with the outcome.
It has been a real learning experience using frozen semen and producing puppies from a great dog long dead. Everytime we look at them we marvel that, 16 weeks ago, these puppies were but a twinkle in the eye of a frozen pellet of sperm! Would we do it again? I think so - but I want time to sit back and decide if the cost is worth the outcome. It's not just the $$ involved in getting there(which are higher than any other form of breeding!) - it's the worry, the anxiety, the time and the patience required to make sure that everything is done exactly on time and with no mistakes.
Because of the deaths of the 3 puppies, there is no income from this litter to help offset the high costs - I'm keeping two puppies for myself (one of each!), I will be co-owning the second bitch with a friend in Oregon, one male puppy is going back to Linda Squires and the last two boys are going as placement puppies with friends - I'm not letting this bunch out of my sight until I know exactly what we have after the clearances are done (prelims AND finals!) That made this a very costly experiment - but one I would like to repeat when I recover from this lot.
In the mean time - say hello to Snowyriver's Betelgeuse, Rigel, Bellatrix, Mintaka, Saiph at Sunnydaze, and Tabit. (Note: these are some of the named stars in the constallation of Orion - we named them after heavenly bodies - hope the theme applies well!).
We also have to thank all of these people to whom we owe a BIG debt of gratitude - and without whom this litter might not have seen the light of day.
Linda Squires - owner of Am.Can.Ch. Tweedcroft's Debonair
Prof. Carrol Platz - International Canine Semen Bank
Fed Ex (for their speedy and careful service)
DynaCare-Kasper Laboratories - for not laughing too hard when they heard why we wanted a progesterone test on the weekend and what it was for!
But most especially, the staff of Uncas Veterinary Clinic, Ardrossan, Alberta, (all of whom I count as friends too!) Dr. Denise Schlingman, DVM; Jill Benoit, AHT; Karen Harrison, Office Manager & mom-sitter during the first stage of labour; Patty & Michele, AHTs and Dr. Bob Jones, DVM (Denise's husband - whose strange sense of humor had us in hysterics on more than one occasion).
And finally, a very special thank you to my husband George - who went without sleep for two days (he works nights!) - to keep these puppies alive when they were threatened. He looks after everyone when I'm away and keeps them safe!
Thanks to all of you - without you this litter would never have been born. We can only hope now that this litter lives up to our expectations!
Copyright Snowyriver Labradors/Mary Kelso
Aug 18/99