Yesterday Glory went to Veterinary Village to have her surgical artificial insemination done. Veterinary Village is where I go for all of my dogs reproduction needs. I had this all planned out ahead of time that for this breeding I would do a surgical implantation. I was using a stud dog from Kansas so it would have to be fresh chilled or frozen semen that was implanted. My first choice was to use fresh and the backup plan was to use frozen. The stud dog wasn’t digging the collector on Monday so we had to go to the backup plan and use frozen. “Where we going mom, someplace fun?” Last Monday night John took Glory to VV to have another progesterone test done. The test is done when doing artificial insemination so you know the exact time to implant the semen so you don’t “miss it”. Her level was at 10 so that meant she has ovulated Sunday night since we tested her Sunday afternoon and she was at 4.1 and the dog needs to be at 5 to ovulate.
When using frozen you usually implant 3 days after ovulation or when the progesterone level is over 20. We arrived at VV around 1:30 yesterday, first the technician came in and drew her blood for another progesterone test. This needed to be done to see where her numbers were at because if it wasn’t in the twenty’s yet then the surgery would have to be done on Thursday. Her level was 25 so surgery was a go!  Glory weighed in at 77#.
Glory hanging out after her blood draw waiting for the results.   She decided she wanted to be fresh for the surgery so she dug my wet wipes out of my purse and put them on the floor.   A technician came in and did a presurgical ECG (electrocardiogram) on Glory. Her heart rate and rhythm were normal so still a go for surgery.    I think that tracing looks good mom, can I eat now I’m starving I didn’t get breakfast this morning remember?  Veterinary Village recommends Nationwide Pet Insurance in which Glory is a member of. I will let you know in another post how we came about pet insurance and why.
After her progesterone test and ECG it was time to premed Glory. She got a pre medication of  morphine and acepromazine. This was given as a subcutaneous injection to make her a little loopy for her IV catheter placement and induction before general anesthesia was given.I’m feeling sleepy, very very sleepy. Once she was sleepy enough the technician came and got Glory. She went to the treatment area to have her IV catheter placed and prepped for surgery. Once she was in the operating room they came and got me so I could watch the procedure. Now I have to tell you, I’ve been a technician for over 25 years, I’ve assisted and monitored many animals including my own for some pretty major surgeries with no problems at all. This surgery my heart was racing while I watched the procedure. I think I was nervous because all I want is for this breeding to take and have puppies for the people on my list.
Glory is in the operating room, hooked up to general anesthesia, monitors. Cassie the Veterinary Technician is monitoring her while Dr. Greer is getting ready to start the procedure.   Glory is a wooly mammoth so some more fur needed to be shaved to have a sterile field.
 A surgical scrub was used to scrub the area and take away all the bacteria so there is a sterile field.   Everything from here on out is done with equipment that is sterile. The surgeon is wearing a sterile gown and gloves. The drape and surgical instruments are all sterile. Can’t take the chance of any infection starting. First a sterile drape was placed over Glory and a hole was cut in it where the incision was going to take place on her abdomen.
The drape was held in place with towel clamps so it doesn’t go sliding off while the procedure is taking place.   Cassie is monitoring Glory’s vitals, she is watching her heart rate, respiration’s, blood pressure, checking her color and adjusting the anesthesia according to how Glory is doing. She is keeping track of this all on a anesthesia monitoring sheet that will stay with her medical record.
Dr. Greer makes the incision into the abdomen. She will be going through the abdominal wall right into the abdomen so she can bring the uterus out to do the implantation.   Dr. Greer is palpating the uterus, checking everything out for anything that is abnormal.
She is checking the ovaries and making sure there are no cysts on them. Anything abnormal may interfere with the procedure working.  If for some reason Glory doesn’t take she will at least know that it wasn’t because there was something wrong with her reproduction organs as she checked them all out. Mean while as the surgery is taking place the other technician Marissa was prepping the  semen for insemination. The semen was frozen into a breeding pellet, it has been frozen and stored in liquid nitrogen until ready to use. It is kept frozen until ready for it then it is thawed out and prepped. Just so you know this semen came from Kansas it needed to be shipped overnight so Fedex was the carrier of choice and it cost me $320.00 to ship Glory’s boyfriends semen to her. They delivered the shipment ahead of schedule so kudos to Fedex!
 Still working on prepping the semen.  Checking the quality of the semen under the microscope and making sure it is alive. No sense implanting dead sperm into her. The sperm were alive and looking as good as sperm can look.  It’s hard to see but I looked at the semen also and tried to take a picture. Marissa is transporting the semen into the operating room while Dr. Greer is just about ready to implant it.   Getting the uterus ready.
Drawing up the semen into the syringe to implant it right into the uterus.  The breeding is taking place, even know Glory doesn’t know what is going on she is being bred right now and hopefully the semen and the eggs hook up. Doing a surgical AI you wait until the eggs are mature and when you freeze sperm you have them mature also so when you implant all they have to do is hook up, you don’t need to wait for either to mature and chance death so this is all a very precise ordeal.
The implantation is done and the uterus is being put back into place and the abdominal wall is being sutured up.
Surgical staples are used to close the outer layer of skin.  This is the tube that Bear’s semen was stored in. It’s just as good as a silver bullet but this one is a orange bullet. People keep these as good luck charms so of course I had to keep this one.
Glory’s procedure is done. From start of the first incision to the surgical staples it was about 20-25 minutes.  Getting ready to unhook all the monitors and wake her up.
Transporting her to the recovery room.  While in recovery a ECG was put back on Glory to monitor her heart rate to make sure she woke up from the general anesthesia with no problems. The tube in her mouth is the endotracheal tube that was placed into her trachea which leads to her lungs to give her oxygen and anesthetic gas to keep her under anesthesia during the procedure. That tube needs to stay in until she starts swallowing on her own. A open airway needs to be available just in case something happens and she stops breathing. Nothing happened and she had a uneventful recovery. I went to grab lunch while she continued to wake up. Once she was on her feet I was able to take her home. I need to keep her calm for 10-14 days while the incision heals. She did good once I got her home, she ate some supper and then went to bed to sleep off her hangover. Stay tuned in one month we will know if this procedure worked and if she and Bear will be having puppies.

I want to give a thank you to the owner of Bear for taking him to the vet to be collected so Glory could possibly have puppies and a huge thank you to all of the staff of Veterinary Village. They are always so nice and accommodating. Thank you Dr. Greer for allowing me to watch the procedure and take pictures for this blog post which is very long and I’m sorry about that but I felt I needed to tell the whole story on this one.

We are joining Linda at 2browndawgs and Jodi at Heart Like A Dog for this great blog hop.