After Glory’s last litter went home in April of 2016 I started planning her next litter. There are many months of research, thinking and decision making that go into a breeding. We decided we would do the breeding when Glory came into season the fall/winter of 2017. Glory has all her health clearances done that are one time tests including radiographs of her hips and elbows, DM, EIC, PRA, Long Coat genetic tests. The only test she needed repeated and repeated each year we breed Glory is her CERF eye exam. In March of 2017 we had that eye test done and she came back with a clear exam. The many months were spent researching a suitable stud dog. I found the stud dog I wanted to use, he had his clearances the only thing I needed to know was if he was fertile. I was going to use a stud dog that was never bred before. He went through testing to check his fertility. Some concerns came up with the semen analysis a few months before the breeding. When Glory came into season the wheels started turning fast. I needed to know that the potential stud dog’s semen was good enough for a breeding so another semen analysis was done at that time it was discovered that he had an infection that might hinder a successful pregnancy so I needed to make some major decisions if I was going to go with this stud dog or quickly find another one. After thinking of all my options we decided to use another stud dog. Finding another stud dog doesn’t just happen like that when we are talking we have a week to pull this off, so we decided to do a repeat breeding with the stud dog we used in 2016, which is Lzy Mtn Piper’s 3-D Brown Bear MH.

We knew this breeding was going to be a surgical insemination so we needed to start progesterone testing on Glory. The seventh day of her heat cycle I took her in for her first progesterone test, she of course was low but we needed a baseline and to start somewhere’s. I took her back three days later and she was moving up, since she was getting closer we needed to repeat the progesterone the following day which proved she had just ovulated. Glory was at day 11 of her heat cycle and the results of the test were 5.76 ng/ml. It has been proven that when a canines progesterone reaches 5 ng/ml they have ovulated, since Glory was at 5.76 we knew she ovulated earlier in the day and when doing a surgical insemination you want to inseminate the semen when the eggs are mature. It can take 2-3 days from ovulation for the eggs to mature so the surgical insemination was set up for Wednesday December, 13th 2017. The procedure was going to be done at Veterinary Village the reproduction clinic that does all my dogs reproduction work.

The day of the surgery Glory’s blood was drawn for a pre-surgical complete blood count, chemistries, coagulation panel and another progesterone. All the blood work was normal and her progesterone was 25 which was spot on for the insemination. Glory had a full physical exam and a ECG done of her heart, those tests were normal as well so it was time to premedicate her and get the ball rolling.

An IV catheter was placed, induction medication was administered to make Glory sleepy so a endo tracheal tube could be placed so she could be put on gas anesthetic for general anesthesia. She was hooked up to IV fluids during the surgery. Dr. Kowaleski was the surgeon while John was the technician monitoring Glory while she was under anesthesia.

John was recording Glory’s vital signs while under anesthesia, he was making sure she was handing the anesthesia well, if there were any changes in her vital signs he would adjust the anesthesia and fluids appropriately.

Meanwhile outside the OR Lindsey was waiting for the cue to go ahead and start unthawing the frozen semen sample they had on hand from Bear.

Once the semen is thawed it is analysed under the microscope to make sure it is viable. No sense implanting semen that is dead. Everything looked great, the semen was alive and active, it had about 75% motility. It’s still amazing to me that you can freeze semen and then wake these little guys back up and have a successful pregnancy.

Dr. Kowaleski was getting the uterus prepared, she was looking at the ovaries and uterus to make sure there were no cysts or other problems that might complicate the surgery. Everything looked great, even know Glory has had 2 previous litters with one being a csection you couldn’t tell anything had happened to her uterus.

She packed everything off and was ready for the insemination.

Drawing up the semen into her syringe to implant it in Glory’s uterus.

Implanting the semen.

John is monitoring Glory through out the whole procedure. There are monitors that will give you the vitals of the patient but it is always a good idea to do your own visual and listen to the heart and lungs with a stethoscope.

Dr. Kowaleski finished implanting the semen into the uterus and is closing the uterus, abdominal wall and sub q layer of her incision.

Surgery is complete.

Time to recover Glory. Her incision site is cleaned, she is taken off the gas anesthetic, fluids and monitors. When she can swallow on her own the endo tracheal tube is removed.

Good morning Glorious one!

Glory recovered nicely, she felt most comfort when she was laying her head on my leg. It comforted me as well.

Here is the outline of events to come for Glory.

Glory the night after the insemination. Surgery went well, she recovered great, she was already hording her toys. She will need 10-14 days to recover from the surgery. She will need to be kept quite and will need to go outside to potty and back in. No playing with the other dogs as we don’t want to disrupt her skin incision. The 4 week wait to find out if the pregnancy took is going to be the longest 4 weeks ever.

~I’m posting Glory’s breeding events after the fact, I announced on Wednesday that Glory is expecting so we know she is pregnant. What you don’t know is the events that happened after the insemination and that we didn’t know if we would have a successful pregnancy. Stay tuned for part 2.