On September 8th, 2019 Guilty was surgically inseminated with Moses frozen semen. This is how the procedure went down.

On August 22, 2019 Guilty went into heat. 7-9 days after the start of the heat cycle I start drawing blood and have her progesterone tested. This is a blood test that will tell us the level of progesterone in her system, we know that canines will ovulate once the levels reach 5.0ng/ml so we run the tests every other day to every three days until we reach the magic number. Guilty had 3 blood draws for progesterone before her surgical ai.

On September 5th Guilty’s 3rd progesterone was 4.9ng/ml so this day she was going to ovulate. When doing a surgical ai you want to do the surgery three days after they ovulate so the eggs are close to being mature when inseminated. We set up the surgical ai for September 8th at Veterinary Village.

We arrived at the clinic, another progesterone was run to make sure the timing was right. Pre-surgical bloodwork was done a few days before. An exam and ECG were done before surgery the day of. Once they received all the results Guilty received the all clear that she could undergo surgery and have the procedure done.

Dr. Zella was going to perform the surgery. A technician was in the OR monitoring Guilty’s vitals while under anesthesia.

The frozen semen sample was verified that it was the correct sample. I chose Moses – HRCH Great Lakes The Deliverer SH for her stud. The correct sample was thawed and going to be implanted.

Once Dr. Zella had the uterus out and all looked good he gave the go ahead signal to start thawing the semen.

Dr. Zella is preparing the uterus. Guilty is doing very well under anesthesia. I know this as I was watching and monitoring from afar.

Checking the sample, making sure it is thawing.

Checking the semen sample under the microscope making sure it un-thawed correctly and that the semen sample was viable. No sense inseminating a sample that is not viable.

Dr. Zella implanting the semen into the uterus.

Preparing the uterus after the insemination.

Suturing the uterus and putting it back into place.

Suturing up the abdominal wall and finishing the surgery.

Surgery is finished. Cleaning Guilty up and removing her from the anesthetic. She was moved to the recovery area where she was hooked back up the the ECG monitor, the endotracheal was left in place until she was swallowing. Once the tube was removed she needed a bit more time to wake up enough to go home.

I hung out with Guilty while she was recovering. Once she was recovered I took her home. She needed to recover for 10-14 days. Once recovered she could go back to normal activity which by this time was hunting in Saskatchewan. We still made sure she didn’t over do herself. The time now was to wait 28-30 days before we could do a ultrasound and confirm a pregnancy.