Live and Learn

That’s what my mother always told me.  What have I learned this time?  Take your bitch to the vet 3 weeks post-breeding and determine if she really is pregnant.  False pregnancies are a fact and it Can happen to You!  

Red is not pregnant.  This was a false pregnancy.  Behaviors, mammary gland swelling, all of it.  Well, the weight gain I helped along with egg yolk and lard to entice her to eat more.

She just didn't seem big enough to be expecting puppies next week and when I took her temperature (3 days in a row with 2 different digital thermometers) it registered much too low (98-ish) unless she was within 10 hours of giving birth.  Something just didn't seem right.  I took her to the vet and he gave her an ultrasound.  No puppies.  

I was totally shell-shocked.  I went home and tried to distract myself with a novel and ended up falling asleep on the couch.  Roger got home about 6:15pm and I was still really out of it and decided just to go to bed.   I slept the clock around.  

So now we wait (and put Red on a diet!).  Eventually her Prolactin levels will subside and hopefully she will come into heat again (we just don’t know when).  The breeder guarantees 3 live pups, so we will take her back to be bred again when she comes back into season.  She is 5 years old though, and with this having been her first heat in 2 years, we have some concerns about when she’ll have another heat.

In the meantime, well, I’m loving the ‘new’ floor and I probably wouldn't have been compelled to uncover it if I hadn't thought puppies were on the way.  As for the whelping box, it’s put together with screws so that it can be dismantled and stored for reuse.

I’ll leave the blog up. Maybe we’ll have some hunting posts to make between now and the next breeding.  Always an adventure…..

More puppy prep - carpet removal!

We are in a rental home while Roger is in grad school and I have been fed up with having carpet for the duration.  With puppies on the way I decided to see if I could get the landlord to split the cost of installing an inexpensive floor in the living room in place of the carpet.  He said he thought there was a hardwood floor under the carpet and if so I had his permission to roll up the carpet and store it and I could throw out the padding and tack strips.  Cool!

I did this in stages, moving furniture from one side of the room to the other as I rolled up the carpet, pulled out the pad, staples and tack strip, did some clean up and put the furniture back on the bare floor.  You can see Red in the lower left of the photo - she laid on the carpet as it moved across the room until there was no longer room for her.

This is a nice oak floor, why would anyone spray paint a room and not cover up a hardwood floor first?

Not only was there paint overspray, spilled paint, footprints and handprints of paint, but there were regular deep gouges in a line across the floor.

Roger was less than optimistic about the visual aspect of the 'new' floor.  I was thrilled just to be down to wood, but he was a bit less excited about the condition of that wood. At the very least I knew I needed to deal with the gouges since they were raw-edged and splintery.  A trip to the hardware store and I came home with an orbital sander (ouch), several grades of stick-on sandpaper, a hand sanding block, some 'safer' paint stripper (for the Big spill spot) and wood filler.  Funny how projects take on a life of their own...

Here I am half-done with phase 1 - padding, staples (thank the inventor for vise-grips!), and tack strips removed, paint spill gone, a lot of the paint overspray sanded off.

By the time I had all the carpet in a roll (this included a section that filled in an area attached to the living room that is a small space between 4 other rooms) and had dragged it downstairs, had all the padding cut up into manageable sections and put in the garbage bin and most of the tack strips removed, it was 6pm and Roger was home from school.  I worked on tack strip/staple removal to make sure we wouldn't step on anything sharp in the night and left the rest until morning (and hopefully sunshine).  

Morning revealed that I still had quite a bit of work to do.  

We didn't want to completely strip and refinish the floor, but after sanding out the paint the floor needed something to protect it from absorbing spills, etc. so I got a can of wax and once I finished all the sanding (and vacuuming, and damp mopping....) I started applying wax (by hand, with a rag...). I had hoped to be able to use a buffing 'mop' that I could attach to the orbital sander, but this proved to be a failure, it wouldn't spin with any pressure applied and didn't do anything when used lightly.  So I spent a lot of time on my hands on knees with rags.

I put on too much wax, the can says it will cover 800 square feet (I think I used about 9/10's of the can).  I was approaching it the same way I approach putting Snoseal on my leather boots - glop it on and melt it with a hairdryer and it soaks in.  I even tried a hairdryer on the floor, when I realized I had on way too much to "let dry and polish", but it wasn't inclined to melt (what is this stuff made out of anyway?).  

Ah well.  I did what I could in two days (I still have to do the connector section between the 5 doorways) and made it nice enough to be enjoyable (and with the furniture in place the white paint around the walls is less noticeable).  It's going to be a bit tacky (the wax) in spots for awhile though....

Whelping Box

From here on out I'll mostly be posting about the adventure of puppies.  Last weekend I built the whelping box.

We are in a rental house while Roger is in school.  This unfortunately means carpeted floors.  Puppies are not exactly a tidy affair, so we needed to devise a way to deal with a litter in less than optimum conditions.  

We have a small bedroom upstairs, next to our bedroom, that we have been using as a weight room.  Since we can use the gym at the university, we don’t actually use the weights much at home and since we can close this room off and heat it with a portable heater (puppies need to be warm) and it’s close to the main living areas of the house and within earshot of where we sleep, it seems an ideal spot for a litter.  

I bought a roll of cheap vinyl flooring at the local Lowes DIY store and put it down over the carpet.  The roll was 8’ x 12’ and the room is closer to 9’ x 11’ but the thin vinyl was easily cut with my medical shears and I was able to fill most of the gap on one side with the remnant and cover the rest up with the back of the whelping box I built.  

I splurged on this cool foam matting I found which comes in a package of 4 interlocking pieces (it was about $20 for the package of 4).  I had planned to put a piece of vinyl down over the 4x4 plywood bottom of the whelping box (to make cleaning it easier) but I got these neat foam pieces instead.  They are thick and cushy so it will give Red a nicer surface to lay on while still being cleanable (and reusable!).  

This whelping box is very simple, and cost about $40 for materials (not including the cool foam mats).  I made my plans and cut list before I went to the store and they cut all my wood for me (since we are in temporary living quarters, we don’t have our table saw and workshop and all that here). 

From a 4 x 8 sheet of 3/8-inch plywood (~ $15) I got the 4 x 4 bottom and 3 16” pieces for the 2 sides and the back.  One 1’ x 6” x 8’ piece of ‘white wood’ (I think it’s pine) was cut into two 4’ pieces for the front. One 2 x 2 ((I splurged on a nice one used for exterior decking (~$7) instead of the really warped less expensive fir pieces (~2.50)) was cut to make the corner uprights.  For the pigging rails (the pieces you see along the sides and back on the inside of the box which are there for puppy safety – i.e. to keep the mother from laying on a pup) I got hemlock 1 x 2’s that had smooth rounded edges.  Some 1.5-inch and 1.25-inch wood screws and there you are.

Cost

I won’t make you hunt around for it or call/email us to find out.  It’s $1000/pup.  Declaws removed, tails docked, first vaccinations, health guarantee, purchase contract. I’m still working on the details on what the documents need to contain but expect to have it all figured out in the next few days.

Red cost $1500 (and Roger flew from Oregon to Illinois to bring her home).  The stud fee was also $1500.  So why are we only charging $1000/pup?  There are several reasons for this, one is that we aren't in this to make money, but on the other hand we want to make sure our pups get superior homes.  Not everyone that can provide a superior home can afford $1500.  Also, we have not field trialed our girl.  Although she comes from a long line of champion bird dogs and the pup’s sire is a field champion, our girl has no title herself.  Her only awards are the personal ones we give her after a successful day in the field.  

Pups are expensive to produce and sell, especially if you are just doing a ‘one off’ litter (not making it a regular thing) and you prepare everything (research, contracts, health certifications, registrations, etc.) one time and may not do it again, so I admit I am probably underpricing these pups.  But rest assured that they aren’t going to go home with just anyone.  I’ve been learning a lot about how to grill prospective new owners to make sure one of our pups will be a good fit for both owner and pup.  Expect to answer a Lot of questions!

See the puppy questionnaire that Boulder Viszlas use for an example (link on the right).

Pregnancy changes your dog

I have a good Vizsla book, “The Versatile Vizsla” but I wanted MORE information.  

I looked for more Vizsla books and my husband brought home numerous dog books (not breed specific) from the local libraries.  While I have bred a dog once before (years ago I had Dobermans) and raised a litter to weaning age (when all the pups went to new homes), I am a bit more cognizant now of all that Can go wrong and I want to be prepared.  I also don’t want to miss the birth!  

Since I really couldn't afford to take Red to the vet just to see if she was actually pregnant, we just assumed she was and waited, and read books.  She became very clingy early on. Vizslas are pretty clingy anyway (hence the nickname "velcro dog"), but she became noticeably more needy of attention (more time spent next to the couch with her head in your lap wanting to be petted, for instance).  She has started following us to the bathroom (not something she did before, even though we have read that Vizslas will do that) and standing at the doorway with her head down like a vulture (very strange).  

She went off her feed (never been a problem before).  She is on a high-protein/high-fat food (see link on the right for Taste of the Wild) but I have to add an egg yolk to her morning bowl of food to get her to eat it, and sometimes I have to ‘doctor’ subsequent meals to entice her to eat. She has always loved Fortiflora (a probiotic powder I sprinkle on her food) and I bought another box of that from my vet, but even that doesn't always entice her to eat (whereas it used to have her gobbling up her food and licking the bowl across the floor).  Sometimes I resort to a teaspoon of melted lard mixed onto her food (that one hasn't failed yet).

She still needs exercise, but we shorten up her outings to about 15 minutes of run time.

Breeding isn't always a straightforward affair

We took Red down to McPherson’s on day 11 of her heat, the 14th of December, 2013 and she was quite excited about all the male dog attention in Josh’s house!  (Josh is also a trainer and on any given day will have not only his own dogs but several others which are in for training).  While all the other dogs (except one small neutered housedog) were in crates in the house, Red was broadcasting her readiness for breeding and she knew there were boys there.  

We left her for a week and Josh bred her 3 times while she was there.  We picked her up and brought her home on Dec. 20th.  On the 21st she started bleeding again as though she were at the start of a heat cycle.  Neither breeder whom I called, (Mark or Josh), had experienced this before and neither had my vet.  The general consensus was that she was having a ‘split heat’ but normally there is a greater lag time between the 2 heats (at least a couple of weeks).  A couple of trips to the vet to check the state of cell cornification and hormone levels indicated that she was again in heat and so I began another countdown with the 21st as day one which would make her receptive for breeding about Dec 30 (day 10).  

We took her back to Josh on the 26th (he preferred to keep her for as much of the heat cycle as possible so that he could observe her, since each bitch’s heat cycle can be different) and we picked her up again on Jan 4th.  She was bred 4 times while she was there and I calculated the earliest whelping date based on what I calculated to be her earliest possible conception day (day 10) so that puts her due date at approximately March 3, 2014.

It takes awhile to tell if your dog is pregnant.  Gestation is only about 63 days but there is very little physical change in the first 5 or so weeks.  In fact it takes a full 3 weeks before your vet can palpate her and tell if there are pups growing in there.  This isn't a very good photo (I'll try to take more soon if we get some sunshine again), but it's the most recent I have (taken Feb 16, 2014). We're about 2 weeks from puppies with this photo - I guesstimate.

If you haven't had a Vizsla before

When I called Crimson Sky to discuss their Vizslas, the first thing Mark Spurgeon told me was all the reasons I didn't want a Vizsla.   Make no mistake, Vizslas are not for everyone.  While I extol their virtues, the breed suits us very well.  This will not be true for everyone.  They are Not kennel dogs.  They Have to be in the home in with you.  They Have to have good socialization with their humans.  If given the chance they will sleep in your bed (we never went that far) and follow you into the bathroom.  They are very sensitive and can be ruined rather easily if you are too harsh with them.  They of course need a Lot of exercise.  Because our girl grew up in my lap (I was working full-time from home at a computer when she was a pup) and we never had to leave her alone at home for long periods (i.e. while away at a job outside the home) until she was over 1.5 years old, we never saw any of the destructive behaviors we have heard that Vizslas can exhibit.  I think that if they are happy and exercised then you won’t see any destructive behaviors.  (I also utilized a Kong with canned dog food pushed inside and frozen – a great occupier for a teething pup!).

I have included some Vizsla site links over on the right side of this blog. These should help you get started in the world of Vizslas, find out if they are right for you (if you haven’t owned one before), and give you more information about where our pups are coming from and what they will likely excel at.  These are working dogs, not show ring dogs (even though they are beautiful!).

Check out the link to the puppy buyer’s questionnaire that Boulder Vizslas use (over on the right).  I especially like this question “If you are gone all day how will you care for your 8 week old puppy every 2-3 hours?: “  I am still working on my questionnaire for prospective buyers, but expect to see something similar to this.

Our cat Bandit also took to mothering Red the minute she got home, and they played really well together those first few months.  It was amazing to watch. Eventually Red became too big to be a good wrestle-mate for Bandit, but they still get along and engage in a little bit of stalk and chase.  It will be interesting how Bandit responds to a litter of pups.

Bandit giving Red a bath the night she arrived home (Nov 14, 2008)

Bandit and Red at play (Dec 2008)