Uh…some dogs can jump a 6 foot fence! An unaltered male will go to great lengths to impregnate a female.
I feel like you’re not listening to what people are saying here. Trying to breed your dog, without any previous experience or mentor, is a bad idea.
If you inform yourself well on the subject by talking with your vet and papi clubs and breeders, are willin annd able to undertake the responsibility then go for it.
The wuestion about the health dangers strikes me as factual question that your vet should be readily able to answer, (or at least help you find your answer).
My dogs can jump a 6-foot fence from a standing start. Never underestimate the desire of an unneutered male to get to a female in heat.
If you love your dog, don’t breed her. She really can get ill, and she really can die from complications. There’s no reason to risk that.
Yes, I am listening to you all. At least to you all who are giving real advice and not doing the “Holier than thou, smarter than thou,” act, i.e. experienced and committed, dog trainer and fancier, Grand Poobah of Doggie Circles…
Sorry,
I have an authority figure thing… I’ll take just about anything from a friend, but lord over me and shake you finger and I just get a little cranky.
" . . . he decides to chase the neighbors cat out of his yard. He bolts for the cat ripping his penis loose and causing your bitch to hemorrhage from within . . . Your modest girl decides she doesn’t want the attentions of this gigolo mutt chosen for her without her consent. She snaps at him catching her tooth on his loose cheek and rips it open . . ."
—Ah, it’s like you were following me around during my wild dating days . . .
I’m not asking this in a ‘shake your finger sort of way’, but I haven’t quite gathered why exactly it is that you want to breed her.
You know that the pups won’t be clones.
You know that there are other ‘perfect’ papillons out there, some in need of a home.
Money doesn’t sound like an issue.
So, what’s left?
See, I can kind of understand where you’re coming from. I have a pair of dogs that I love dearly. Although this is entirely moot* in my case, it would be swell to have a pup from them to ‘continue’ on the line…but upon further reflection, I couldn’t really come up with any justifiable reason to do this. And to continue on with that, I wondered when it would stop. Say I have a litter of 4. Would I want to breed each one? I sure as hell wouldn’t have been able to give any of the pups away. In my case, I could have easily become 'that crazy lady with 400 Boston Terriers"! 
*my girl came from a rescue and was spayed.
Yes, I guess it may be my unfulfilled desire to reproduce myself, heck if I know. Because if I did do it, I would definately have a hard time giving any of them away. I could become the CrazyPapillonLady.
That may be it though… children, grandchildren, awwwh… so cute.
Maybe I should adopt a kid? hmmm… no. Call me old fashioned, but, my late husband didn’t give me any, and I can’t, wouldn’t have kids without being married (to someone who would be a good father).
Dogs on the other hand, I can handle that responsibility myself.
I guess its just some stupid blockhead way of fighting off the sterility of my life. What can I say?
I’ll go off to cry now. …
Hmm…
So you don’t have the time to spend an hour a week in a conformation handling class for a couple months, and then spend a weekend or so a month doing the dog show circuit (the connections will come naturally), but you do have time to find a good stud, make the appropriate appointments with the vet, raise the litter for a couple months, and place the pups in good homes? :dubious:
I own a purebreed hound whom I’ve been taking conformation classes with and will be showing soon (per an agreement with the breeder). I’ve read the standard, I’ve read books on the breed, etc. and I feel I’m years away from knowing enough to decide if my bitch is worth breeding–much less knowing how to find a stud that would complement her. There’s a LOT involved in breeding purebred dogs.
I just gave a presentation on this at a local university. People don’t realize how bad the overpopulation of stray pets is. The Bartow County (Georgia) Humane Society euthanizes between 700 and 1,000 dogs A MONTH! Animals are left on their doorstep, abandonded in boxes, you name it. A few facts…
Approximately 55% of all dogs and puppies brought into shelters have to be killed.
It costs U.S. Taxpayers and estimated $2 Billion each year to impound, shelter, euthanize, and dispose of homeless animals.
For every human born in the US, 7 puppies and kittens are born.
An estimated 6 to 8 millon dogs and cats are euthanized in animal shelters each year in the US. Millions more are abandonded, only to suffer from disease, starvation or injury before dying.
One of the biggest problems with abandonded dogs is breeders who are under the false assumption that owners would never abandon a pure bred dog.
E3
Hmm, are their meetings open to visitors? Or do they sponsor obedience classes? Those were the venues I looked at when I was thinking about joining the all-breed club in my area a few years ago. I went to several obedience classes and got to meet folks there. So you may not HAVE to wait for conformation shows to start to get to know folks.
(I ended up staying with my breed club only, largely because my dog focus is kinda narrow and I’m not really well socialized myself. But I don’t think I’d have had any trouble getting into the club through non-conformation contacts.)
Just a thought…
Maybe you could get involved in rescue, and “mother” homeless, neglected, unwanted dogs? I know you might not be interested in larger dogs, but there are many, many abused and neglected toy breeds out there in need of good homes. If you’ve got the space and money to keep four puppies your bitch might produce, you’ve got the space and money to take in a few needy dogs who are desperately in need of someone to love them.
This message has been circulating the dog forums I frequent in the last few days, I am more than certain they’d be very, very happy to have someone extend the offer to take even one of these dogs. Most of them are German Shepherds, but there are forty other dogs of other breeds–some of them may be very small dogs. Permission to crosspost every-fricken’-where has been granted and encouraged:
More information can be found here:
This just in: some of the forty dogs of “other breeds” areJapanese Chin similar to the Papillon, no?
Okay, fine.
If you think it’s a Holier Than Thou position I gave you when listing experiences you may have to face as a breeder, knock yourself out.
Hope it works out for you.
Hope you find a mentor, too. You asked for people’s experiences, about what could happen to your bitch. That’s what I did. Best of luck to you.
Well, we had a six foot fence with another 2.5’ of trellis above that, and came into the garden to find Molly the golden labrador (in her first season) in passionate embrace with the local pit-bull…not only had he scaled our fence, but he had previously been tethered with a metal chain in his OWN yard…he still had eight foot of chain-link attached to his collar. God knows how he didn’t strangle himself getting in.
But anyway, I took her to the Vet for a termination, but a pregnancy test was negative. Cool!!
Then she started putting on a bit of weight, so I took her BACK to the vet, and they did an ultrasound to be on the safe side, and reassured me that she was absolutely not pregnant. Cool again.
Then I started feeling babies wiggling in her tummy. :eek: Took her to the vet yet again, and they conceded that there were some pups there, but on ultrasound exam it appeared that there were only four.
Three o’clock one morning she pumps out five wiggling pups…then an hour later, she’s still straining, so it’s BACK to the vet where they did an emergency caesarean to deliver another five pups. They speyed her at the same time thankfully.
And that was just the beginning of the problems. She got mastitis (twice) and another infection in her caesar wound. We virtually LIVED at the bloody vets for a few months. The pups (of course) were ugly little brutes and after they were weaned we took them to the local animal shelter to see if homes might be found for them.
All up it cost me nearly $4000. All because the local gigolo jumped the 8.5’ fence. :rolleyes:
Totally unbiased list of things for you to look into, health-related, that are totally 100% breed specific.
-PRA has been detected in the breed, and now breeders are doing DNA testing to eliminate it from the gene pool. Don’t want pups to go blind 3-4 years down the road. They also certify eyes with the CERF registry. A veterninary olphtalmologist can do this testing for you. Insist that the boy also be OFA/CERF certified. PRA is rare in the breed still, but it will also detect other eye defects such as cataracts and ingrowing eyelashes.
-Someone already pointed out that there are sometimes complications in small breeds requiring C-sections. Papillons ARE among anesthetic-sensitive breeds. Ask the vet to be sure to use isoflurane as an anesthetic rather than the older methods to avoid problems in the operating table.
-Be sure you are also able to take 4-5 weeks off of work at the drop of a hat, should something (god forbid!) happen to your bitch. Those puppies are going to need your constant attention. You may also want to consider being home for the first 2-3 weeks after they are born. This could be longer, depending on how your bitch takes to motherhood in general.
I am so being a posting whore…
If you want a hand, you can always email Stanley Sohn (Chair, Papillon Club of America Education Committee Dude) at
pappwr at comcast dot net
(make appropriate substitutions for the email addy) He may have other pointers and answers for you.
Actually, it was all because you didn’t get your dog spayed in a timely manner and then didn’t properly monitor her when she was in heat. After all, if you’d done the former, the pit bull wouldn’t have had any reason to try scaling an 8.5’ fence, and if you’d done the latter, you could have simply brought her in while he was coming over the fence. And, of course, you could have had her spayed after the breeding but before the pregnancy became advanced. It would have cost you $10-$30 extra, but it’s a hell of a lot better than a few thousand extra.
As for the saga at the vet, it’s a fools errand to try counting puppies on ultrasound, and palpation for pregnancy in the early stages is pretty dicey. I can’t fault your vet for that, really. Still, it seems incredible to me that you could miss 10 puppies completely on ultrasound.
Still, this does go to another point that I wanted to make about breeding toy breeds like a Papillion. Male dogs can and do go through unbelievable barriers to get to a bitch in heat…and the ones who do tend to be large dogs. If a large-breed male manages to get to her, she’s in a world of shit, medically speaking. Vaginal tearing, internal hemmorrhage, certain need for c-section, risk of uterine rupture if she goes into labor before you can take her in for a section.
And, of course, there are the sorts of injuries my grandfather’s beagle suffered when a Rottweiler jumped through a sliding glass door to get to her. He couldn’t dis-engage, so when he was ready to leave, he jumped back through the shattered glass and dragged the bitch with him. She suffered horrible cuts all over her body, and damn near bled to death before they could get them seperated and her to the vet. Are these sorts of cases unusual? Yes, but they do happen, and they’re something you have to be willling to risk if you’re going to keep an unspayed dog.
As for the vigor of the puppies, toy breeds are more susceptible to bouts of hypoglycemia, especially as puppies. Their glucose levels can just bottom out with no warning if they don’t eat every few hours. If you can’t watch them and make sure they eat or get syrup rubbed on their gums every four to six hours, you have to resign yourself to the idea that you might come home from work to find one or more of your pups comatose…or dead.
That first bit was directed to kambukta, btw.
CCL, I posted my experiences because I too once thought like myrnajean in that breeding dogs couldn’t be THAT hard, could it? I had (high) hopes of breeding Molly when she was in her second season, and that is why I refrained from having her speyed. And I too was under the misapprehension that an 8’ fence would keep out unwanted suitors until the time I was ready to breed her. I’m not denying my ignorance and negligence, just pointing it out. No need to get rabid about it ya know.
And the ultrasound thing? The final ultrasound was done 5 days before she whelped, and it was then that they assured me that there were only 5 puppies. The vet was as amazed as I was when 10 popped out.
CCL - true, they are unusual freak accidents - truth is, if you ask breeders (fanciers or not), most of them either have had a story of their own, or have a friend who did.
To continue on my earlier post about answering the actual OP’s question about things to consider for her bitch and the litter of puppies - health-wise. Here’s the Papillon Club’s health survey, for 2002.
http://www.papillonclub.org/PapillonHealth/PapillonSurvey2002.htm
Interesting things to LOOK INTO, when picking a male and when having your girl tested (to make sure the pups are going to be healthy - for your own sake, and hers!)
Related to breeding:
STILLBORN / DIES SHORTLY AFTER BIRTH :
Almost every litter : 9 %
Every couple of litters : 5 %
Once very several litters : 25 %
Very seldom : 41 %
Never : 21 %
OTHER PROBLEMS :
No problems 31 %
False pregnancy 29 %
Spontaneous reabsorbtion 28 %
Irregular heat cycles 26 %
Pyometra 14 %
Infertility 13 %
Mastitis 12 %
Reproductive problems 12 %
Mammary tumors 8 %
Eclampsia 4 %
Spontaneous absorbtions 3 %
Testicular cancer 1 %
Other 12 %
HEALTH ISSUES (it’s a pretty healthy breed, but some concerns):
Musculoskeletal:
Patellar Luxation ( 1 knee / not repaired ) : 18 %
Open fontanel : 10 %
Bone fractures : 10 %
Patellar Luxation ( 2 knees / not repaired ) : 9 %
Hernia : 7 %
Patellar Luxation ( 1 knee / repaired ) : 5 %
Patellar Luxation ( 2 knees / repaired ) : 5 %
Cleft pallet : 4 %
Deformities : 2 %
Neurology:
Epilepsy/ Seizures : 13 %