Breeding A Litter -- lots of people have had puppies born at their house; mixed breed dogs, pure bred dogs, stray dogs . . . nature has found a way for centuries, so why do reputable breeders say it's so much work?

As much fun as it was to watch Brenna move from a svelte, agile dog to a full-figured gal, it was a lot of work.  Sure, Mom takes care of those babies for the first four weeks; you just have to keep her happy and healthy and she'll take care of the rest.  But after that -- it's all about being a responsible, ethical, involved breeder.  

It doesn't start on whelping day, though, it starts long before that, it starts when you start looking to buy your first bitch with plans to breed her someday.  When you find that young puppy and see her potential and watch her grow, training her for the show ring, feeding her correctly, keeping her in shape, and doing every applicable health test and finishing her bench championship; when you do all of these things you're just getting started toward your goal of breeding a litter.   All of this costs money, quite a lot of it in fact.  Most breeders don't keep track of all of these expenses -- who really wants to know how many thousands you can spend, after all?  

Then there's locating the stud dog, that in itself can be a months long proposition; you must choose the best dog for your bitch and everything that entails "best" can be amorphous.  You want to be sure he matches her strong points and can improve her weak points, if possible, to see him in person as well as some of his get from previous litters; and if you can see his parents and siblings too, that's of great benefit to you when trying to decide what he may be capable of producing.  Talking to the stud dog owner as well as owners of dogs behind the stud dog to get all of the health and personal information first-hand whenever possible takes a lot of time and money and is not a 100% guarantee of actual results.  You do your best and you roll the dice, you narrow the field from perhaps 20 dogs down to 3 or 4 until the final choice is made.

Arranging to get your bitch to the stud dog can also be costly, since the best dog for your bitch usually isn't just a block or two away or even just a state or two away, he can live all the way across the country from you.  So you make arrangements, either driving or flying your bitch or making arrangements for fresh-chilled semen to be delivered to your vet for insemination there at the office.

Puppies need to be socialized before they leave the breeders house, you want them to leave as well adjusted as you possibly can, to give the new owners an excellent base from which to start.  This means you have to have people "tramping" through your house -- all kinds of people:  young, old, male, female, different nationalities.  And you have to expose them to "real life".  The noise of the garbage disposal, the sound of pots and pans falling, the TV blaring and many, many other things.  Breeders become very creative.   You should have seen the faces of the folks at the toy store when I told them I wanted something that made noise and could move around on its own.  I wanted the most obnoxious toy I could find.  They thought I was getting revenge on someone.    :-)  Truth is, the puppies needed to know that the unexpected is out there and they needn't be afraid to  explore the possibilities.

I've never appreciated how much work puppies are to raise correctly.   Yes, I knew, but I didn't *know*, if you get the difference.  Every day it's straight home from work, no dawdling, get those puppies up and out and clean up the ex pen (oh, there's a LOT of cleaning involved.  I went through an entire bottle of germ-killing anti-bacterial hand soap.   And now I know why my mother's hands were always chapped when I was a child -- when you're cleaning your hands every five minutes for 10 - 16 hours a day, there's quite a bit of moisture lost!)  Interacting with the puppies although a lot of fun, takes away from the time you spend with the other adult dogs in the house, who are just as used to taking up your time and attention and miss it.   And beginning crate and house training causes quite a few circles under one's eyes as well.  People at work started e-mailing me instead of coming over to my desk -- they were never sure how much sleep I'd gotten and therefore what sort of reception they'd receive.  Oh, and the agony of finding the right homes.  A lot of people want puppies and many want Basenji puppies, but matching the puppies' individual personalities to the potential owners is important. 

The responsibility doesn't end here, either.  Now we worry about whether or not our puppies went to the right homes, as careful as we are, sometimes something doesn't work out.  Sometimes a breeder will get the awful call that the puppy that they spent so much time and attention on ran out the door and was hit by a car.   Sometimes 8 years later someone decides they just can't keep the dog and it needs to come back, which of course it does, but you feel awful for a dog to lose its only home after yours after such a long time.  Occasionally, a breeder gets a call asking them if they know that their dog has just been turned over to rescue!  You were sure the owner would have told you that they couldn't keep the dog and of course you would have taken him back, but they were too embarrassed!

Tracking the puppies as they grow is extremely important as well.  If a breeder is to continue to build on their breeding program, it's important to know the health of the dogs they've produced in the past, not just the one(s) they kept.  The health of siblings is just as important as the health of the "keeper" in determining the direction of a breeding program.  I've never understood someone who has consistently produced three or four litters per year over 5 or even 10 years and can look someone in the eye and say "we've never produced X disease".  I guess I'd be impressed if they kept in contact with 87 or 88 to 175* puppies, but I rather doubt it.  That is definitely one of the advantages to breeding on a small scale, not to mention the individual time available per puppy!

* Using an average of 3.5 litters/year times an assumed average of 5 puppies per litter time 5 or 10 years.