puppy thought

[Penny's Girl]

I was thining of getting another dog, I have two chihuahuas and a black lab. My female Chihuahua we got because I wanted to breed but she is about almost 2 pounds smaller than my male. What should I do?

[Crossfire Bulldogs]

Originally Posted by Penny's Girl

I was thining of getting another dog, I have two chihuahuas and a black lab. My female Chihuahua we got because I wanted to breed but she is about almost 2 pounds smaller than my male. What should I do?

Chihuahua's can be difficult at best to breed, whelp and raise and not something that I would venture into without seeking the advice of a reputable breeder as well as huge amounts of research on the breed, the breed standard and genetics just to name a few things.

Why would you want to breed her?

[Penny's Girl]

because I want to and I know that I will not turn into a puppy mill.

[Carrie]

On an impulse, during a midlife crisis, LOL....I got my Chihuahuas from a back yard breeder who did not show, did not do any genetic health testing, xrays, had no champions that I'm aware of to indicate that the dogs were structurally correct...nothing. This was before I did all the research I've done on what breeders should do.

So far, I have one who has had to have a painful and difficult surgery for patella luxation and will undoubedly need another on the other leg at some time. It has cost me $500.00 plus the cost of the dog. He doesn't represent a Chihuahua well at all. The other one, my girl looks better, but still not quite up to par. They both have collapsing tracheas at times of excitement. Who knows what else they may develop? I was so careful when I looked for my Doberman breeder.

The ONLY reason one should breed is that they are interested in improving upon the last generation and bettering the breed. PERIOD, not because you just want cute little puppies or for money. And that takes knowledge and research, health testing, showing etc. I hope you'll read the stickies on top of the breeding forum. They are informative and interesting. There's one which describes some of the risks. You would be taking an extreme risk breeding your Chihuahua. Death to the mother isn't uncommon. I urge you to look thoroughly into the seriousness of breeding before you make such a decision.

[Crossfire Bulldogs]

Ok, so you've already done all the research and are in the process of having your bitch health tested then?

[Crossfire Bulldogs]

LOL Carrie, we posted at the same time and your right....breeding should only be done for the betterment of the breed.

I won't go into it any further since I have no way of knowing at this point if you have considered all of the important things Penny's girl but asking about the difference in size between your two leads me to believe that maybe you haven't. If I'm wrong then I apologize but I'm a very strong advocate of spay / neuter when it comes to the majority of dogs.

If a breeder sells a pup, wether they be reputable or not the bottom line is your getting something the breeder didn't want for one reason or another, is this a dog that should be bred for the betterment of the breed?

Reputable breeders call them pet quality and will demand the pup be spayed or neutered and sold with limited registration.

[flyndog]

Penny's, how old are your dogs now? Are they still puppies? Just wondering, since you posted a breeding question in the puppy forum.
Kit

[Rip's Girl]

Amanda you know my position on breeding, I won't get into it with you on a forum.. You also know that I wish you wouldn't breed Tony, because of his knees.. Look at it this way, I spent all in all about $1300 on Ripley (including training to title him in agility) and I am neutering him because of his one little knee problem. Yes, many Papillons being bred have it, even show dogs, but I don't want to pass that on to his offspring. With knees like that, he can't improve the health of the breed in any way. With his structure, he can't improve the conformation of the breed in any way. The only thing he could add that would be an improvement to the breed is his temperament, but what good is it to breed an unsound, conformationally incorrect dog just for the .001% chance (or, whatever) of getting a puppy with similar temperament? This is just me, but I personally wouldn't breed Tony.

As for breeding Penny, look in my next post

[Rip's Girl]

(It's really long, but settle in with some hot coffee and read it all )
ATTENTION ALL NOVICE POTENTIAL BREEDERS!!!!!

SO YOU WANT TO BE A BREEDER? - Breeding the female
So you want to breed your female. You know what to expect if everything goes right. Your little girl will present you with tiny bundles of joy. She will lovingly nurse them and care for them until they are old enough to be weaned.

You and your family will find great joy in watching and playing with these little dolls, and then when the time is right they will all (or maybe you keep just one) go off to special homes to live out their lives as cherished companions. But have you given consideration to what if something goeswrong? I have listed here a few of the problems that I myself have personal knowledge of. Everything listed has happened either to me or someone I know. These are not isolated incidents. I'm sure other breeders could add miles to my list. Learn by others mistakes!. Let the breeding up to those who know what they are doing, have the experience, know what to expect.

WHAT IF DURING THE BREEDING


-The stud dog you have chosen is carrying a venereal disease and gives it to your female. She not only doesn't conceive but you have to pay the vet bills to get her infection cleared up and she is now sterile.
-The stud dog you decided to breed your darling to is not experienced. Once the two dogs are joined tightly in a tie, 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 sending blood flying everywhere. He retaliates by sinking his teeth into her left eye.
-You leave your dog with the stud owner because the breeding is not going very swiftly. In fact , it's been three hours and nothing is happening. The stud owners leave the two dogs alone in the back yard. The dogs get out through a tiny hole in the fence and a truck hits your female.
-You pay the $250-$1000 stud fee up front figuring you will make that and more back when the pups sell. The breeder guarantees the stud service to work or you can come back again. After 2 months you discover it didn't work and now must wait another 4 months to try again. Of course it doesn't work again, so in another 4 months you take your dog to another male and risk loosing another stud fee.
-You get her bred. Bring her home. She bothers you so you let her out she is still in heat and still receptive to males. You hear a commotion outside there is your girl tied up with the neighborhood mutt. when she whelps there will need to be DNA tests done on the pups.
-You get her bred. Bring her home and let her out. (She is still in heat and receptive to other males) but you do not see the neighborhood mutt breed her. The pups are born but look odd. You call the stud owner he suggests DNA testing (At your expense). You have a litter of mutts! What do you do about the ones you have already sold?
-Or knowing she tied with the neighborhood mutt you decide to terminate the pregnancy and try again being more careful next time. But a few weeks later your female is very sick because you had her given a miss-mate shot creating a hormonal imbalance causing a uterine infection and now she has Pyometra and needs a complete hysterectomy. All plans of getting a litter is gone and your female's life is now in danger if she does not have the operation.
WHAT IF DURING THE BIRTH


-The puppies are too large for the female. She never goes into labor, the puppies die and she becomes infected by the decaying bodies.
-The puppies are coming breech and they drown in their own sacks before they can be born.
-The first puppy is large and breech. When it starts coming your female starts screaming, and before you can stop her she reaches around, grabs the puppy in her teeth and yanks it out killing it instantly.
-A puppy gets stuck. Neither your female nor you can get it out. You have to race her to the vet. The vet can't get it out either. She has to have an emergency caesarian section of course it is 3:00 am Christmas day.
-A puppy is coming out breech and dry (the water sack that protects them has burst). It gets stuck. Mom tries to help it out by clamping her teeth over one of the back legs. The head and shoulders are firmly caught. Mom pulls on the leg, hard, peeling the flesh from the leg and leaving a wiggling stump of bone.
-A dead puppy gets stuck in the birth canal, but your female is well into hard labor. She contracts so hard trying to give birth that her uterus ruptures and she bleeds to death on the way to the vet.
WHAT IF DIRECTLY AFTER THE BIRTH


-The mother has no idea what to do with a puppy and she drops them out and walks away, leaving them in the sack to drown.
-The mother takes one look at the puppies, decides they are disgusting droppings and tries to smother them in anything she can find to bury them in.
-The mother gets too enthusiastic in her removal of the placenta and umbilical cord, and rips the cord out leaving a gushing hole pulsing blood all over you as you try in vain to stop the bleeding.
-Or, she pulls on the cords so hard she disembowels the puppies as they are born and you have a box full of tiny, kicking babies with a tangle of guts the size of a walnut hanging from their stomachs. Of course all the babies must be put to sleep.
-What if because of some Hormone deficiency she turns vicious allowing no one near her or the babies, who she refuses to nurse, or you have to interfere with.
-You notice something protruding from her vagina when you let her out to pee. You take her to the vet to discover a prolapsed uterus, which needs to be removed.
WHAT IF WHEN YOU THINK YOU'RE IN THE CLEAR


-One or more of the puppies inhaled fluid during birth, pneumonia develops and death occurs within 36 hours.
What if the mother's milk goes bad. You lose three of your four puppies before you discover what is wrong. You end up bottle feeding the remaining pup every two hours, day and night. After three days the puppy fades from infection and dies.
-The puppies develop fading puppy syndrome you lose two. You bottle-feeding or tube feeding the last remaining baby. It begins to choke and despite your efforts to clear the airway, the pup stiffens and dies in your hands.
-Your female develops mastitis and her breast ruptures.
-Your female develops a uterine infection from a retained placenta. Her temperature soars to 105. You race her to the vet, he determines she must be spayed. He does the spay in an attempt to save her life, you pay the hundreds of dollars bill. The infection has gone into her blood stream. The infected milk kills all the puppies and the bitch succumbs a day later.
-All the puppies are fine but following the birth the female develops a hormone imbalance. She becomes a fear biter and anytime anyone tries to touch her she viciously attacks them.
-Mom and pups seem fine, the puppies are four weeks old and are at their cutest. However, one day one of the puppies disappears. You search everywhere but you can't find it. A few days later another puppy is gone. And another. You can't figure how on earth the puppies are getting out of their safe 4' x 4' puppy pen. Finally there is only one puppy left. The next morning you find the mother chomping contentedly on what is left of the last murdered puppy.
WHAT IF THE NEW HOMES AREN'T SO HAPPY


-You give a puppy to a friend. Their fence blows down so they tie the puppy outside while they go to work. A roving dog comes along and kills the puppy. Your friend calls you up to tell you about the poor little puppy and asks when you are having more puppies.
-You sell a puppy to an acquaintance. The next time you see them you ask how the puppy is doing. They tell you that it soiled their new carpet so they took it to the pound
-You sell a puppy to a friend (you give them a good price and payments). They make a couple of tiny payments. Six months later they move to an apartment. They ask you to take it back. You take it back and of course the payments stop. The dog they returned is so shy, and ill mannered from lack of socialization and training it takes you a year of work providing socializing and training to be able to give it away.
-You sell a puppy to a wonderful home. They love her like one of the family. At a vet check done by their vet it is determined that the puppy has a heart murmur. (Your vet found nothing when he checked the puppy before it was sold.) They love their puppy and want the best for her. They have an expensive surgery done. The puppy is fine. They sue you for the medical costs. They win, because you did not have a contract stipulating conditions of guarantee and so as breeder you are responsible for the puppy's genetic health.
-You give a puppy to your mother. She is thrilled. Two years later the puppy starts developing problems. It begins to develop odd symptoms and is suffering. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of tests later it is finally discovered that the dog is suffering from a terminal condition that was inherited. possibly from your female since you know nothing about her family lines.
-One loving home decides your puppy is untrainable, destructive and wants to return the pup and get a full refund, which you have spent on your vet bills.
-One loving couple calls you and is very upset because their pup has crippling hip dysplasia and want to know what you are going to do about it. You have spayed your female so a replacement is out of the question, looks like another refund.
THE SALE


-You put your ad in the local paper for your pups at the usual price and get only 2 responses and no sales. You cut the pup's price in half and broaden your advertising to 3 other newspapers in which the advertising totals $120.00 a week.
-You get a few more puppy inquiries from people who ask all about health testing you did before breeding and if the pups are registered. You tell them your dogs are healthy and it was enough and that you could get the papers. The callers politely thank you and hang up.
-The pups are now 4 months old and getting bigger , eating alot and their barking is really beginning to annoy the neighbors who call the police who inform you of the $150.00 noise by-law.
-Your neighbors also call the humane society who comes out to inspect the care of your dogs. You pass inspection but end up feeling stressed and harassed.
-You finally decide to give the rest of the litter away but still have to pay the $1200.00 advertising bill and the $600.00 vet bill.
So you gotta ask yourself: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, "breeder?"

[oc_spirit]

Sorry if I'm repeating anything Rip's Girl has already said but I don't have the time to thoroughly read it at the moment and just wanted to get my two cents in quickly. I posted this in a different thread so the beginning might sound like it doesn't have much revelance but once you get reading it goes on to say why you shouldn't breed randomly

The reason everyone reminds to Spay/Neuter is because even if someone were to find homes for the puppies, that just potential homes being taken away from a dog that's going to be euthanized at a shelter. The problem also is that if the person's dog has a default from the breed (Ex. an aggressive Golden Retriever) then the puppies may carry the trait and if they're bred their puppies are aggressive and so on and so forth and then suddenly a wonderful breed is ruined because of one person's mistake. This is already apparent with the Labrador Retriever. There are a lot of labs out there that are very aggressive because they came from bad breeding. And it's not just in temperment that this happens, physical too. Dacshunds with very weak backs, beagles too big/small etc.

A perfect world would be if breeders only bred if theirdog was proven because that would mean that all breeds would be true to the standard and heredetary defects like hip displaysia and cataracts could be bred out.

Fact: Siberian Huskies originally didn't have any problems with hip displaysia but bad breeding meanth that the few sibes with hip displaysia were bred and passed that defect on to their offspring who passed it on to their and so on until now it is mandatory that a reputable breeder have their dogs cleared for this in an attempt to bred it out.

Would you like to be the one responsible for introducing a defect into a breed?

Cheers!

BTW if there's no motivation for the reason for the breeding other than "I want cute puppies" (so your girl didn't win BIS in Westminister, or your boy didn't win national titles in sheep herding competitions - notice how breeding isn't JUST for conformationists, but both litter still have a very good purpose) then you are deemed by definition, a Backyard Breeder (BYB) which in my books and the books of MANY other dog owners, is in the same category of horribleness (made up word i know LOL) as a Puppy Mill.

[Carrie]

I know how I'd feel if I bred a dog whose breed never showed a particular fault but mine had it. Five years down the road after many generations following, using my lines, say 50% of this breed now had this fault and I was responsible for causing it??????? Holy ****!!!! I'd kill myself. What if it were some awful, painful thing or a bad temperament where dogs were having to be put to sleep on account of severe aggression? Or some internal organ malfunction. These things happen and can happen when breeding is not carried out responsibly by caring people that understand the ramifications.

Now, one might say, "But my dog doesn't have anything wrong with it." Well, the truth is that one cannot know without health testing, xrays etc. Conformation must be evaluated by experts. AND even if one's dog doesn't show signs, they may later AND they may carry a gene for something without having the problem. An understanding and study of pedigrees needs to be done.

I'll never buy from any other than a reputable breeder again. And I'll do my darndest to educate people to only go to reputable breeders. Hopefully one day irresponsible breeding will be a thing of the past. But that's wishful thinking isn't it.

[Carrie]

This thread has gone off on a....what is the word? On a mission? LOL. It really belongs in the breeding forum. But, back to the original post:

I was thining of getting another dog, I have two chihuahuas and a black lab. My female Chihuahua we got because I wanted to breed but she is about almost 2 pounds smaller than my male. What should I do?

What should you do? If you want another dog, I would advise getting another dog, but spaying and neutering all of your dogs and leave the breeding up to breeders who know how to go about it in a responsible way. There are plenty of dogs out there. There is no need to breed more except for the reasons as were stated in previous posts......to better the breed.

[Rip's Girl]

JMO... Go to a reputable breeder and talk/work with them for a while, get to know them and how they breed, learn a lot about breeding, get some experience... And, then look for a breeding prospect puppy/adult. (I say prospect because a dog's knees can look fine and feel fine to a vet at 6 months of age, but they can turn into grade 4 luxating patellas at 2 years of age.. Just look at what happened with me and Ripley, he was perfectly healthy at 6mos, it wasn't until he was older that his bad genetics and health problems caught up with him.)
If you're up for the challenge of breeding the *responsible* way, work with your dog's breeder, get all the necessary health tests done, temperament tests, etc. to make sure your dog is sound.. Show the dog in obedience, agility, conformation, etc. Work with the breeder to select a suitable stud..
It won't make you much money at all, in fact my guess is that you would lose money on it.. But you would in all likelihood be adding quality to the breed.

[Penny's Girl]

I want to thank you guys for all of your advise. I am going to take Penny and Bony into the vet to get them health checked and ask the vet his oppinion on the whole breeding idea. I am planning on breeding penny on her next heat which will be in the summer some time I am hoping. As for Bony he is going to be a Dad hopefully on the 14th of January if we calculated right. I think his puppies will do just fine, and yes at first we were scared about the whole idea of the locking on thing and the thing about if they pull apart to soon it might hurt the female. So we helped them the first time and after that they were walking around the house tied. So I think all reputable breeders have to start somewhere. Again, Thank you for all of your advise and oppions. I really appreciate responses.
Thanks, Amanda