Reggie goes Big in Texas!

Last week was pretty crazy on the dog front! Our Reggie was requested for breeding a little Cavalier Spaniel in Texas USA! We live in Utah and so that meant we would need to ship chilled semen overnight to Texas!

Friday March 10th, Lyle (breeder in Texas) let me know that his bitch's (it's hard to say that with a straight face) tests came back and her progesterone levels should be where they need to be by Tuesday March 14th. With that update we knew we needed to get Reggie semen collection on Monday March 13th. I called our vet and gave them the heads up. Monday was also my daughter's 4th birthday, so I knew Monday would be crazy!

On Monday I took Reggie to our awesome vet at South Mountain Pet clinic and they had everything ready including a French Bulldog in heat! Unfortunately, When Reggie saw her, she snorted at him like a pig! I had to chuckle because it was so funny to see his reaction, and Reggie was NOT impressed.

The vet and his staff were super fun and friendly and encouraged him to sniff her. He would not, he stuck his nose in the air. This is the dog who howls ALL NIGHT at our house when one of our females goes into heat and now he has no interest??? They tried to collect his semen, but because he was not excited they could not get much of a collection, not enough to ship a chilled sample. We needed 100 million sperm to be able to have a successful artificial insemination with chilled sperm and we only had 38 million.

The Vet said we should try again and we could add the collection to the one already taken. so I left our Reggie with the sweet staff.

Here he is running around with my daughter (the Birthday Girl!).

The vet tried again apparently with the same French Bulldog, hoping if they got to know each other Reggie might fall in love <3, but no luck! The vet got a poor collection a second time! We really needed to ship the semen out that day so it could arrive by Tuesday March 14th :-o

I told them I would try and do the collection at home where he is familiar and comfortable. My husband and I have collected him before for our dog Piper to have puppies, since he is so much smaller than Piper it was very difficult to breed naturally.

My husband works near the vet clinic so he picked Reggie up on his way home.

We took our little Birthday Girl to Texas Roadhouse and she got to ride on the birthday saddle!

The next morning I tried to get a collection from him and accidentally spilled the preserving solution for his semen! Ugh, I drove back to the vet with Reggie and the vet tried to get a collection using that same French Bulldog, Reggie had not grown any fonder of her. After that collection We still didn't have enough to send. My vet suggested we let Lyle know that he needed a plan B for his little Cavalier gal and he would need to get another male for the sire. I called Lyle and he told me that he and his wife really want us to try again. They want to keep a puppy from this litter for themselves and they want Reggie to be the Daddy.

Lyle works as a Veterinarian assistant and his vet recommenced we try again.

I was pretty discouraged about it when I was leaving the office, but one of the really nice gals at the front desk said "you got this Michele!" All of the sudden I felt hopeful like "yea I got this!" Isn't it amazing how someones encouraging words can totally lift a person?! I need to remember to say encouraging words more often!

I went home and with my mom's help, we got a collection using our female (I just can't call her a bitch haha!) Nala and cotton swabs I swabbed one of our females with to save heat sent and froze. (crazy things go on at our house to get outstanding pups in the world)

Semen is very delicate and as soon as we got the collection I had to be super careful and get it to the office within a half hour!!! We raced to the office, the vet analyzed it and we had 110 million live sperm, just what we needed to ship to Texas! Everyone cheered!!! FedEx would be there in 10 minutes to pick up the package and so the timing couldn't have been better. Lyle was overjoyed!

Reggie's semen got to Texas at 8:30 am March 15th and Lyle told me the artificial Insemination went really well. Now we just have to wait...

Hopefully Lyle gets a beautiful Reggie sired litter like we got on February 15th 2017. These puppies are our Miniature Golden Retrievers, they are a hybrid of Golden Retriever, Cocker Spaniel, and Cavalier.