Puppies on the way!

I am pleased to announce that we are having puppies this spring!!!

Galena came into heat the last day of February. After a couple of progesterone tests to determine the optimal date for breeding, and making arrangements with the stud owner, we picked up the shipment of semen from the airport cargo early Tuesday morning, March 10, then headed over to the vet for an artificial insemination. Everything went quite smoothly, and by 10:00 we were heading back home. This was the day after she turned four – in fact she had to go into the vet for a final progesterone test on her birthday, March 9.

Galena is back at her guardians’ now where they will take good care of her as she grows those puppies big and strong! She is booked for an ultrasound on Monday 6 April, after which we will have a pretty good idea how many puppies she is expecting.

The sire for this litter is Black Canyon Triple Play, aka Jackson, of Dreamland Doodles in Surrey BC. Jackson is a gorgeous black tri-colour – with phantom markings and lots of parti white as well. He has had all the standard and extended health testing to make sure he has good hips, eyes, thyroid, and doesn’t carry the genes for a certain genetic eye disease known as PRA-prcd. According to Karen of Dreamland Doodles, he also has a magnificent laid-back personality. Between that and Galena’s super friendly, cuddly nature, we are sure to have a bunch of cuddly, calm and eager-to-please pups out of these two!

With Galena being chocolate who carries for both phantom and parti, as well as cream and black, and Jackson being black and expressing both phantom and parti, as well as carrying for cream, this is the breakdown of pup colours we can expect (statistically speaking):

• 37.5% black – of which ¼ solid, ¼ phantom only, ¼ parti only, ¼ phantom and parti
• 37.5% chocolate – same sub-breakdown as for black
• 25% cream – of which half solid, half parti

Of course, that’s just statistics, and it’s not easy – make that impossible – to have less than a whole puppy! So let’s just say, for the sake of ease, that Galena has eight puppies. That would mean roughly:

• one black phantom (tricolour or with white mismarks)
• one black parti
• one solid black
• one chocolate phantom (tricolour or with white mismarks)
• one chocolate parti
• one solid chocolate
• one cream parti
• one solid cream

Then of course there’s the fact that statistics bear out over large populations but results can be very skewed in a small sample. For example, with Galena’s second litter, we would have expected ¼ chocolate parti, ¼ chocolate solid, ¼ cream parti, ¼ cream solid. What we got was 1/8 chocolate parti, 1/8 chocolate solid, 1/8 cream solid and 5/8 cream parti! Go figure.

 Anyhow, with a gestation period of 63 days post-ovulation, Galena’s due date is around May 9. With her first two litters, however, she gave birth at around day 60, which would make it around May 6. Either way, these pups will be ready to go home around the first weekend of July.

 In the near future I will be putting out a call for guesses in the 2015 Galena edition of our Guess How Many Puppies Contest! Stay tuned…