Game had an ultrasound 30 days after the first mating/29 days after the second mating, and it’s confirmed: she is pregnant! I’m so excited! Game is everything I’d want in a breeding female and more, but my previous attempts were unsuccessful. I’ll be transparent about the things going on with her and, once the time comes, the puppies because I want to share a slice of puppy joy with you all, and why not also share my personal dreams and reasons for breeding. You may agree or disagree with them – that’s totally fine; that’s about you, not me. Keep it to yourselves, please. No need to take away from my joy. That’s why I’ll be closing comments on this post. You can of course “like” if you are sharing in the joy!

Below are Game’s ultrasound results!

WHAT am I doing here?

Just my own thing, really: something I’ve dreamed of ever since I was a little kid was raising a litter of puppies at some point in my life. I’ve learned a lot about breeding by reading books, taking Puppy Culture and Avidog courses and taking classes and a 1-on-1 from Jessica Hekman over the last couple years to learn as much as possible about puppy development. I am as ready as I will ever be. What I personally hope to get out of this (probably one and only) breeding adventure is more knowledge about dogs between 0 and 8 weeks of age: so far, I’ve only raised and worked with puppies who were 7 weeks and older. This litter is going to teach me A LOT.

Rebelde!

I have a litter theme! Why? Because it’s fun! Rebelde by RBD is Game’s theme song because I happened to be listening to it when I decided to give breeding her one last try (the next time she goes into heat, she would be too old for me to want to breed her).

While this isn’t the greatest song in the world, it fits in the sense that not everyone will approve of the sire I’ve chosen for Game. I’m okay with that. This choice is right for me and I will make sure every one of these puppies goes to a most excellent home.

I’ll share my puppy joy with you all because I want you to have a slice of it too: puppies are wonderful. They create bonds between strangers. They make you laugh so much and allow you to fully live in the current moment for a moment. Joy is not a limited resource – take as much as you can carry!

Selecting a sire

Before trying to breed Game for the first time in Mexico, I temperament-tested 6 different male dogs. I didn’t mind whether they were purebred Malinois or not, but I only tested active/worky (i.e. seemingly healthy) dogs of the shepherd-type. That’s because I wanted some predictability, and that’s easiest to achieve if I cross my shepherdy pointy-eared Malinois to a similar dog. Among the dogs I tested were:

• Zero German Shepherds (they are popular, but mostly extremely show-liney and I very much didn’t want that)
• Zero White Swiss Shepherds (I have yet to meet one who is cool and worky; I the ones I know are very mellow pets)
• 1 Dutch Shepherd
• 1 Mal or GSD mix, Mal sized and shaped, GSDish patterned
• 4 Malinois (of the worky dogs I see here, Mals are by far the most popular)

I made up a temperament test that I’m sharing below. You’ll note that there is nothing about health testing (told you you wouldn’t necessarily approve of this breeding. That’s why.) It is not common in Mexico to health test in the way people in the US commonly do: breeders (i.e. people who make conscious choices about crossing dogs) generally observe and only breed dogs who are both good workers and lovely companions (or whatever temperament they want in a dog.) Mal breeders who are into bitesports, for example, are more likely to look for civil dogs rather than lovely companions. Bitesports in Mexico include personal protection, which is about teaching dogs to (also) attack people who do not wear bite suits and guard houses, specific individuals, cars etc. I’ve only researched the very, very surface of this when I first got here, so I hope I’m not misrepresenting it. The main difference the sport of personal protection seems to have from traditional bitesports is that it is not about impulse/self control but about the dog hanging in there and not backing down against all odds. So there is (I believe; I am not an expert by any means) more weight placed on attacking than on letting go. This sport has several levels, and the dogs are generally bred for and sold to people looking for personal protection dogs. You’re unlikely to see them out walking the streets because they are not necessarily safe to have in public.

On the other hand, there are also lovely companion Mals you see doing incredibly well in public, but I’m pretty certain that these dogs don’t typically come from personal protection/civil lines.

If a dog or their parent dies of cancer young, you don’t breed them. It is common to get regular health exams in breeding dogs, including blood tests for, I believe, cancer markers and general health (I wouldn’t know what you look at there if you’re a vet drawing blood) – but nothing more invasive. Drago (Game’s sire) was all clear on his last health exam, but that really is quite superficial. X-rays aren’t usually done and DNA testing hasn’t quite made it to Mexico yet either.

The humans of the dogs I temperament-tested would probably have agreed if I asked them to do x-rays of the dogs’ hips and shoulders as long as I paid for these exams. I didn’t ask because I want to absorb as much of what I invest in the puppies myself. X-raying would add quite an expense to this that I might have to pass on to puppy buyers, and I don’t want to do that. I wouldn’t trust a Mexican vet’s x-ray evaluation because there doesn’t seem to be a system like there is in Europe and the US. So I would have to send the x-rays to, for example, PennHIP. It would add expenses I may not be able to absorb and do not want to pass on to a puppy’s future families, and I may end up with x-rays where the dog isn’t positioned right anyways.

So instead, I consulted with a veterinarian with an interest in breeding and genetics who I trust. They considered it okay to breed to a dog who was not x-rayed as long as I knew this dog was highly active without showing injuries or unnatural movements suggesting pain and as long as my own dog was clear. Since all of the above is the case, I went without health-testing on the sire. (If you’re reading this and think I’m an idiot – fair enough. I don’t care and I don’t want to hear about it. I already bred the dog, so your opinion changes nothing. Move on with your life.)

I temperament-tested every candidate myself with the owner watching. Some questions were questions I had to rely on the owner’s answers for:

• How does the dog react to firecrackers? (Mexico has A LOT of firecrackers, especially in small towns, and we know there is a genetic factor to noise sensitivity.)
• What do we know about the dog’s past/pedigree?
• Do we know anything about illnesses in the dog and/or their relatives? If so, what?
• What does the dog eat and are there food sensitivities the owner is aware of?
• Who does the dog live with and do they get along?
• Is the dog trained/training in any sports, work or life skills? (I actually preferred as little training as possible because I wanted to see what “the raw dog” brought to the table rather than how good of a trainer the owner was.)
• Has the dog sired a litter before? (If yes, what do we know about his puppies?)

For the questions above, I trusted the owner’s accounts. For the ones below, I tested the dog:

• What’s the dog’s first reaction when I, a stranger, enter the dog’s home (in a friendly way)?
• How does the dog respond if they have a bone or toy and someone approaches? (Resource guarding question: we know there’s genetics involved as well.) I first asked the question, then gave the owner a rawhide bone and/or toy I had brought to give to the dog and asked the owner to take it away again after a minute. If the dog didn’t mind the owner taking it and assured me it was going to be safe, I asked them to give it back to the dog and then took it away myself after another minute (observing the dog’s body language, of course – I wasn’t interested in getting bitten).
• How does the dog respond when they head out and meet a strange human?
• How does the dog respond when they head out and meet a strange dog?
  
  As for the two questions above, I took dog and owner for a brief walk until we had met both at least one human and at least one dog, and observed. I asked the owner to have their dog at liberty, i.e. either off leash or on a 5m long line I had brought, and not use cues/commands.
  
• Is the dog interested in playing? I brought different toys and observed the owner trying to get the dog to play, and then tried playing with them myself.
  
• Does the dog work for food? (Again, I asked the owner to demo and then tried luring a novel behavior myself with kibble and hot dog slices.)
  

The first time I tried crossing Game in Mexico was almost exactly a year ago. The sire was the Dutch Shepherd, Hades, who had beaten the second-highest scoring dog by one point: Hades doesn’t mind fireworks at all; he doesn’t blink an eye. We were trying twice when Game was in standing heat. She really liked Hades and was very flirty, but he couldn’t figure out his part. He hadn’t sired a litter before; Game hadn’t been mated before and things ended up not working. They both had a lot of fun and oral sex though, so good for them!

Game and Hades in 2023 (I think).

This time, I used the second highest scoring dog because this dog has already sired four litters – so I knew he’d know what to do. I had brought Game along way back when I tested this dog and they had gotten along well and played together, so I knew she liked him (Drago) too. (Game got to come to all temperament tests and let me know what she thought of the candidates.)

Left: Eduardo with Drago and Game during Drago’s temperament test, Drago (middle) and Drago (front) and Foxy (Hades’ owner’s other adult Malinois) playing fetch, 2022.

The reason Drago scored second rather than first is that unlike the Dutchie (Hades), Drago minds fireworks in a certain context: he doesn’t care about them at all as long as he is out and about with his humans, but when he is home and there are continued firecrackers, he retreats to his “dog house” in a safe corner until they pass. (He only retreats to the dog house for firecrackers – otherwise, he’ll rest close to his people or wander about the house/yard, depending on what is going on.) No shaking, stress-panting, vocalizing etc., but clearly a reaction that shows discomfort around firecrackers. Without Drago losing a point in my evaluation for noise sensitivity, he and Hades would have tied.

Drago’s evaluation

Below are the observations for Drago in the different categories:

What do we know about his past/pedigree: he’s from an FCI registered working/sports kennel in Toluca. His parents do agility and obedience. Drago himself does not have papers (in Mexico, you can get papers for the puppies of FCI-registered breeding parents, but it costs extra to get these papers from the club. It is common that breeders ask buyers whether they want the papers or not. If they want them, the buyer pays the cost for papering the puppy. Drago’s human, Eduardo, didn’t care about the papers.)

Drago himself and his previous puppies Eduardo is in touch with are healthy and have no food sensitivities; it is unknown whether the parents have food sensitivities but they are otherwise active sports dogs and appear healthy.

Drago eats partly kibble and partly a homemade raw diet.

Drago lives with Eduardo (his human), two female Mals, a cat, Eduardo’s sister and Eduardo’s dad. He gets along with all household members. Both Eduardo’s brother and a friend visit regularly with their respective children, the youngest one of whom is 4. Drago gets along with the kids, interacts but doesn’t get nervous and doesn’t push over the kids. He didn’t need to be taught this; he was naturally good around them.

Resource guarding: no. Both me and Eduardo could take things from him and he just smiled up at us in an “Alright, what’s next?” kind of way. Eduardo tells me the other household dogs can also take stuff from him and he’s chill about it.

When I entered the first time, Drago was relaxed and confident – neither desperate to greet me nor shy. He observed, saw that the new person entering (I) was being treated like a friend by his humans and wagged his hello without intruding my space. When I invited him to greet me, he came over and did so in a friendly manner. Nothing frantic. He didn’t mind me touching him.

Eduardo almost exclusively walks with Drago off leash when they roam the neighborhood. It was market day, so we went for a walk that led us through a street market where we met multiple dogs and people. Throughout, Eduardo just walked and Drago stayed within sight radius, sniffing and doing dog things without losing us. He didn’t mind any of the people or dogs we met, seemed confident and sure of himself and enjoying his walk.

Drago is a ball junkie. He’d fetch until he drops and also plays tug, but fetch is his favorite. On the day I evaluated him, I came right after they had had a long toy play session. It was a hot day, and I couldn’t convince him to play tug with me. (Based on what Eduardo tells me, I suspect I might have if he hadn’t just had the hot fetch session.)

He was happy to take my hotdog slices, but not my kibble (maybe also because he was hot). I could clearly see that he treated the hotdog interactions with me as transactions while he was in tune and there was a relationship-based work ethic when Eduardo asked something of him.

He has basic companion dog training and a sporty trick: he has a recall, doesn’t jump up on people and furniture, stays within his radius on their many off-leash urban adventures, doesn’t pull on the leash (which he rarely wears), plays with toys enthusiastically and cooperatively and can jump 2m (!) hurdles.

According to Eduardo, the basic living-together behaviors were very easy to train and just seemed to “make sense” to Drago.

He and Game played a little on neutral territory. Drago was more playful than her, but responded beautifully to the boundaries she set and respected them. Not timid at all, just really good dog/dog skills. He had no problem with her entering the house together with him.

When I temperament-tested Drago originally in 2022, he had sired two litters. By the time I visited for Game’s breeding in 2024, there had been two more litters and I got the opportunity to meet two adult puppies from two different litters: a female who now lives with Drago and his people and is very similar to him in her behaviors (Eduardo told me this; I saw her but didn’t test her) and a male who lives nearby. The male’s human came over with his dog when I was there so we could all meet. He (I forget his name) happily showed off his tricks in public (leg weaves, sits) … He arrived and left off leash and played with Drago and Game, showing exellent dog/dog skills even around my female in heat.

Left: Game meets Drago’s adult son, right: Game and Drago before their first mating. (January, 2024.)

Main criterion: sociability

As you’ll see from my temperament test, I was most interested in sociability (being able to be at liberty around dogs and humans without eating them), interest in working with humans for food and toys and – extremely important to me – noise sensitivity. This element matters because Game is noise sensitive, and I would like to balance this out with the sire. Personally, I’d call noise-sensitivity Game’s only flaw (but I’m biased, of course).

Ideally, I would have bred Game to a dog like Hades, the Dutchie, who doesn’t care AT ALL about fireworks. However, it didn’t work with Hades and ALL the other dogs I tested cared about fireworks to some extent. Drago cared the least amount.

This is not a coincidence – it’s not like I tested a particularly noise-sensitive population of dogs. It’s that I know hardly any Mexican or Guatemaln dogs who aren’t at least a little bit noise sensitive. (Except for Mexico City proper; the city is a lot quieter. I didn’t test any city dogs.)

“Noise” in a Latin American country isn’t the same as in the US or Europe. Many dogs sensitize over the course of their lives. That has been the case for Game: she spent her first New Year’s Eve in Austria and didn’t mind the single night of fireworks at all. Same about the occasional firework display when we lived in Thailand. When we moved to Guatemala, she started out that way too: she didn’t mind. But we moved into a house next to a church. Churches in Guatemalan villages – at least this church in this Guatemalan village – have several services a day, and they will announce each one of them with about 30 minutes of nonstop “bombas” (that’s the name in Guatemalan Spanish for INCREDIBLY loud firecrackers. They sound as if a bomb was exploding next to you. It’s nothing like what I’m used to from other parts of the world and I haven’t heard anything like it outside of Latin America). We woke up this way, it happened at noon and it happened at night – every single day. Over the course of a few months, Game sensitized to these sounds.

For a dog living in Europe, there is only a single day a year where there are fireworks – New Year’s Eve. I suspect Game wouldn’t have developed sound sensitivity there at all – but even if she had, it would be easy to medicate her once a year. Same goes for the US. Medicating your dog on one or two predictable days a year is perfectly fine. But you can’t medicate your dog three times a day, every single day of their life, with the medications we use for noise sensitivity. And Game’s puppies may end up living in Mexico – so I want to make it as improbable as possible for them to worry about loud noises.

An aside: Game has overcome her fear with the help of the Take A Breath Game from CU! It’s crazy how powerful that game is. First, we we consicously breathed and ate thourough each bout of fireworks. By now, she is okay even without the exercise!

In any case, I don’t expect Game’s puppy’s future owners to know CU and ideally, they won’t be noise sensitive in the first place.

Game

Speaking of Game – here’s some stuff about her!

Game is Ygame van’t Merleboosch, born in the Netherlands. She’s an FCI registered KNPV line dog:

This is her unique “genetic pawprint” (this is not an Embark or Wisdom Panel test; I haven’t done those):

These are her (pretty old) hip and shoulder x-rays, done in Austria. As by the European FCI evaluation system, these would be “A” hips (best score), “A” elbows (best score) and there is no lumbosacral transitional vertebra (we want there to be none as it, as far as I understand, makes dogs more prone to back conditions).

Game has passed her breeding evaluation test in Guatemala, where I was originally going to breed her – I just didn’t get around to it because I wasn’t able to renew my temporary residency and left the country. Anyways, here’s her “apt for breeding” certificate (which involved an evaluation by a judge) and the Spanish translation/FCI ACANGUA registration of her pedigree that I had to do in order to get “apt for breeding”:

I even registered a kennel in Guatemala. “Caniversity” was my business name for my in-person dog training business in Antigua, Guatemala, hence the kennel name “Caniversity’s.”

I’m now in Mexico, of course, so the Guatemalan paperwork isn’t valid – I’d have to go through the same process again. I’m not inerested in that though, so I didn’t. Game’s puppies will not have papers.

Game is a great dog with one flaw (I am aware of): noise sensitivity.

Game and I have dabbled in most sports you can dabble in, and she is (like her name suggests) game for anything: bikejoring, obedience, trick training, herding (cattle), nosework, cadaver detection work (fake cadaver scent), bitework, dock diving, parkour. We have not titled in anything but tricks. I LOVE training whatever we have access to and fun with, but I can’t stand competetions. (I was an A student, but HATED school and its grades to a degree that I will not subject myself to anything that reminds me of it as an adult. At least up until now, I have avoided everything and anything that pits individuals against each other. It’s fascinating to me how strongly I feel about this. The fact that Game doesn’t have titles isn’t about Game, it’s about me.)

Game’s main job is to be my demo dog both at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy and in person as well as my take-everywhere companion and service dog (she has two tasks). Public access, no matter what I throw at her, is easy for her. She has been in tiny boats on wavy water without throwing up, cross-country trains and busses. She has done transatlantic in-cabin as well as under-the-belly-of-the-plane flights.

She is very social for a Malinois (if she was a Golden Retriever, I wouldn’t say “she is very social for a Golden Retriever” – she does have her Malinois edginess alright and is a no-bullshit dog who will set boundaries and expect them to be respected).

She has matured late but has grown up to be a fantastic travel companion, house and apartment dog. She loves swimming, running through the forest and along the beach, gets really excited about seeing my friends who are always also her friends, and is highly food and toy motivated.

She currently lives with a female Border Collie and me. She has lived in a household with up to 2 humans, 5 sheep and 5 dogs.

She thinks cats and chickens look a lot like snacks, but I can recall her away from them.

She has lived (i.e. stayed for 6 months or more) on 3 continents: Europe, Asia and the Americas. She has lived (i.e. stayed for 6 months or more) in 4 countries: Austria, Thailand, Guatemala and Mexico. She has visited (i.e. been there for less than 6 months) 7 different countries with me: the Netherlands, Austria, Thailand, Guatemala, Mexico, Germany and 4 different US states. If she were a human, she’d speak 5 languages: Dutch, German, Thai, Spanish and English.

She has also modeled for my recall book that the amazing Isabelle Grubert took professional photos for, is up to date on vaccines and deworming and her latest health check says all good.

That’s all I can think of right now … you’ll get to know her better as I share more about her and eventually her and the puppies over the next few weeks! If you’re an FDSA student or reader of this blog, you’ll already know her quite well. Oh! One more fun fact: the first thing she does when we get to a hotel room, AirBnB or new apartment is look for the bed and roll all over it; it’s one of her trademark moves. Another one is interrupting online meetings with the undelayable need to have her head scratched and her ears massaged or, potentially, a toy thrown.

Looking ahead

In the hope of the mating being successful, I’ve spent the last few months collecting cardboard boxes, paper rolls and shreddable paper. The puppies will have lots to shred!

Now that I know the mating has worked, I will make sure to make as much of a positive (and avoid a negative) impact on the puppies in utero as I can. The in-utero environment is an important factor in terms of who the future puppies will be. They are, of course, still blind and deaf, but they are plugged into Game’s system. If Game’s body is flooded with, for example, cortisol or oxytosin, so will be the puppies. Keeping this in mind, Game will continue her usual life, but I will consciously make sure that she gets the following every week:

• I’ll continue allowing her to scavenge for small amounts of random different food items she finds to normalize those. I’ll keep track of her most delicious finds for fun!
• Apart from her kibble, I’ll feed raw once a week (either just an extra raw meat treat or a raw meal).
• Shape/clicker train briefly 5 times a week – it gives her so much joy and she hasn’t had as much of it as usual because Chai is currently the baby who gets the most training attention.)
• Off leash free run of the woods/fields/trails outside the city at least once a week.
• Toy play at least once a week (may involve fetch, tugging, swim fetch).
• Daily snuggle session; do so really consciously, 5 minutes or more (if Game keeps opting in).
• Make sure she gets to hang out with a dog and a person (other than me and Chai) she loves or finds neutral at least once a week.
• A car ride at least once a week (I don’t know if this will make it less likely to prevent carsickness in the puppies – but it certainly can’t hurt).
• Make sure she has at least one canned-food meal while pregnant too. I don’t know if this will help guard against future food sensitivities – but again, it can’t hurt.

Many of the items on my list happen naturally. Most of the time not accounted for above is either running errands together, taking walks, hanging out in parks, Game snoozing on her couch or playing with Chai. I want to track the above items from now on to make sure they really do happen a minimum number of times every week. Apart from this, I’ll just let Game lead her normal life unless she lets me know she needs changes in food amount, exercise or otherwise. Another thing I am grateful for, even though it’s not on the list since I don’t have control over it, is dog/dog play: Chai play-wrestles with Game most days, and I love that this is likely to continue happening throughout her pregnancy. (If Game wants it to stop, she has an easy time letting Chai know – no need for me to interfere.)

I won’t be doing ENS (early neurological stimulation) on the puppies because. ENS is recommended for puppies who have a relaxed and sheltered in-utero experience, but not for puppies whose mother may have experienced stress during pregnancy. I believe that living in Mexico City – a city that never sleeps and gets as crowded as Times Square at times – is inherently stressful, even if a dog like Game handles it well. So I’d rather not add to this potential stressor with ENS.

I’m happy to report that last week (the week leading up to the ultrasound) checked a lot of the above boxes as well: we clicker trained (shaped) quite a bit because I needed new videos for a private student, Game saw two human friends and two dog friends, she went on a car ride, played lots of water swim fetch and ate an extracurricular rawhyde chew. She did her usual scavenging, but something that stood out to me last week was her favorite treasure: crunchy curbside bones in Iztapalapa. We’re off to an excellent start in terms of an enriched life, even “the week before” (the ultrasound)!

Puppy updates will show up here, on my podcast, Facebook and Instagram. Enjoy your vicarious Rebeldes, you all!