Tag: breeding

Week 4 post ultrasound: days 54/53 to 61/60 since 1st/2nd mating

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Dog and human friends

We started the week meeting Daniel and Dina – dog and human friends, check! Game wasn’t particularly interested in playing with Dina apart from being happy to see and greet her (Chai, for her part, was very much interested in running with her gal), but loved getting lots and lots of scratches from Daniel. These last few days, Game has become extra social even around new dogs: she’ll wag and greet and lick snouts/have hers licked. This is interesting; I would have expected the opposite as her due day gets closer. But Game’s social side is blooming these days!

Saturday morning with Daniel and Dina.

What isn’t blooming is her love of exercise: being heavier than she ever was in combination with unusually (well, we know that climate change means the unusual is normal) warm days mean that Game has now decided she will no longer do her supposedly healthy endurance trots. That’s okay with me; the queen gets what the queen wants! These days, this is snuggles, sleeping in my bed and lots of food. As I’m typing this, it is Sunday, a little after 4PM and Game just requested (and received) her dinner two hours early. She continues enjoying food toys and training sessions – but not too, too much running around, thank you very much.

Exceptional treats and scavenging

Monday, March 11, was the first day Game didn’t want breakfast (but insisted on her other meals). On Tuesday, she ate half her breakfast and, as usual, a full lunch and dinner, and by Wednesday, she was back to normal. Yay! I hope that’s the only discomfort she ends up feeling.

Two of this week’s extra meals: beef shank with marrow bone, a side of rice and a touch of parsley and a fish-and-rice bowl with avocado sprinkles.

Exceptional scavenging finds of the week:

  • Chilaquiles
  • Yellow and blue tortilla chips
  • Crunchy fried tortilla
  • Cake frosting
  • A big puff pastry

Little training sessions

Among other things, one particular shaping project for our daily little training sessions was a spin. These are, I believe, the first two full spins Game has offered! Pregnant dogs learn new things too. Isn’t she super cute? That belly really shows (particularly because you can still see where it was shaved for the ultrasound) and her movements look … well, let’s say less athletic than usual. Panting – also not something she’d be doing usually, but carrying that baggage around changes things! Love the waggy tail and how she is having a great time in any case, pregnant-bellied or not!

This week’s outdoors adventure came with water fetch!

It’s warm and carrying that big belle is heavy. Game has slowed down, but few things are better than a good swim, rolling in the dirt and a slow trot around the lake!

Jacaranda bliss!

Preparations

+ I re-watched the first parts of the Puppy Culture video. Some notes on it below:

  • Supposedly (no sources were mentioned), puppies turn out to be “more docile” (quote from the film; I am not 100% sure how they’d operationalize “docile”) when you stroke the dog’s belly a lot late in the pregnancy. So I’ve been focussing our snuggle sessions more on Game’s belly – if and only if she consents, of course. I assume that as long as she enjoys it, it can’t hurt, whether it actually does something for the puppies or not.
  • The colostrum – the milk produced in the first 24 hours after giving birth – is how the puppies get maternal antibodies against anything she is immune/vaccinated to. (I had forgotten about this fact and used to think they already get these antibodies when plugged into her system in utero.) The wild thing is that the puppies’ bodies are only able to absorb these antibodies without breaking them down (and losing their benefits in the process) in the first 18 hours of their life! So getting colostrum in the first 18 hours matters. The maternal antibodies will protect them in their first few weeks of life. This is important to me since I am going to prioritize socialization, i.e. the puppies are going to be exposted to visitors and go places etc. before their first vaccine.
  • Activated sleep: fun fact! Tiny puppies twitch in their sleep. That’s because in their first two weeks of life, all puppies do is sleep and eat. The twitching is caused by electrical stimuli and it trains their muscles to get stronger as they sleep. What a big difference between altricial (born before they are fully developed – for example, puppies are born with their eyes and ears sealed shut) and precocial species (like horses who’ll run around and eat independently within hours after being born!)

+ I connected with Jessica Hekman to find answers to some questions that will help me with my socialization plan.1 I want to focus on human and dog socialization – the rest, you’ll pretty much get for free in a Mal, but I want these puppies to get the best chance at being able to be family members in addition to whatever else they’ll grow up doing. I’ve taken an Avidog breeder course, I’ve got Puppy Culture, took Jessica’s Genetics/Environment FDSA class, read the linked papers, Carol Beuchat’s genetics class, read the linked papers there and watched all of Jessica’s FDSA webinars on biology and personality. I still have questions:

I know puppies can’t hear or see when they are born. They find their way to each other and to their dam by means of detecting heat. But are they able to smell right away? (This will impact my socialization strategy: if they can already smell different dogs and different people, I would not only handle them myself and have Game interact with them before they can see and hear, but also have other humans handle them and introduce other dogs even when they are still blind and deaf. As a dog trainer, I have seen so much behavioral fallout that when it comes to behavioral benefit/health risk assessment of fragile puppies, I come down heavy on the side of the most socialization possible, no matter the health risk. Personally, I’d expose puppies in my care to physical risks anytime if it set them up for behavioral success.2 Jessica believes they can smell – which means I’ll want to already introduce humans and dogs other than me in the first and second weeks of life (other dogs will be tiny dogs or be held so they can’t step on the puppies.)

BUT – and this was the second question Jessica helped me answer: I know that Game may be protective of her litter. Probably not against close human friends, but potentially against dogs she doesn’t know extremely well. In order to avoid the puppies being exposed to Game’s potentially negative response, I would remove Game when introducing other dogs or humans who aren’t close friends of Game’s. But of course Game would smell the strangers – human or non-human – on her puppies when I let her back into the room. So my question to Jessica was: will she be stressed by this smell on her puppies? Will this stress translate into her milk, and if so, will milk satiated by stress hormones do more harm than socialization does good?

I don’t know where to look for this information, and it has probably not been studied in dogs. Jessica assumes, based on her knowledge of the scarce research that is out there, that only chronic stress would be passed on to the puppies in Game’s milk.

These were the only two questions I still had that Jessica could answer – sadly, there are hardly any studies on puppy socialization.

That’s why I’m skeptical of Puppy Culture3 protocols, for example: yes, there are expert interviews, which is all good – but where are the sources? Show me the studies! Some things said in the Puppy Culture film are incorrect – for example, they suggest we not comfort a scared puppy in order to avoid reinforcing their fear response. We know it is not possible to reinforce fear though. They also introduce their “adult recall cue” by doing the new cue/old cue technique in the wrong order: instead of saying the new cue (in the film, it’s “Come” before the old cue (in the film, the breeder’s high-pitched puppy recall), they say the old cue first and follow it up with the new cue.

Knowing things like this, expert interviews are not enough for me to trust that what is shared in Puppy Culture is necessarily the best or only approach. I want to see papers or get the information from someone I know won’t say things that haven’t been studied. Jessica is scientifically rigorous, and I am glad that I found “it has not been studied in dogs, but based on what we know about other animals, it is probably biologically/physiologically/neurochemically this way”-type answers to two of my questions with their help. Thank you, Jessica! And thank you for not sugarcoating things we do not know for sure!

+ I got raspberry leaf tea (supposedly helpful in the last days before giving birth) – I’ll add a shot of it to Game’s food starting tomorrow, on the first day of week 5 (day 62/61). This has not been scientifically studied, but since I don’t see it doing harm, why not. Plus I like tea myself.

+ I got an x-pen that I’ll use to take the puppies to parks and other public places, and to protect things I don’t want them to get into at home.

+ I got a re-usable puppy toilet and an extra rectangle of fake grass! Almost everything is ready!

Denning news

On Friday, March 15, Game joyfully dug into the pillow-duvet-blanket fort I’ve built for her. I’ve showed it to her every day and spent some time watching my drama TV shows with her (and without Chai) in there every day since I’ve finished it, and on the last day of this week, she finally seemed convinced that it might be a good place to have puppies. Yay! (She can have them anywhere she wants, but it would be most convenient there. That way, I won’t have to throw out my couch or my mattress after they’ve been soaked in fun bodily juices!)

The week’s color tracking sheet

As of Wednesday, I’ve been tracking Game’s body temperature. Supposedly, it goes down by 1 degree 24 hours before giving birth. I’m curious if that’s actually true!

If I made another tracking sheet, I would update this one further: the second line in the left column would go, since outstanding scavenging is further down on the list already. And I’d put “temperature” in as a pre-printed field. As it is, I will stick with this sheet since I’ve already printed it twice – and I won’t need a third one since a dog’s gestation period is 63 days! Wheee!

  1. Let me add this here: Jessica – and I appreciate this very much – would refuse to give anyone advice about socialization (“not a dog trainer, not a behaviorist, but a scientist.”) The socialization I will be doing will be partly informed by how Jessica has answered my questions about “what do we know – what does science say,” but it will always be my socialization decisions (I am saying this specifically in case some of them turn out to not go so well). Jessica would not say, “Do or don’t do this.”
    I so appreciate people who know what they can and want to have informed opinions on and who will not present personal opinions as facts. So let me just reiterate: Jessica is not the kind of person who would tell me what to do with a 2 week old puppy. That’s all me. Jessica would just say something like, “In rats that get licked by their mothers in X way, it has been measured that at Y weeks, there is more of Z brain chemical present. Here is the study.” Jessical would absolutely not say, “I believe you should do XYZ with your newborn puppies.” She would say, “Watch Puppy Culture or consult a behaviorist. I am not a dog trainer.” And I very, very much appreciate this. The dog world has so many people with SO many opinions based on just-so stories that are presented as facts. Having opinions is absolutely valid. Claiming they are facts is not. My puppy socialization will be based on my personal opinions, which I am forming based on sparsely available facts and my dog trainer bias (I constantly see behavior challenges, but not medical ones). ↩︎
  2. This is how I, personally, want to do this. It is not based on a rigorously studied protocol, but on my opinion, and I am NOT saying you should do this with your litter. You do you, not me! It is absolutely valid to prioritize physical health or aim for the balance that is right for YOU! We do not have enough evidence to know what the best approach is (and I doubt there is a single best approach anyways.) So I say, like in many things in life, we all do our own best and let others do theirs. And we don’t get upset about the fact that of course, different people are going to do things differently. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Enjoy my puppies – and in case the way I do things upsets you, go enjoy something that brings you joy instead! ↩︎
  3. While I am skeptical of Puppy Culture and do not consider it “the one and only perfect way of raising puppies” due to certain factual errors in the film and the lack of resources, I very much appreciate the film and will be using many of its ideas. It is without doubt an excellent puppy starter, and as a future puppy owner, knowing the person raising the puppies followed Puppy Culture protocols is undoubtedly a green flag. For a first-time puppy owner, I’d also recommend checking out Puppy Culture materials. Perfect or not, it comes with A LOT of truly excellent information and fun ideas!
    I also know that making factual errors happens – I made one in the puppy book I wrote, too. When I asked for it to be corrected or a “please note that …” leaflet to be added to the book, unfortunately, my publisher told me they could only do this for the next print run because it would be too expensive otherwise (disappointing!) Anyways, my point is: while healthy scientific rigor is great, we can also learn from things that aren’t perfect. ↩︎

Week 3 post ultrasound (days 47/46 to days 53/52 after 1st/2nd mating)

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We started the week with a VERY lazy Saturday (I was out on Friday and very much socially satiated and lazy).

Sunday, we were ready to rumble again! Alan and Kiba were going to join our hike, but Alan’s mom had to go to the emergency room, so that fell through. Charlie, Hilo and Nemo joined us instead:

We were out for a long time and had food after. Unlike she typically would,
Game was happy spending Monday just being lazy.

Monday, the day after the hike, Game slept on the bed most of the day and regularly made content grunty sounds (I haven’t heard her make these sounds before – they are very cute). She also spent a lot of time on her back, legs up in the air, and encouraged Chai to lick her.

The last day of Game’s week, Friday, she got to see another human and dog friend: Alan and Kiba.

Alan, Kiba, Game. Can you see her pregnant belly? She’s also clearly saying, this is enough carrying my heavy belly around on a hot day in the second picture: our cue to head home!

As of this week, there MUST be an extra snack every day. Game asks for it and won’t accept no for an answer. She now eats breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’m using the different food categories I want to expose the embryos to, so the extra snacks are eggs, raw meat (different protein sources), meat bones, canned food of different brands and human-food leftovers. I’m trying to remember to use hotdogs and cheese to train even though she’d work for kibble. I would love for the puppies to inherit Game’s iron stomach!

As of Thursday, Game has requested a reduction in exercise which, of course, she is is receiving!

Two of this week’s raw dinners/extra meals/snacks. My dog obviously doesn’t care what her food looks like, but I’m having fun with it.

I also got an extra formal meal this week, aka 5-course sushi at what was probably the fanciest restaurant I’ve been to (I’m not a fancy restaurant person, but this tasted AMAZING). It was a “thank you for dog training support!” dinner a friend took me on. You all, feel free to “pay” me with food for things I’d happily do just because! This was YUMM!

It’s whelping box time!

On March 6, Game had another bout of denning behavior: she dug in between the two pieces of my couch and under its blanket. I thought we’d have another week or so, but she is letting me know it is time to get the welping box … ahm … my kitchen … ready. I’ll temporarily turn my kitchen into a whelping room. I rarely cook anyways, so it’s not as if I was giving anything up. I’ll put a low barrier in the door so Game can come and go, but the puppies will have to stay. The kitchen has a tile floor, but it’s old and I don’t want puppy urin and other fun juices to get stuck in the cracks between the tiles, so I’ll use a large tarp to cover the floor. I’ll add a layer of puzzle mats for traction and then lots of blankets and pillows for Game to make herself comfortable so she can really dig herself a nest or cave or build a blanket fort in a corner – whatever makes her happy. The far side of the digging corner will have a washable fake-grass puppy toilet and water bowl. Anything else (enrichment items, visitors etc.) will fit in between these two ends of the rectangular room.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering: we’ll only be in the city for the first few weeks of the puppies’ lives. I want them to still be in Mexico City the first week of their sensitive socialization period, but after, we’ll have a house and yard outside the city so the puppies can run. It’s close enough to visit the city and keep socializing, but for the most part, I’ll want them to have lots of space once they are mobile!

Exceptional snacks and scavenging log of the week:

  • Extra dinners (frozen meat bones (beef), chicken, pork, rice, banana).
  • Desserts with Panacur mixed in: yogurt, eggs, a new kind of canned food (last week was Royal Canin, this week is Pedirgree de res molido).
  • Crackers a kid must have dropped in front of a school.
  • Some horse poop (apparently, pregnant Games like horse poop.)
  • The wing of a dead bird, smashed into the street (we’ll call it a food toy.)
  • Hotdogs and cheese for training/shaping sessions.

Preparations

  • I bought a thermometer. Supposedly, a dog’s body temperature drops by 1 degree 24 hours before whelping. I’ll monitor her temperature starting one week before her theoretical due date.
  • Balloons: I got a bag of balloons that I’ll pop to get the puppies used to startling sounds (in Game’s absence) during the sensitive socialization window.
  • I got nailpolish in the colors of the puppy collars I’m planning to use. In addition to putting collars on the puppies, I’ll also paint one of their nails in case the collars slip off when they are still tiny. I’m hoping for 4 puppies, so these should be more than enough colors!

Yes, I know you all know what nailpolish looks like. I’m just excited
and want to share the little things! Documenting stuff brings me joy.

  • I got most whelping box ingredients: a tarp, pool noodles and tape to seal off the floor, additional puzzle mats, soft, washable carpets, duvets, blankets and pillows, a low see-through barrier (for the door) and an additional water bowl. Still need to get puppy toilets, but that’s not urgent. We’re almost all set!
  • I re-watched Jessica Hekman‘s excellent The Biology of Socialization webinar. Speaking of – below are a few notes!

The biology of socialization1

We know puppies have a sensitive socialization period: behaviorally, this window of time is sensitive because during this time period, the puppy is physiologically not yet able to experience a fear response. That is to say, if you measured the puppy’s cortisol levels during that period, you wouldn’t find any because the puppy’s body cannot yet produce cortisol. OR (I’m not sure which one it is) the cortisol is there, but the puppy’s body is unable to detect it/respond to it. In either case, as a result, we do not see a fear response in the puppy’s behavior while they are in their sensitive socialization period. We can still socialize (introduce them to humans and other dogs) after the window has closed (i.e. the puppy’s body produces cortisol and they have the ability to experience fear, which we see in their behavior), but it will take longer. The younger the puppy is, the less cortisol is being produced and the milder their fear response. 

The most important/effective time to socialize a puppy is before there is any fear response: they are quick to file away any stimulus they encounter as safe and normal in their world. This window varies, but it goes from approximately 4 to 7 weeks of age. If you got a puppy yourself, you would usually only get them at 8 weeks or older. So a lot of the determining factors of who that puppy grows up to be are entirely out of your (the puppy’s future human’s) control.

We know, and I’m sure that’s the case in humans as well, that pretty much everything is a gene-environment interaction. So yes, the puppy’s genetics do matter – for example, we know that separation anxiety and noise sensitivity run in certain breeds and lines of dogs. While we haven’t figured out the complexity of the contributing genes, we know that if a puppy’s parents are both noise sensitive or both have separation anxiety, their offspring will be at a high risk to also develop these issues even if they are being cross-fostered by a mom who does not have these issues – it isn’t a learned response. 

Apart from that, there is the in-utero environment that plays a huge role in who the puppy will be. Jessica explains it this way: there is an on-switch (the amygdala), an off-switch (the hippocampus) and a volume control (how much cortisol will be produced) as far as a dog’s stress response is concerned.

The sensitivity of the nervous system dashboard is determined in utero and in the first weeks of life. This makes evolutionary sense because canids live all over the world, and their environments differ greatly. The majority of dogs, for example, are free roaming dogs and not pet dogs. Depending on where you grow up, it makes sense to have a hair-trigger on-switch for your fear response, OR to have an on-switch that takes quite a lot of effort to activate. (If you’re a pet dog, there is no need for your on switch to be sensitive, but if you are a free-roaming dog in certain parts of the world, there may be. What increases your survival chances is determined by the environment you will be living in later in life, and your (the dog’s) body is fine-tuned to that environment before being born and in the first weeks of life. It makes sense that it would be at this early stage rather than later: young puppies aren’t very mobile and their dam will have sought out a safe spot to have the puppies. So there is no need to be afraid of what they encounter within or in the immediate vicinity of their nest. However, as they get more mobile and start venturing further from the nest, it makes sense to be able to experience fear because there may be dangers just around the corner. Once you (the puppy) venture out into the world, your chances of survival would be low if you were not afraid of, say, a bird of prey or a car. 

The off switch is equally important. It relates to what we trainers call the dog’s “bounce back”: does the dog startle easily, but also recover quickly? Or does the dog startle easily and then need the rest of the day to recover? Jessica calls the latter case a sticky off-switch. The hippocampus “decides” when the volume (the amount of cortisol (and maybe also other stress hormones?)) is high enough to flip the off-switch. 

For a family dog, we want an on-switch that does not easily get flipped. We want a volume control set to low (only small amounts of cortisol being released when the dog feels stressed in case the on-switch does get triggered), and we want a sensitive off-switch (it only takes small amounts of cortisol to “convince” the hippocampus to turn off the stress response again).

I want to make the most out of the sensitive socialization window in terms of introducing my puppies to as many people and dogs as possible to maximize the chances that they will feel safe and confident around people and other dogs in their future. With working line Mals, you usually get the drive and the workiness for free, but you sure don’t get socialbility and stable temperaments around dogs and humans for free. So this is where I’ll focus my efforts: I want to give the puppies the greatest possible chance to be lovely to live with and be able to go places with their humans, independently of what or whether they work and do sports. Both parents are like this, and with a little luck and a little help, we’ll get puppies like this as well.

This week’s color planner/tracker

I re-designed the trackers for the remaining weeks: I removed the check-box for the weekly car ride – turns out we tend to go on more than one anyways these days. And I added a few things based on what I’ve learned over the last weeks.

  1. This is how I understood Jessica Hekman’s fantastic webinar. All mistakes in the paragraph below this heading are mine! ↩︎

Introducing the (yet to be born) REBELDE litter!

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!

45807-GameDownload

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!