Pure Dog Talk 475 – Multiple Sired Litters When, Why and How Pure Dog Talk Is the Voice of Purebred Dogs

Pure Dog Talk 475 – Multiple Sired Litters When, Why and How Pure Dog Talk is the voice of purebred dogs. We talk to the legends of the sport and give you the tips and tools to create an awesome life with your purebred dog. From showing to preservation breeding from competitive obedience to field work from agility to therapy dogs, and all the fun in between your passion is our purpose. Pure Dog Talk is proudly sponsored by Trupanion, medical insurance for pets. Don't let unexpected vet bills throw a wrench in your plans. Let the Trupanion policy provide the protection you need against the unexpected. If you're a breeder, the Trupanion policy has a special additional rider that provides coverage for breeding concerns, such as emergency C-sections, even more Trupanion has a breeder support program that allows you to send your litters home with a special offer of medical insurance for pets. Learn more about all of the perks available to breeders like you by clicking the link on my partner page, and be sure to let them know Pure Dog Talk sent you. Laura Reeves: Welcomed Pure Dog Talk, I am your host, Laura Reeves, and I am joined again by my very favorite returning guests, Dr. Marty Greer. And we are going to talk about a fascinating topic that I just told Marty I can't believe we haven't actually covered this before. And it is the idea of a dual sired litter. And this is something that the American kennel club made available as a viable legal option about 15 years ago. Dr. Marty Greer: Something in that range. Yeah. Laura Reeves: And it enables people, who for pick a reason, to breed their bitch to two different stud dogs, DNA test the offspring, and register them as such, without getting in trouble. So people have used it for some pretty remarkable preservation breeding kinds of concepts. So welcome Marty, let's talk about it, because I think this is fascinating. Dr. Marty Greer: Sure. And I think it is as well. And don't forget, it doesn't just have to be two. It can be three. We did three last week. Laura Reeves: Oh my gosh. Okay. Dr. Marty Greer: So it can be a trio, so a multiple sire is probably a better catch all term. So I think it started with AKC, not exactly on purpose, and I'm not on the AKC board or a delegate or anything, so I'm on the fringes. But I think it started as, okay, we had an accidental breeding. We can do DNA now. So when DNA became a thing enough that it was reliable for parentage, then you could start saying, "Okay, let's do this." So I think someone at the board of delegates said, "Okay, well, now that we can do multiple sire litters, because of an accidental breeding, like, I'm bred her to the dog I meant to, and then I came home and she was- Laura Reeves: Oops. Dr. Marty Greer: ... tied to another dog of the same breed or of another breed." They said, "Oops. Yeah. Okay. Now we'll let you register the litter as such," because up until then, if you had that kind of a breeding, it was a wash. Laura Reeves: Yeah. You couldn't register anything. Or you registered them all as what you hoped they were, whether they were or not, which is a whole other story for another day. Dr. Marty Greer: It is. And that's way more than we can get into at this time. You're absolutely right. But it started off sort of as, well, what do I do with an accidental breeding? And then someone raised their hand at the delegates meeting, and said, "Well, what if it's an on-purpose, are you going to let us do that?" And they kind of scratch their head, and I'm sure they had to have some pow-wows about it. I'm not sure exactly how the decision was made, but ultimately, it was decided that yes, you can use more than one sire. And I have had first hand experience with my own breeding program that I've used two sires. Like I said, last week, we use semen from three different stud dogs frozen for a variety of reasons. And in my case, because you'll hear everybody say, "Oh, every time you do it, you only get them from one sire," and in my case, it was that way with my first breeding. And that litter is about 14, 13 years old now. I can't remember exactly when we did that litter, but we did name them after who's your daddy. Laura Reeves: Nice. Dr. Marty Greer: So we had Anakin and Padme, the whole Star Wars, who's your daddy theme. But this last time that I did was about a year and a half ago, and I ended up with three puppies from one sire and one puppy from the other sire. So these two beautiful girls out of the same mother are competing against each other. We competed against each other last weekend. And the judge went back and forth and back and forth. And she finally looked at them and said, "I'm really having a difficult time making a decision. They seem so much alike." And I'm like, "Well, that could be because they're half sisters out of the same litter." So, yeah, it actually did work that way. And I was very careful, because you can get the DNA back on your own dog and then they send you a chart for how to interpret it. And so most of the time, I just do it myself, because it's not that difficult. But the owner of the stud dogs is in her late 80s, and the last thing I wanted to have happen was for someone to say, an accusational remark about, you didn't really register the litter as who they were supposed to be. So I went through the paperwork, my husband went through it who's was a veterinarian, three of my vet techs went through it, and then I sent it to the AKC, because in addition to the $200 fee for registering the multiple sire litter, and the DNA testing, for an extra $40 or $45 AKC will interpret it. And they came up with the same interpretation we did. And it's really quite simple and quite straightforward. So it's not hard to do it, as long as the male dogs are dissimilar enough, genetically. If you start breeding brother/brother or father/son, it might get a little close. And I had one with a border terrier, usually they go out, I think 13 genes and they had to go at 23, because the dogs were so closely bred. Laura Reeves: So we're starting on the list of all of my questions. I have so many questions. Dr. Marty Greer: Oh, good. Laura Reeves: And this is, again, something that I have toyed with and never actually pulled the trigger, if you will. So number one question, what are some of the reasons that you would do this particular method of producing a litter? Let's just start there and we'll go down the list of my questions. Dr. Marty Greer: Sure. One of the most common is that the male you really want to breed to, doesn't have great quality semen, but you really, really, really want a litter out of this bitch at this time. And there are many reasons for that. She may be approaching her end of reproductive career. She may have fertility issues of some other kinds. She may be at leased bitch, and you can't really make a decision. You have two co-owners that can't come to terms with the decision. You have someone that really desperately wants a puppy out of their line of dogs before they pass away from cancer. I mean, there's just a whole lot of reasons that people make these decisions. Both times that I did this, it was with the same stud dog owner, but different stud dogs, because it was a different generation. And she just thought it was kind of interesting. Like I said, she's in her late 80s now, but when we did it the first time, she was in her mid 70s. And so, she wanted to do it and I was fine with it. And the one dog... We see a lot of times that you want to breed to a dog that's really great, but he's 13 and the semen's not great, and doesn't ship well. And so you just want to back it up with somebody else. And so you have choices then of in what sequence you deliver the semen. Laura Reeves: Okay. Okay. So now you see transitioning, I feel like Arnold Horshack here, I swear to God, ooh, ooh, ooh. Arnold Horshack: Oh, oh, oh oh. Ooh, ooh, oh. Oh, oh, oh. Oh. I got it. I got it. Laura Reeves: Are not old enough to remember Welcome Back Kotter, I apologize. Dr. Marty Greer: It would be a sad day. Laura Reeves: It happens. So, okay, my question is when I have discussed this with my veterinarians, when I have considered it with my own breeding program, I had one very bad, very old collection from one stud dog, and one reasonably good collection, but only one of it from another stud dog who was collected very young, so the expectation is it would be relatively good quality.

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