Allye has gotten the green light to be a breeder!
Yay!
Oh, heck, what have we done?
Finding quality, well-bred puppies is tough. Every five months our assistant lead trainer scours the country to find the best dog breeders who understand what takes for a puppy to grow into a service dog. Sometimes it works pretty well. Then, there are the in-takes like this session when Mother Nature laughs and says, “Aren’t you cute for thinking you can control the when and where you get puppies.” We had two litters that didn’t take. One litter only had two puppies. No one seemed to have litters due in our generous three-month intake window. We still figured it out, so …
The breeding news is great!
This is the first step of creating our own program, which will be key to growing our program. Ultimately, we will become less reliant on other organizations and be able to better plan – Mother Nature willing.
How did we get here? Allye is an ADI breeding cooperative dog.
The cooperative is made up of active Assistance Dogs International-accredited service and assistance dog organizations who have established breeding programs. It is a lifeline for smaller organizations like ours looking for quality, well-bred puppies. To participate in this group as a non-breeder, we have to agree to breed the puppy if and when it is appropriate. So, Allye isn’t the first breeding candidate we have had, but she’s gotten the furthest in the process in many years.
For example, Koko was eliminated for a benign heart murmur. Tau was booted for chronic ear infections. Cocoa Bean, who is a Phase 4 service dog in training, was well on her way until she contracted a uterine infection that resulted in an emergency spay. Others have been eliminated because their siblings had too many concerns like behavior, bad hips or elbows. The cooperative staff closely tracks genetics, behaviors and the overall health of the litters that are produced because only the best of the best are bred.
Once a dog is bred, there is an established process of how the puppies are donated out, a little bit like one for me, one for you and one for another participating service dog organization. In a litter of 8-10 puppies, we will get at least two puppies.
Because nothing about this is simple, we also had another decision to make – whether we whelp the litter ourselves or farm it out to another member organization. We made the decision to handle everything here. See why we have conflicting feelings? But our fearless assistant lead trainer has been working hard to figure out what we need to be successful. She is busy planning everything from the physical space to the training necessary to have volunteers help along the way.
As for timing of all of this, we don’t know. Her next heat cycle will likely be in August/September, which is coming fast. There are many considerations still to be had and not all of them are in our hands — here’s looking at you Mother Nature! If we miss this cycle, we’ll definitely be ready by the next in six-ish months.
Seriously, how cannot you not love a job where can talk about reproduction, poop and all the things generally not accepted at the dinner table!
A final thought: this does not take out our wonderful service dog in training for consideration of matching with a veteran. Our plan is to breed her, continue training her through this process and place her with a veteran after she has fully recovered from this one litter. In all, it will likely delay her placement by 6-12 months, but barring any complications, she will serve a veteran.
So pardon this way-too-early, not-a-birth-announcement announcement because this is an important milestone for us as we look for ways to grow the numbers of service dogs available.
In the meantime, stay tuned, there will be updates and likely some cute baby pictures soon!
