This post is about embracing uncertainty.
In more concrete terms, it’s about deciding to proceed in my breeding program after losing one of my dogs this summer to cancer, just before her fifth birthday.
When Ruby got sick, suddenly, her second litter of puppies was only three weeks old. Watching her go from a thriving, athletic young dog to death in only a few short weeks was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. She was a beautiful brave girl, and a perfect mother. She never complained one time. Sudden loss of a dog is an experience I don’t wish on anyone. I certainly don’t want to be responsible for creating puppies at high risk of dying young.
In fact, I want to do the opposite. I want to produce healthy, behaviorally sound puppies with better than average life expectancy. Ruby was part Golden Retriever, and Goldens are “cancer factories” as my vet put it. About 60% of them die of cancer, many die far too young. In theory, it seems likely that mixed breed dogs like Ruby are at lower risk of cancer than their purebred ancestors. Some data seems to confirm this is true. But lower risk isn’t no risk. Clearly.
Jane Messineo Lindquist (Killion), the director of "Puppy Culture the Powerful First Twelve Weeks That Can Shape Your Puppies' Future" as well as the author of "When Pigs Fly: Training Success With Impossible Dogs" and founder of Madcap University said recently on her podcast, Puppy Culture Potluck:
“Five years is how long most people stay in dog breeding, and then they get out…because…you come into this thinking that you’re going to do all the right things and avoid problems, Everyone of us started out, thinking, on some level, “Oh, all those other breeders, they were unethical, and they were cutting corners”, ….but Im just telling you for sure, nature is going to have a turn at you, and give you a real lesson in humility….”
Jane was discussing temperament variability in this quote, but nature’s affinity for chaos applies to physical health as well. The reshuffling of genetic material with each generation is inherent to the design of living things and to the survival of species. This reality equates to a certain amount of futility in the effort we call “selective breeding”. There is no way to guarantee results. We can impact things, but we can’t make perfect dogs. Well, some might be nearly perfect. But they will never all be perfect, or all the same.
Nature has had several turns at me already. This cancer nightmare was just the most recent. Despite learning all I can about how to mitigate risks, doing the recommended health testing, and working hard to socialize puppies correctly, I’ve produced: a puppy with elbow dysplasia who needed surgery, a puppy with a heart valve defect that died suddenly before her first birthday, several puppies with allergies, at least a couple puppies who aren’t all that fond of meeting new dogs as adults, and several that are more fearful than I would like. So far. That I know of.
For most of my adult life, it never occurred to me to breed a dog, let alone make it part of my identity and become a “dog breeder” . I had owned only neutered male dogs, and in my later years, had mostly decided I was a cat person.
Then came Lucy. She arrived in the middle of the devastating end of my first marriage. Her acquisition was the kind of thing depressed people do in a grasping effort to cope; whose success or failure can be the difference between despair and hope. It is definitely not fair to put that kind of pressure on a dog. But I did. “I think a puppy will make me feel better” I said one day. I desperately needed to feel better. 2 hours later I found her- a buttery yellow lab puppy- on Craigslist.
Lucy got me out of bed in the morning. She made me smile. All the things most any puppy will do for you; but then there were the other things. She handled things better than I did. She was there when I was falling apart and she didn’t mind. She just watched me. She was a steady presence, better able to handle my life disaster than I was. She didn’t mind being left alone, but would happily go anywhere. She took 5 minutes to housetrain, and she was never sick. She was exactly the kind of dog many people hope for in a companion. I got lucky.
Lucy inspired me to breed dogs. To create more dogs like her. To help other people feel as lucky and blessed as I had. It was a simple desire. I was naive. 5 years in, having lost my beautiful girl to cancer, unsure whether it would be ethical to proceed with breeding Lucy’s granddaughter Rose, awake at 3 am, I was ready to quit.
I consulted experts, friends, mentors. I found more questions than answers. I didn’t produce Ruby. I don’t know enough about the health history in her background. I don’t know what kind of cancer she had, the biopsy was inconclusive. It was aggressive and poorly differentiated.
Were the pesticides used in the vineyard surrounding our house a factor? Maybe. How about the flea and tick preventative I gave her for years? Maybe. Her diet? Maybe. Will future generations have a high risk of early cancer? Maybe. Does that mean I should retire this line? Maybe. The only thing everyone agreed on is that nothing is certain.
Typically a mother dog feeds her puppies for about 5 weeks at least, and provides nurturing and socializing until they go home at 8 weeks. We had to do things differently with this litter. Luckily the puppies were happy to eat soaked kibble with milk replacer and never lost any weight. In fact, they grew like weeds, and, a miracle happened.
Rose, Ruby's daughter, who has never had a litter, adopted the puppies.
Rose was obsessed with her little half siblings from the moment they were born. I don’t normally let the adult dogs meet new puppies until they are 4 weeks old but Rose waited outside the door to the whelping room, looking at me, eagerly explaining with her eyes, that she needed to be with the puppies. When we let her meet them, as we were losing Ruby, she instantly took over mothering duties. She laid down with them, curled herself around them, and licked them all over. I wept. “Thank you Rose, I said. Yes, you’re right, they need a mama.” I’ve never loved a dog more than I loved Rose in that moment. We were a team. We raised the litter together. They thrived.
Experiences like this between dams and puppies; between breeders and their dogs, are important, and rarely discussed. Mothering is important.
Readers will rightly find me overly sentimental. Mothering skills are hardly the most important thing about a dog. Loving a dog is not a reason to breed it. To be a good breeder one must look beyond the attachment one has to the animals, beyond one’s personal feelings. We must objectively evaluate a dogs qualities, and only breed the ones most likely to move us toward our goals.
Phil Sponenberg, who was a professor of pathology and genetics in the Department of Biomedical Sciences & Pathobiology in the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech and and an expert on conservation breeding wrote:
“A basic and guiding philosophy is the single most critical component of any breeder’s program. A breeder’s first task is the development of a specific purpose in breeding animals. This may seem obvious, but it is very often overlooked, with the results that breeding is done with little progress toward any goal. Perhaps even worse than an aimless approach is a breeding program that chases after the fads dictated by the show ring or by other people. …”
My purpose is to create dogs who will be the steady presence in the lives of their humans that Lucy was for me. Dogs who don’t burden their humans with behavioral issues. Dogs who can handle anything. That is my north star.
If cancer becomes a trend in my dogs, I will make more changes. For now, I will embrace uncertainty. I will persevere, with radical transparency, confessing all of the imperfections of my dogs, and supporting other breeders to do the same.
Ruby was one of the first dogs registered in the Companion Dog Registry. My mission is to help this registry change the future, to create a world where pet puppy seekers can research the background of breeding dogs and make informed choices. Her entry in the registry has been updated to reflect her fate. Date of Death: 8/17/24. Cause of Death: “Oral Malignancy”.
She was a beautiful brave girl who never complained once.
Onward.
References
D. Phillip Sponenberg and Carolyn Christman. 1995. A Conservation Breeding Handbook. Pittsboro, NC: The Livestock Conservancy.
Cancer risks in dogs: A data analysis of risk by breed, size, and age; https://www.petinsurance.com/veterinarians/research/
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