When our boy, Beck, died suddenly in June of 2015, I wanted a new puppy much more immediately than I ever thought I would. He'd been my first baby and our loyal companion for eleven years. You can't replace that. But, we were grieving the loss of Kate and Beck's sudden death several months later was more than I could bear. So we bought our Tessie and, aside from eating walls when she was a puppy and the fact that she will still "Happy Potty" on the floor, she's been fantastic. She's needy and hairy and obnoxious like all golden retrievers but she behaves, she is much less neurotic than her predecessor, and she's a complete sweetheart.
Almost as soon as we brought home a female dog, my boys started asking me if we could breed her.
NO.
I did not want to deal with heat cycles and the breeding process and PUPPIES for eight weeks until they go to good homes. They persisted. They told me all the reasons we should do it. They dragged their dad on board until I was the only level headed human in the house. They wore me down and I decided that we wouldn't spay her before her first heat. I wasn't convinced but I wasn't unconvinced, either.
To make a long, two and a half year, story short, we did decide to breed our retriever. It wasn't a decision we came to lightly and we were very critical of Tessie's temperament and her health. We came to this decision based on many factors. Our older boys are the perfect age to get an upfront science lesson as well as take on some of the responsibility of puppy rearing. We believe so strongly in this breed of dog. We have never regretted having our golden retrievers. They have both been spectacular with our children and that is the single most important thing to us. If we can breed our dog and provide a great family pup to people, we're happy to do it. Once.
I have not talked publicly about this process because we have many friends who believe strongly in only getting a dog from a shelter. While we absolutely support people who choose shelter dogs, we truly don't believe it is the only way any more than we believe that adopting children is the only way to build a family. I've blogged about this before. Still, I didn't want to open up a giant can of worms with my friends. This is why I haven't blogged about it until now and why I haven't posted any pictures on Facebook. I finally decided that I would like to chronicle this process and my blog is the best place I know to do that. Additionally, unless I link directly to Facebook, almost no one reads my blog anymore. So, if you're here reading about our puppies, thank you for being one of the faithful.
After Tessie, who is AKC registered, turned two, we paid a hefty sum of money to have her hips and elbows OFA certified. Goldens are notorious for having joint issues and we absolutely did not want to breed her if she might pass down bad joints. It was a financial risk we were willing to take. Her hips came back as excellent and her elbows as good!Tessie typically went about eight months between heat cycles and so we anticipated breeding her in early December. We found a stud dog in our local classifieds and I contacted his owner so we'd all be ready.
And then Tessie surprised us and didn't go into heat until mid January.
At what we thought was the appropriate time, Timber's owner brought him over to play. He was a perfect gentleman and they literally only played. It was a great first date and it was clear that Tessie wasn't ready. He came again. Again, they did nothing but play. We waited a couple days. On January 31, I met Timber's owner halfway between our homes. Timber hopped into my van and we took off for our house. This time, it didn't take long for Tim and Tess to get to the business of puppy making.
Timber
He stayed and played for the entire day. Timber never really left her side. That night, we put Tessie in her kennel. Timber slept right outside her kennel and the next morning I let them out. We were all getting ready for the day. Matthew was eating breakfast. "Matt," I said, "Yell up to me if they get stuck together." We'd already explained the strange art of dog mating to our older boys.
Not two seconds later he screamed, "They're stuck together."
Two successful ties. Now all we had to do was wait to see if puppies were on their way.
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