Breeding – Risks and Rewards

When his mother had no milk, this puppy needed bottle fed every 2 hours

As I write this, I can hear the occasional squeaks and yips of two litters of French Bulldog puppies. One litter is 8 days old, the other just 48 hours old. It’s hard to deny the cuteness of a Frenchie puppy – or that of any other breed. Those soft coats, those limpid eyes and that puppy breath! One glance at a litter of healthy puppies is enough to make any owner of a pure bred dog consider breeding their own. After all, it looks like so much fun, and you might even make a little bit of extra money. Before you rush into breeding French Bulldogs, there are some very specific things you need to consider.
Cost, for one -  Breeding, whelping and raising French Bulldogs is exorbitantly expensive, more so that you could probably imagine. The vast majority of French Bulldogs can neither breed, conceive or whelp naturally, and these costs can add up into the thousands in a very short period of time.

French Bulldog Litters – the Caviar of Dog Breeding (In Expenses Alone!)

Here’s an example work sheet of a litter we whelped several years ago – I have updated costs to accurate 2011 prices for my location in rural Ontario, Canada.

Breeders in larger urban areas should add 10 – 25% additional on to these prices, with breeders in large cities like NYC, Los Angeles and areas adding as much as 40% (I have heard of LA C sections going for as much as $6500). Unless otherwise indicated, all costs are in Canadian Dollars:

Three puppies were born in this (fortunately) problem free litter. Bearing in mind that we have left out the costs of advertising, health testing, showing, feeding and all other expenses associated with this bitch reaching a stage where she is suitable to be bred, we are still looking at net costs of $2496 per puppy produced, and with no guarantee that any of them will turn out to be show quality.

But not all litters are trouble free. Some end in stress for the breeder, the bitch and the puppies, and some end up much, much worse.

Puppies Always Come in the Middle of the Night

Honey was a lovely cream bitch with an amazing future. She finished her US Championship with numerous group placements, culminating with a Best of Opposite Win at a Regional Breed Specialty. In Canada, she finished her Championship in one weekend, with three group placements. Within one month of showing, she was the top French Bulldog Bitch in the country at the time.

When the time came for us to breed Honey, we carefully chose a gorgeous male with qualities that matched and enhanced hers. An ultrasound showed she was indeed pregnant, and we began the count down to her due date. At 6 am on a Sunday morning, approximately five days before the earliest date we had estimated for her, Honey went into labor. Our regular vet, a canine reproduction specialist, was not open, and the local emergency clinic was a two hour drive from our rural home. We called the closest Vet, and, to our relief, he was indeed already in and willing to do Honey’s section. We had no idea at the time that he was there at such an unusual hour because he was a livestock vet primarily, nor did he inform us of this.

Arrival at the clinic showed a distressing site — one elderly vet, one 15 yr old kennel girl to assist, and a placid Jersey cow tied up in the back room. We had no other choice, though, as Honey was clearly in distress. Over sedated and with no hands to help me, Honey’s entire litter six of apparently healthy and to term puppies were born dead. We were not able to revive a single one of them. The Vet barely helped at all, calmly stating that ‘some pups just don’t make it’. So casual was his attitude, in fact, that when my bitch began to seizure in the cold metal recovery crate where he had placed her, he told me that it was ‘normal for a dog to shake’. It took screaming on my part to make him walk over and confirm that she was indeed seizuring. Luckily, we saved Honey – very luckily, and very barely. Unluckily, she developed a medical condition shortly after this, and was never bred from again. The litter we lost was her only chance at reproduction.

When Things Go Wrong

This puppy passed away in his owners hands at 12 days old, from a congenital heart defect

Don’t think that Honey’s case is the exception, either. Remember that cute little litter of 48 hour old puppies I mentioned at the beginning of this article? Since their birth, two of them have been back to the Vet clinic due to problems — and one went to the emergency clinic just two hours after we’d brought him home.

One male developed a severe umbilical hernia requiring stitching, and one female suffered a mysterious injury to her elbow which rapidly abscessed. I’m now flushing her wound every 30 minutes,once with saline/peroxide solution, then a second time with liquid antibiotic solution, and finishing up by applying topical antibiotics. In addition, I must check the boy’s stitch to ensure there’s no oozing, apply topical antibiotics, and administer oral antibiotics every 12 hours. All this in addition to checking weights, ensuring they are nursing well, keeping the whelping box clean, checking on the bitch, carrying her up the stairs so she can go outside, and washing mound after mound of dirty blankets.

Examples like this are mild, compared to a friend who recently lost five of the six puppies born in her much anticipated, long planned for litter. One was put down at birth, due to congenital defects, but the others slipped away, one at a time, after  she had spent days caring for them. Sleepless nights, long days spent tube feeding and taking puppies back and forth to the vet’s office, and finally, necropsies on the puppies she lost, and still no answers as to why they died.

Even when our puppies reach the age where they are ready to leave for their new homes, they are not out of the woodwork. Another very reputable breeder recently lost her twelve week old litter of puppies to a virulent form of Mycoplasma, which had her puppies sick by noon and dead by midnight. Weeks of care and attention, only to lose puppies so tragically – an unbelievable horror.

There is no insurance to cover you when tragedies like this strike, and sooner or later, all breeders will suffer them in one form or another. Are you prepared, financially and emotionally, for the toll this can take?

Summary

The rule of thumb in dog breeding — perhaps the dog breeder’s credo — should go something like this:

If you think it can’t happen, it will.
If you KNOW it can’t happen, it will.
If it is absolutely impossible for it to happen, it will DEFINITELY happen eventually!

Mother nature works to ensure that the minute a dog breeder assumes that all is going well, something will go wrong. If you are prepared to make the choice to be a dog breeder, you need to be aware of the risks associated with, and the incredibly hard work and agonizing situations which it entails.

Dead bitches, dead puppies, dead litters, sleepless nights, devastating vet bills, and round the clock work are all the prices we must be prepared to pay for the rewards of snuggling those cute little faces which survive.

Until you have held in your hands a cold, dead puppy — one you’ve watched since birth, one you’ve waited for so eagerly — you cannot know what loss is. Until your bitch has died from complications of a breeding that you decided and planned, you cannot know what regret is. Serious breeders are aware of all of this, and reluctantly accepting of the possible outcomes which can happen.

Hope for the best, but plan for the worst - and if you can’t do that, then you really shouldn’t breed a litter.