I knelt behind a distraught dog at 4 o’clock in the morning with my gloved hand inside of her trying desperately to get hold of a puppy that had been stuck for over half an hour and I was sure was now dead. Birthing fluid covered my clothes and clung to my beard as I worked to save mom and the rest of the litter. My breeding mentor, who had been wonderful enough to accept my middle-of-the-night phone call, spoke up over the speaker-phone: “Remember this whenever someone asks you for a discount.”

Well bred Working Line German Shepherds are expensive and those of us who do it right are unapologetic about charging for our work. People have an intuition that breeding dogs is a lot of work, and there are plenty of articles out there breaking down the various costs, but I’m going to quickly walk you through our entire process, from sourcing breeding stock to sending a litter home. There is stress, there is drama, there is cost, and there is gratification. One thing there is not is a discount.

Bitches

A breeding kennel doesn’t exist without females, and kennels hold on to their prized females above all else, making good ones hard to find. Adding to the difficulty of sourcing a breeding quality female GSD is the fact that the best kennels are in Europe which means that North American breeders need to develop relationships with European breeders and brokers, and need to trust them enough to wire them money and hope to get a dog in return. Depending on the age, quality and training of the female this can cost between $5000 and $20,000+ with shipping. In order to get the dog, the breeder then needs to hire a customs broker to clear the dog at the airport. All this without knowing whether the animal you’re getting is even going to possess the qualities you were told it would.

Studs

Now we have a female, but that’s only half the equation. Very simply put, in order to produce the best dogs, you must breed the best dogs to one another (yes breeding nerds, there is of course far more to it than that). The most effective way to achieve this is to own the best females you can acquire, and breed them to the best males on earth. Sometimes those males are owned by the kennel itself, but most of the time they are not. The breeder must develop relationships with the owners of these males, and in a best-case scenario if the male is close enough, pay a stud fee to breed the dogs to one another live. This usually involves hours of driving in each direction and sometimes a hotel stay. If the male is not within easy mating distance the breeder must pay the owner a collection fee, as well as the owner’s vet fees for semen collection, must rent a shipping container, and pay to have the fresh or frozen semen couriered to their location. The breeder then needs to source a local vet with a reproductive specialty and the resources to store frozen semen, and pay a monthly storage fee.

Maintenance

At this point we’ve sourced our breeding stock but the magic doesn't happen right away. While we wait for our females to come into season they need to eat the best food to help with fertility, get regular medical care, genetic testing and hip and elbow x-rays. But health isn’t the only thing. We also need to prove the female’s ability to work; that she has the nerve and temperament that we are searching for. Unless we’ve paid the big bucks for a female who has already obtained a title and proven her working ability (and watched a ton of videos since a title in itself can often be meaningless), we need to do that training ourselves. Obtaining a working title involves years of consistent daily training, requires breeders to find and drive - often hours - to a decoy or club to train their dog in bite work, and requires the breeder to acquire all the skills necessary to allow their dog to achieve and express its genetic potential on the field. Puppies happen once a year; care and maintenance of our females happens every day.

Start the Clock

The clock starts when we see the first drop of blood. About a week into the heat cycle the daily progesterone blood tests begin. In order to more easily get a kennel licence most breeding kennels are in rural locations which means that a trip to the vet and back can often take half a day or more. Blood is drawn every day or two until the results indicate the female is ready to be inseminated and she is then taken to the reproductive vet for the insemination procedure.

Pregnancy and Delivery

A dog’s gestation period is roughly 63 days, give or take a few. The first 60 days pass in a flash, and the final three seem to last for years. We spend those days taking the mother’s temperature at regular intervals to try to predict the onset of labour, over-analyzing her actions, wondering if tonight might be the night. After caring for mom throughout her pregnancy, providing a high quality diet and regular medical care, active labour begins and it’s game time.

It’s rare that mom is so kind as to have her litter at a reasonable hour of the day. 10am, after a coffee and some breakfast would be ideal but like many animals dogs will often give birth at night, and that’s most often when breeders are called into action.

The stress and emotion of delivery is hard to describe. The puppies that are being born will go on to define your kennel. The line between life and death seems thinner than ever. The life of the dog you’ve put years of love and effort into is inherently at risk. It’s the dead of night, and you’re alone.

In that moment the weight of the world rests on the breeder’s shoulders. For the most part, a trip to the vet is out of the question. Not only do distance and time of day often make it impossible, but taking hours old puppies to a vet’s office risks exposing the entire litter and the rest of your kennel to potentially deadly pathogens. On whelping day, the lives of the mother and puppies are in the breeder’s hands, often literally. When a puppy gets stuck - and eventually a puppy will get stuck - it is on the breeder to pull it out since failure to do so will kill the mother and the whole litter. When a puppy is dying it is on the breeder to make the decision of whether to support the puppy or allow nature to take its course. Every decision is life and death.

Eventually, after 4 to 24 hours or more, whelping will be over and everyone will be able to get a bit of rest.

Puppy Rearing

The first few days are spent making sure that all the new arrivals are eating well and gaining weight. Mom does most of the work with the puppies and the breeder’s focus is mainly on her recovery. At this point she is eating 6-8lbs of food per day (we feed only raw) to provide her enough energy to produce milk for her litter. The breeder’s life for the first couple of weeks is as easy as it will get until the last puppy goes home but once the puppies are weaned onto solid food and mom decides she no longer wants to keep cleaning up after them, the breeder’s life gets… shitty. No animal on earth can produce and distribute poo more widely or more quickly than a puppy. On top of early neurological stimulation, sound and water desensitization, regular bathing and feeding 3-4 times/day, breeders need to work out the logistics of dealing with the waste produced by a whole litter of puppies. Failure to do so results in even more regular bathing. No matter what you do, your day will revolve around poo.

Sending Puppies Home

After yet another trip to the vet for shots and microchips the pups are ready to go home. People often ask if it’s hard to let a litter go. It’s not. Home day is the culmination of years’ worth of work and is a day of celebration. By this time we have screened buyers, are confident that the puppies will live good lives, and are excited to see the dogs we have produced go out into the world and live up to the genetic potential we have tried to instil in them. We’re also excited for sleep.

“Remember this whenever someone asks you for a discount”

Kneeling there in the whelping box, sweat dripping down my face, something finally shifted and the back legs of the stuck puppy I had been trying to pull out were in my hands. Gently but firmly I eased it over the pelvis and out the birth canal. As it came out I cleared the mucus from its mouth and started rubbing it vigorously with a clean cloth, putting in the motions for what I was sure would be a stillborn pup. Then it screamed. Somehow, it was alive and the feeling was indescribable. I do remember that moment - and every moment leading up to it - when someone asks us for a discount. Every single time.