Labrador Puppies - Breeding and raising

Following on from my last hub ( Bringing up and Training a Labrador Retriever ) about our experiences raising our black Labrador retriever, Rowan, I left off after her training. We were so pleased with her temperament that we wanted to keep the bloodline going and decided to breed from her.

This is that story - it's worked out well, but there were tears along the way. The sadness being that we'd really left it too late as Rowan was nearly six and a half years old by the time that circumstances allowed.

It's important to know the dog's pedigree back as many generations as possible - in Britain, the organisation that registers all dog's pedigrees is the Kennel Club. A reputable breeder should be able to show you their dog's pedigree and in the case of a labrador, you should also ask to see what's called a hip-score and also an eye-score. This ensures that congenital problems such as hip dysplasia and eye problems such as cataracts and retinal atrophy won't be a problem.

We knew Rowan was fine and that her pedigree had quite a few "field-trial champions" in it so we were really keen to find a suitable mate. This we managed to do when we found "Dave" (not his pedigree name!). Dave was a good looking, gun-trained yellow (or more accurately fox) labrador. His pedigree was impeccable, with many field-trial champions and from a well known "stable" in North Yorkshire. Not only that, but it was immediately obvious he was a friendly and intelligent dog - what dog could resist!

On Dave's owner's recommendation, we took Rowan to meet him before she was on heat. They seemed to get on well, but Rowan made it obvious that she wasn't "ready" when Dave tried to mate! We then waited until Rowan was about two-weeks after coming into season and went back. They played together and soon "one thing led to another", as they say - the mating was a success and they remained coupled for about 10 - 15 minutes, which we knew was a very important part of the mating process. Again, on the breeder's recommendation we took Rowan back two days later for a repeat performance. All looked good.

As I'd mentioned, we had been warned by our vet that leaving breeding from Rowan until she was 6 could cause problems such as a litter of only a few puppies. At term, the individual puppies would be larger making the birthing process more dangerous for mother and pup.

About four weeks after mating, we took Rowan in for an ultra-sound scan. It was very difficult to see anything and we made another appointment two week's later to try again. This time, the vet thought she could see some embryos, but not many. Eventually, and with a second vet's opinion, they decided 3, possibly 4 pups. It had worked, but the warnings were there.

We went home and, as it said in the book pregnant bitches like enclosed spaces, I built a nice den for Rowan by draught-proofing the cupboard under the stairs - this was never used at any stage!

Rowan began to make "nests" by scratching up her bedding and as the time grew near, she became more and more agitated. She was probably in labour for several hours with all of us having a sleepless night before finally she gave birth to a large black female puppy. To our alarm, no matter how much we rubbed and dried it & blew into her nose, she remained limp and still. We rang the vets and rushed round with Rowan and the lifeless pup. Despite the vet's best efforts, our dreams of continuing the line with a new, beautiful black lab bitch were dashed.

Rowan had other ideas though, and within a few minutes of arriving at the vets she had given birth with no fuss whatsoever to a quite large yellow male who was wriggling about straight away!

It may sound silly to some, but we named the little dead puppy and took her home. She's buried under a lilac tree by the pond. I'm glad we took her home - to have done anything less would have felt wrong. Sleep well, little Piper.

The sight of the little, new puppy was quite magical and once the vet had checked Rowan and pup over, we drove home more slowly - not realising how icy the road had actually been on our dash to the vets!

Once we got home, we made Rowan some scrambled eggs - she hadn't eaten for at least 2 days before and was ravenous. We needed to get her eating again to produce milk for Moray (pronounced "Murray"). After the feed, they quickly settled down into a deep sleep and all was peaceful - a long day and quite a mixture of emotions for us.

The next day it was obvious that not everything was OK with Rowan. She had started to pant and look uncomfortable. We rang the vets and they prescribed antibiotics, Rowan responded well to these and soon seemed better. She also took to mothering very well and was very attentive but at no time was she worried about us picking up and checking that her pup was well.

Rowan produced a good deal of milk and, being an only pup, Moray had no competition and grew at a really phenomenal rate. We weighed him regularly on the kitchen scales but this soon became impossible as we ran out of weights!

Moray's development was pretty much as the books had led us to expect. The exception being that he was still being allowed to suckle until about eleven weeks - if it'd been a bigger litter, the bitch would have stopped them long before then with their little, pointy teeth!

Puppy food was intruced to his diet starting from about 4-5 weeks, but not much as he was still suckling. Once Rowan finally weaned him off milk, the quantities of puppy-food were increased as per directions from the Pedigree Chum company who have a really informative set of leaflets that I'd recommend. Their Pedigree Chum Puppy Club is good fun to join - it's a Facebook for puppies, but it also sends emails to you at regular intervals relating to your puppy's development!

Toilet training Moray went pretty well, we kept putting down plenty of fresh newspapers for the first few weeks (the pages from old telephone directories are quite absorbent too). After a time, we moved the newspapers out onto the hallway's tiled floor and he got the idea. Also, because we're more isolated and there's less risk of meeting any strange dogs, I was able to take him outside and introduced him to the great outdoors at about 4 or 5 weeks, certainly before vaccinations. If you live in a town or city, please make sure you have your puppy vaccinated and listen to your vet's advice as it takes about 3 weeks after vaccination before they are immune.

Like his mum, Moray was introduced to travelling by car from a very early age which he fortunately took to very easily.

As Moray grew, it became obvious that he was going to be easy to train - even easier than Rowan had been. In fact, I think Rowan somehow showed him what to do, for example, if you said "Sit" then Rowan would sit and Moray, who was always watching very carefully, would sit too! We also learnt from having raised Rowan from a puppy and this time made sure Moray had plenty of "indestructible" chew-toys to exercise his teeth on and to save the TV remote!

That's about it for this stage of development, I think - I'll leave it with Moray at about 3 months old and still with a lot of growing up to do and fun to have. I hope you've enjoyed this story.