Third Time's A Charm?

I'm giving this another go; I so want it to work. Chilled semen; I love the concept. No shipping, no borders to cross, no long distance driving. For this breeding, the stud dog is in Ohio, and there are no flights into Columbus from Ottawa. I would have had to drive to Syracuse to ship; and there were no direct flights. If I had shipped her, I'd have to have driven back down the following week to pick her up. I have done that plenty of times in the past and it isn't my favorite thing to do. Instead, I just waited at home for the delivery.

The first two times we tried chilled semen breeding there were circumstances why it didn't work. The first time was around Christmas, and the plan was to ship the bitch to the stud dog. Weather got in the way and then the Christmas shipping embargo. While flight plans kept getting pushed back, and then seemed impossible, a plan was made to ship the semen instead. By the time that happened, the bitch was out of heat. So understandably, the breeding didn't work. The second time, I was out of town on the key day. Someone (not telling who) was left to do it by himself without instructions, and he's never done a breeding before. Unfortunately, most of the sample ended on the floor. Needless to say, that breeding never took...

So we did progesterone tests to time the breeding. Since the progesterone test results aren't available until the following day, I had to make an executive decision on Monday. I knew she was getting close, so I called the breeder and asked her to ship the semen ASAP. So the first package was sent UPS on Monday, supposed to arrive on Tuesday. A call from my Vet Tuesday said she had ovulated Monday and he felt the best day to breed her would be Wednesday.

I waited all day Tuesday for the UPS truck. Online tracking said it was en route. By 5 pm it hadn't arrived and phone calls to the company said that there was an error...that Carp was not next day service. So instead of calling me to come and pick it up, it had sat at the station. So it finally arrived Wednesday afternoon around 2:30 pm, with an $11 brokerage fee. Not too happy. I checked to see if the sample was viable and there was some life, so I did a breeding around 3pm yesterday afternoon.

After I got the progesterone results on Tuesday I had called the breeder and asked for another sample to be sent for Wednesday, so that shipment was sent FedEx. I had every faith it would arrive Wednesday. In fact, I thought it would probably arrive before the UPS delivery. Well by 5 pm yesterday, they hadn't delivered it; this is a first for me with FedEx. A phone call said it had cleared customs too late for the truck, but I could come down and pick it up at the airport. So that is what I did...and did the second breeding at 8 pm.

My lesson from this breeding is that I would have the package shipped to the station and then pick it up. It saves waiting all afternoon and saves having the package being kept needlessly overnight.

The cool pack was still very cool...even after a 24 hour delay.

Everything for the breeding is provided in the kit.

Fingers crossed this works. We'll let you know when we know...