THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE YOU BREED YOUR ROTTWEILER

By DRCMA Member Audrey Bye

I frequently get asked the question, "How old should my dog be before I breed him/her?"

Rottweilers, like most large breed dogs, take longer to mature physically than smaller breeds. Two years of age is the youngest that any rottweiler should be bred, and the health clearances for genetic diseases that are common in in the breed must be performed prior to any breeding taking place.

For rottweilers, that mean clearing both sire and dam for:

• Canine hip and elbow dysplasia through OFA and/or PennHIP
• Genetic heart defects (sub-aortic stenosis, or SAS) by a canine cardiologist and submitting results to OFA
• Entropian and ectropian, genetic eye defects by a canine opthamologist, and submitting results to OFA
• thyroid disease, and submitting results to OFA

The costs for these tests will cost you about $400-$500 to perform, but to not have clear results of these commonly occurring genetic problems prior to breeding is irresponsible, both to your dogs, but to the future owners of your puppies.

Before you decide to breed your rottweiler, I have to ask why you are considering do so? Since your dog is a puppy, at this point you don't know how he/she will mature. There are many things to consider before breeding your dog, and the fact that he/she is a purebred is not in and of itself a good reason to want to breed him/her. There are many purebred rottweilers that are not good examples of the breed, and should not contribute to the gene pool.

Since your dog is just a puppy, you do not know what kind of temperament he/she will have when your dog matures (temperament is at least 50% genetic), what kind of physical structure will he/she have (most dogs don't finish growing until they are 2 years old, or older), or if he/she will be healthy enough to breed (all purebreds have propensity to specific genetic disease that should be cleared in breeding pairs prior to any breeding).

There is a great deal of risk in breeding any dog, including having your dog and the entire litter die at any point during the process. I'm sure you love your puppy, and as time passes, you will grow to love him/her even more. The risk of losing your dog because you decide to breed her is something that you have to carefully consider, because it does happen.

There is also a great deal of financial risk involved in breeding a litter. Whelping a litter can end up costing you thousands of dollars in expenses if you run into the slightest problem with your girl or the puppies. Approximately 25% of births encounter problems that do not follow the text books, and if you are inexperienced, you absolutely must have a vet on call, or a 24 hour emergency vet available when your girl goes into whelp. That is expensive.

Dogs never whelp during office hours, by the way. If a pup gets stuck in the birth canal or is presented breech, what are you going to do? If you can't get them to a vet immediately, all the pups and the dam are at risk of dying. What if she doesn't produce milk, or she dies? Are you prepared to bottle feed a litter of pups every hour or two around the clock, until they are 4 weeks of age? Are you prepared to take off of work to do this if it is necessary? Fading puppies, coccidia or giardia can cost hundreds of dollars if your vet has to treat an entire litter. Rottweiler puppies are particularly susceptible to parvo, which can live in the soil for years, and be transmitted to puppies by your hands, shoes, or even their dam.

Even if you are lucky and everything goes smoothly, do you have money set aside to pay your vet for docking tails, removing dew claws, vaccinations and worming of puppies, prenatal and postnatal care of your dog, which will in the best case scenario, cost you at least $1,000 out of pocket before you sell one pup.

Further, we live in a sue happy society where everyone looks for someone to blame when something goes wrong, and producing dogs with health problems, genetic problems, or even temperament problems, can land you in court years down the line if something goes wrong with a puppy that you have bred. The attorney of the parent who's child is bitten, seriously injured or killed looks for money wherever they can find it. If you didn't properly socialize the pups, or released them to their homes before 8 weeks of age, then you expose yourself to legal liability. If you have not done your due diligence as a breeder to ensure that any pups you breed are properly cleared for genetic health or temperament problems, you expose yourself to a potential lawsuit.

If your motivation is financial, many people think they will make a pile of money on breeding purebred dogs. Trust me, this is a myth. Most breeders are bleeding money by the time the last pup is sold. Yes, there are large scale puppy mills that live off of breeding dogs, but for the person wanting to breed their pet, you will be very lucky to break even. Without investing in your dogs by showing them to championships, performing necessary health clearances, and having this same background in every dog in the last three to five generations of your dog's pedigree, your prospects for selling your puppies is limited to other pet owners. Very few pet owners will pay more than a couple of hundred dollars for a backyard bred rottweiler puppy, and you will end up with more invested in your litters than you will be able to recoup.

Whelping and raising a litter is a lot of work. Prepare to take at least a week, if not two, off of work when the litter is born. Plan for several sleepness nights prior to whelping and for a week or so afterwards. Be prepared to wash load after load of laundry and constantly clean up poop and urine after the puppies.

If you are not prepared for any of these scenarios, then please reconsider breeding your dog. I am not saying this to scare you out of wanting to breed your dog, but these are simple facts of life that few people think about before they breed. When these are not carefully considered, it is the dogs that end up with the stinky end of the stick.

There are millions of homeless purebred dogs bred by well intentioned, but uninformed pet owners that simply wanted to breed their pet. Rottweiler rescues can only take in a small percentage of these dogs, and the rest get euthanized because there are not enough homes to go around.

Millions of dogs are killed each year in this country because there are not enough people who can or will provide good homes to the dogs they buy from people just like yourself. The sad reality is that some of the dogs you breed will eventually make their way into a shelter because people won't be responsible owners that make a lifetime committment to their dogs. That, unfortunately, is a cold, hard reality. Do you really want to contribute to that?