S/HE’S HERE!
SEVEN brand-new corgi puppies, born last night of their mom, Saydee. Think of that: seven!
That means for sure Cassie and I will get some dibs on this litter. We were number 8 in the list of prospective corgi servants, and five pups were born in the group that came into being last month.
Another of the breeder Lindsay‘s excellent dams came into heat a week or two ago, so they bred her, too, to their radically expensive, meticulously tested, outrageously genetically perfect sire. So if for any reason I imagine that the Ideal Companion for the Queen of the Universe is not in this litter, we should be at the head of the list for the next.
This litter has four males and three females. I had been thinking that I’d like a King Consort for Her Exalted Highness, since tradition holds that it’s best to bring a male dog into the house when you have a female, males being more submissive and so less likely to get obstreperous with the resident owner. However, some corgis can get pretty hefty. At 24 – 25 pounds, Cassie actually is a fairly petite corgi — and the males do get significantly bigger. In my old age, the whole idea of getting a smaller breed than the beloved German shepherd is so that I can lift the critter. The back pain sure isn’t gonna go away at this stage, and so it probably would be wise to try to keep the new royalty’s size on the smaller side. So…maybe we really want a Duchess to take her place as lady in waiting and vice-regent to the Queen of the Universe and Empress of all Time, Space, and Eternity.
Heh. Don’t you love that Saydee? She looks like a little cowgirl to me, kinda spunky and outdoorsy. We may have to call the pup Dale Evans. 😀
And of course, that will require us to have a Ram 1500 SLT. Right? With the six-banger and a nice gold-plated gun rack…
Yikes! I clicked on the link to the site, and to the puppies page. I had no idea they lopped off the puppies’ tails!
In the United States, they do. Recently, the UK banned docking puppy tails. The result was a crash in sales of corgis — no one wants a Pembroke with a tail. The reaction has been so extreme that there’s actually been some talk of ending the breeding of Pembroke Welsh corgis in England. Of all things.
Many Pembrokes are born tailless — the Cardigan has a tail, but the breed standard for the Pembroke is un-betailed. Personally, I’d take the tail myself…as I would resist having a doberman’s ears docked (also illegal in the UK). But one goes along to get along, I guess.
It is cruel, IMHO. The procedure is done long before the puppies are offered to their future humans, and so one has no opportunity to say “please don’t chop off my dog’s tail.”
MAN ….seven pups…. at $600 (?) a piece…we’re looking at a picture of $4200….And they just had another litter of 5….and there is a waiting list for the privledge….Can you say promising growing business?…LOL…
Make that one thousand dollah…for pet quality.
Like any of those enterprises we so idealize, breeding dogs is not something that would lead you to quit the day job. You don’t even want to KNOW what this lady paid for a sire that does not carry any of the dire genetic ailments to which purebred dogs are prone. Add to that the OFA certification, the certification that the dog is free of eye disease, the certification that the dog is free of inherited cardiac disease, the training, the athletic competitions, the registration, the cost of the show-dog circuit, plus a slew of veterinary bills…plus…plus…plus… Ye gods.
It is a very expensive endeavor, if you’re doing it right.
So we’re looking at $7K…I don’t know….seems to me …good work if you can get it! Sure there is overhead…but MAN…..
Several decades back a family I babysat for decided to buy a high-quality golden Lab as a money-making sideline. They paid a pretty penny for the privilege.
The dog went into heat at a very young age so they kept a careful eye on her…or so they thought. She got out, the in-laws’ black Lab made her acquaintance and yikes! Pregnant.
That’s OK, they figured: In an area full of duck, quail and pheasant hunting they’d have no trouble selling the multi-Lab offspring. Unfortunately the dog crawled under a pile of lumber (possibly because she was in labor) and it collapsed on her. When she was found, who knows how many hours later, she was in bad shape.
The vet was able to save her, but had to do a hysterectomy. So they had a nice big medical bill plus the large initial outlay for her purchase. Fortunately she turned into a nice family pet. An expensive family pet.
@ Donna: Ha ha! Another thousand-dollar-a-day dog!
Glad the pooch survived. Sorry about the heartbreaking misadventures, though.
@ jestjack– I’ve never known anyone who’s made much money on breeding either dogs or cats. There must be some folks who do…but they’ve surely not crossed my path.
The lady who bred M’hijito’s dog Charley did two breedings of her extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily pricey female English goldens. From one breeding, she expected to clean up: she ordered semen shipped in from Scandinavia, where the fanciest of the beasts are being cultivated. The cost was several thousand dollars.
Two pups were born. They both sickened with some kind of dysentery, which spread to the litter soon spawned by the other dam. One of the ultra-expensive offspring died. The other was too sick to be sold.
So all that money went down the drain.
Several pups in the other litter also got sick, but they recovered — after expensive veterinary care.
Charley had undescended testicles. The breeder fibbed to my son in assuring him that the dog’s testicles would descend by the time he was six months old. Fortunately, my son was smart enough to extract a promise to cover the surgery on the dog, should no balls appear.
Which, of course, they did not. Appear, that is.
She thought it would be no problem.
Undescended testicles usually become cancerous in dogs. If you want to give the dog a shot at a normal life span, you have to pay for surgery to remove the lost balls. By the time the dog is old enough for this surgery, the testes will have migrated around the body — anywhere in the abdominal cavity and sometimes even down into the thigh muscles.
As you can imagine, veterinary surgery on a cryptorchid dog is difficult and expensive. Very expensive.
By the time the breeder had paid for the Scandinavian semen that produced exactly zero salable pups and the veterinary bills to save the other pups and then the surgery on Charley, you may be sure she was showing a negative balance. My son paid $1200 for Charley — the “pet” price..
Well…didn’t this blog take an ….”interesting” turn…could have went the rest of my life without hearing the term “undescended testicles”…LOL…it just sounds painful…I get the risk…in this neck of the woods…”hip displacure(sp)” is a big problem in larger breeds and certifications from a vet are the norm. I have known a couple successful breeders who made a fair amount of money raising dogs. The first raised, bred and showed St. Bernards…our family purchased one of “Eric the Great’s” babies…he was beautiful as was the baby we took home. Owning these dogs is a treat….no dog enjoys the now as much as a Saint. The second was a successful breeder of Shelties (minature collies). This gal was highly regarded…had a waiting list…folks came from all over the Country and she got a pretty penny for her dogs. But it is a business and has risk….
St. Bernard! Wow…that is one large specimen of a poochie! What a hoot…doesn’t he eat you out of house and home?
On the other hand, if he could be trained to carry that keg of rum into the TV room, that would be nice. 😉
Yeah, hip dysplasia is very common now in most big breeds, and even in smaller dogs — corgis can get hip, knee, and shoulder dysplasia. Actually, Anna the GerShep had mild hip dysplasia, but it didn’t bother her until she reached old age…at which time she had so much arthritis in general she probably couldn’t tell the difference between the various aching joints.
LOL! One of my neighbors has a sheltie. They used to be outside almost every time we walked by their house — Cassie would play with their little dog. But I haven’t seen those folks in months. Don’t know what happened to them. The young folks who moved in next to them bought a German shepherd that they allow to run loose. It came after me and Cassie when we were down at that end of the block a month or two ago, so I’ve stopped walking in that direction.
Man! I’d argue that as bidnesses go, dog breeding has a LOT of risk. In the hip dysplasia department, for example, there’s a kind of standard contract for big dogs positing that if your dog develops dysplasia, the breeder will take the dog back and replace it, free of charge, with a new pup. I didn’t do that with Anna because the guy made it clear he was going to put her down. But…in theory, he should NOT have bred his female again. I’m sure that despite his protestations to the contrary, Anna was not the first pup out of that dam to inherit dysplasia.
Same with the cryptorchidism. As it develops, it is considered unethical to breed either a male or a female again once a single breeding has produced a cryptorchid pup. In theory, Charley should have flat-out brought an end to the breeder’s business. And she had a ton of money invested in those dogs! You can be sure, though, that she’s still cranking out puppies, each one of which carries the gene to pass cryptorchidism to its male pups.
I happen to belong to a golden retriever forum that has a lot of breeders in it. This lady lied to my son about the likely progress of the condition. I was soooo mad that I seriously considered reporting her operation to the breeder’s forum and to the AKC. The only reason I didn’t was that she covered the very pricey cost of the extensive surgery that had to be done to remove the precancerous gonads. But if she had anything even faintly resembling ethics, the cost to her would have been much higher: voluntarily ceasing operations, at least with those two dogs.
Awww! I love corgis – have one myself. Congratulations.
Ahhhh! Another PF blogger with impeccable taste!
“males being more submissive and so less likely to get obstreperous with the resident owner.”
WOW. Maybe it is that the Male doesn’t want to hear her yapping at him. As always, joking (a bit) lol!
Ha ha! Now there’s a reasonable explanation! 😉