Many, many years ago, scientists tried to freeze dogs’ semen. It was so long ago that it is even hard to imagine that even at that time as early as 16th century people were thinking about something that has been perfected today. During the last century the brightest veterinarian minds of the planet had been working on techniques of not only collecting and preserving sperm of dogs but also of possible ways of using it in the most effective way.
Around 20 years ago we at Trade Kennels came across artificial insemination. At that time it was only a small stud place with a couple of stud dogs and a dozen of broods. We saw how effective it was and how much less stress it was for the females when it came to the time of mating. Before you would try to count the days, to nearly guess the time of mating, then if you have the dog arond the yard, try mating then every day, basically only wasting your time, wearing out the dogs and hoping to get pups. No one says it did not work! It worked in around 70 cases out of 100 if the dog did not have fertility problems. The technology available at the moment is absolutely amazing and it has progressed enormously from the time Trade Kennels got involved into stud keeping.
First of all, the testing is based now on proper count of progesterone hormone that causes ovalution. It can easily happen that she does not ovulate at all or she does not ovulate this time, it is not her proper cycle and there is no need to mate, probably saving you travelling time and expenses if you do not have the dog, the semen if it is an import or just your own time, you devote to two animals while they are trying to mate. The testing is crucial. At present there is only one equipment, calibrated, tested and recommended for testing progesterone in female dogs, i.e. Immulite. Originated from the Californian labs in the middle of he 20th century, it steadily conquered the medical and veterinarian world by its reliability and accurate counts. At the very end of the century a number of tests proved that Immulite could be used to test progesterone of canine species. Although there are other machines that claim to be able to do the same, this equipment is so far the best. Inseminators have used it for the last four years and tested over 15,000 bitches and not a single time we could say that the machine let us down with the measurements. We rely on it for the matings with the imported semen for €6,500 per vial!!!
Every practice has worked out its own ranges and routine operations for matings. At Trade Kennels we start mating at around 12 ng/ml but we achieved really good conception rates with implants at as high as 25ng/ml. There is no one definite route how to do it and when to do it. Every dog is different: for one bitch only two blood tests are needed, while the other one is not ovulating for two weeks but then ready for the mating straight away - counting the days means absolutely nothing!!! Why to poke into the dark, if there is technology to do it right?
More about the history of Artificial Insemination
Archeological evidence suggests that the dog was the first species to be domesticated by man. With 78 chromosomes, the wolf subspecies are considered the ancestors of the dog in all its breeds, since they have this same number of chromosomes. A canine mandible dating from about 10,000 BC has been discovered in Western Iran, and it seems likely that some kind of link between the human and the dog was established 12,000 years ago, if not earlier.
This skull, of a Saluki, found in northern Mesopotamia, dates to 3500 BC. The Saluki is a sighthound, known for running down game by sight rather than smell. The sighthound group, which included greyhounds, afghan hounds, Russian wolfhounds and deerhounds was bred for speed, stamina, keen eyesight, and powerful jaws. This stone relief from the British Museum, dating from about 645 BC, shows the Assyrian king, Assurbanipal, hunting wild onagers on horseback with bow and arrow and dogs.
The oldest known veterinary publication, the Kahun papyrus of ancient Egypt, dates from 1900 BC, and describes in sacred hieroglyphic script some eye diseases of dogs, fish and birds.
Dog sperm played a key role both in the discovery of spermatozoa, and in the discovery of the role of sperm in fertilization. The Dutch habetdasher and microscopist, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, published hand drawings of canine spermatozoa in Paris in 1679, even though their role in fertilization was unknown until the mid-1800's; in the seventeenth century they were viewed as parasites, or structures that stirred the semen or stirred the sexual desire of the male.
Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799) a famous eighteenth-century Italian physiologist, held professorships at Modena and Pavia in logic, metaphysics, and Greek. Under the influence of his kinswoman, Laura Bassi, a professor of mathematics, he became interested in science and devoted his leisure time to scientific research. As well as being a scientist and a philosopher, Spallanzani was an ordained priest.
Although Arabs may have used artificial insemination (AI) in the horse as early as the fourteenth century, Spallanzani is credited as the first scientist of modern times to achieve pregnancy by artificial insemination, using the dog as a model.
In 1780 he used freshly collected canine semen siphoned from a naturally bred bitch to inseminate another bitch in heat. Three puppies were born sixty two days later, the first recorded successful AI in any species in modern times.
Dog spermatozoa are notable for other reasons than their use for the first recorded artificial insemination. Unlike the sperm of most mammalian species, which survive in the female reproductive tract and are capable of fertilization for 24 to 48 hours,
In the 1950's Harrop, Bendorf and Chung shipped dog semen extended with heat treated pasteurized milk from London to New York, California to Hawaii, and London to New Zealand, witn several conceptions from multiple attempts.
Use of frozen semen in the dog lagged, substantially, behind this technology in other species, especially development of the bovine AI business in the 1940's and 1950's.
Conception with frozen semen in the dog was reported in small studies the 1960's and 1970's, with, in general, poor conception rate and need for large insemination volumes in successful conceptions.
In the early 1980's, Fran Smith, who is here today, began a series of experiments in the laboratory at the University of Minnesota to investigate semen freezing techniques and performance of frozen semen in the dog.
Although investigators around the world were devoting tremendous energy to the study of frozen semen in dogs in the 1970's and 1980's, discoveries of far greater significance to reproductive success in this species were beginning to be reported at the same time.
The first of these was the discovery of the hormone assay technique of radioimmunoassay (RIA), for which Rosalyn Yalow received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1977. This technique grew out of the discovery of antibodies to hormones in the blood of human patients and the decision to use these antibodies in a competitive protein binding assay to measure minute quantities of substances in biological fluids.
This discovery was followed by the establishment of endocrine laboratories, including veterinary laboratories, all over the world. Veterinary colleges, such as those at Colorado State, Cornell, Minnesota and a productive group at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences began to use RIA to understand animal reproduction.