After much deliberation and research, we still found ourselves scrambling to make breeding Lucy this summer a possibility. This is the first time we have used a dog that wasn’t 20 minutes down the road and it definitely complicated things!
I have been getting breeding advice from Rob Jones, an old timer in the OTSC breeding world. He’s been breeding these dogs for 15 years and has the kind of reputation that doesn’t even have to advertise his puppies. People go looking for him and his dogs.
I was grateful for his advice and he took the time to look over the studs that I was considering. Hamish produced such wonderful pups that I was after something very similar in both appearance and temperament.
For one, I stuck with the same lineage of dogs – coming off of the famed Silver Dollar Georgie Porgie line. He was Hamish’s great-grandfather. The dogs in these lines are just beautiful, in my opinion.
Being OTSC means a lot of variety in appearance. Remember, these are a land race breed, not purebred. Coming from their Scottish heritage, they are related to English Shepherds, Border Collies, Rough Collies and Australian Shepherds. I actually just got Lucy’s Embark panel back and she has a percentage of English, Rough and Aussie in her background.
These mixtures actually make the dogs much healthier. Rather than sticking to a strict AKC breed standard, we are more free to take dogs within these mixtures that meet the healthy standards we are looking for in our breeding programs. Lucy’s COI (Coefficient of inbreeding) is only 7%.
Let me tell you a sad story. I had a visit from a young man who worked at Heavenly Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe this summer. He is considering an OTSC for the ski patrol program and wanted to meet us. I asked him what kind of dogs they have been using and the answer was golden retriever (these dogs are used for avalanche rescue). Unfortunately, these dogs (specifically the ones in his area, not all GRs) are so inbred that they are suffering from some big health problems, dying at ages as young as 5 from cancer or being removed from patrol early for hip dysplasia. When it takes almost 4 years to get a dog certified as a rescue animal, those statistics are discouraging. Anyway, all that to say that variety is what we want and it is why there is a lot of it in OTSC appearance.
So back to Georgie Porgie. I’m partial to his offspring so I have been picking out tri-colors (I like the color combos I get with a tri and Lucy’s sable) from his lines. I was looking at dogs all over: NH, CO, MI, WI, KY, WV, and IN. My top choice, and Rob’s, ended up in MI: Shepherd’s Hearth Robert the Bruce of Stirling. https://registry.scotchcollie.org/details.php?id=66460
He is beautiful and fits all of the characteristics I was looking for in intelligence, temperament and workability. He would make an excellent working dog and is already a fabulous family dog. Not only that but the owner was meticulous in her health testing and he stands out on the Embark free from all standard disease carriers. She also had his hips and elbows tested which is really going the extra mile. He was a stud muffin.
Unfortunately, he was in MI, 12 hours away. We talked about AI briefly but that sounded too chancy. We would have considered the journey if it wasn’t for the fact that Lucy’s heat cycle hit just a week before my daughter’s ACL surgery July 2nd. But I think we’ll be visiting Mr. Bobby for upcoming litters. He’s just too good to pass up!
Heat cycles are tricky things. Rarely are they perfectly predictable. And since we decided to do a back-to-back breeding this time (some practices are every other, some are two on, one off – we’re trying two on this time around), pregnancy always throws off the next cycle from the typical 6 months. I was planning on late May/early June. Lucy had other plans. As we got closer to Hannah’s surgery date, I began to wonder if we were going to be able to make this happen after all. Amazingly, the days of her highest fertility fell over the week right before Hannah’s surgery! It couldn’t have worked out any better.
However, my plan B in West Virginia hadn’t expected Lucy to hang on that late either and had made plans for a family get away that same weekend! I was disappointed because Henry had become a close second and half the distance was even better. He also had wonderful things going for him – excellent temperament, on a working farm, and also clear on all health testing and also had his hips and elbows checked out. Henry was looking pretty great until our plans fell through…
Onto plan C. Northcutt’s Jack in Kentucky. Now if you’ve been around the OTSC world for a while, you have definitely heard the name Greg Northcutt. He’s a bit of a legend as a trainer and has been breeding dogs for almost 30 years! His dogs are known throughout the OTSC community as fabulous all around working and family dogs. Especially Doug. And Doug was Jack’s father. I called Greg to ask him a few questions about Doug and Jack before making the trek to Kentucky, and between him and Jack’s owner, Sharon, I think he sounds about as good as you can get when it comes to an OTSC that epitomizes the breed. And he is a clear dog too :)
And so we’re off to Kentucky! Just left today after spending several days worth of planning to make a last-minute-leave-7-kids-at-home trip work. I wanted to take everyone and make a mini vacation out of it. Husband nixed that idea. Too expensive, unpredictable as to what we would be able to do since the goal had to be BREED THE DOG. He was probably right. Then I wanted to take the littlest two to ease my mind a bit. He nixed that too. Why can’t we go somewhere alone for a change? Well, I’ll tell you why… It’s kind of mind boggling to even try to explain the amount of coordinating it took so that I could feel good about leaving them all for a few days. Since it was last minute (because with heat cycles you don’t know til you know) neither of my older girls could get the time off to stay home all day. That left my 15 year old son Micah as next in command. He does ok for a few hours but when it starts turning into a whole day kind of thing I come home to kids crying and people starving and the littlest one has either been watching TV all day and has become a zombie or hasn’t eaten or drunk anything all day and has a tummy ache. Or both. The house is most certainly beyond all hope. I come home to more work than I ever want to come home to. And then I feel bad when Micah feels like he did pretty good because everyone is alive and is hurt when I complain about the pile of dishes and the fact that he forgot vital things like lunch. I can’t imagine what coming home after several days of that would look like. Not pretty.
Divide and conquer was really the only answer here. Leaving Hannah and Micah alone for long hours is also inviting World War 3 to your doorstep. So splitting them up is definitely ideal. The boys were easy. A friend offered to take all three to their family campsite. Only one day on their own required and she’d pick them up from work. The two youngest girls required a bit more juggling. I wasn’t sure Zip was ready for an overnight so I had jumped through all these hoops to make our good friends next door work out and they still spent the nights at home with the big girls. I had it all arranged including meals and snacks and food to take along so they didn’t suck our friend’s dry during their stay. Instructions about who was going where and when and with whom were written on the whiteboard as well as what they could eat and where they could find it (you’d be surprised how many times I’ve come home to them having eaten nothing bc they couldn’t find it in the fridge!! What am I raising??) What I had been feeling as a little panicky and dread about leaving them all had settled in my mind as all going to maybe work out just fine.
Tim and I finally hit the road with Lucy in the back. About 30 minutes in I realized I’d brought socks but no sneakers, toothbrush but no toothpaste, and a long list of other, forgotten items. Apparently, my brain could only handle so much this week. About 2 hours in I get a text message from my sweet neighbor. Hand, foot and mouth had hit their house. I have spent the remainder of the 7 hour drive ironing out where to put my 7 and 5 year old for the next few days but I think I finally got it all sorted.
Moral of the Story: If you have a lot of kids, just stay home.
I’m sure I’ll enjoy it once everyone is happily in their place for the next few days. Until then, I’ll chew my nails and pray I don’t get another text message! Lol.
Wow!!! The joys and challenges of motherhood! God bless you for going to all that effort....and I certainly hope the breeding is successful after all of that work!