The 2014 litter

Well 2013 was an interesting year, between an employment change and a handful of family crises we were unable to foster a litter, however, 2013 is long in the books and we are doing a bit better in 2014. We have a new litter of 2 healthy boys, one black and the other blue, both have a bit of white on their chest and we will be offering them up for sale. Unfortunately it wasn't an easy whelping for our girl and we had to resort to a c section to get them out safely. In light of this being her second c section in 4 years, we have made the decision that it will be her last litter. Which also means this will likely be our last litter for a few years as we look for a female to fill her shoes, then raise her. Make sure to check out our previous litters, and I will be adding new content to our pictures page over the next couple weeks. Below you will find the pictures from this litter.

The 2012 whelping

This brings us to our current litter in 2012. If you are looking for pictures, and information on puppies available from this litter follow this link to our available puppies page. If you have read my previous posts you know that our 2011 litter had some complications. I asked our vets in 2011 if having a C-Section would cause any problems with her welping, they said that they really couldn't say for certain as each case is different. I decided that I would breed her again, and would try to get an xray before the pups were to arrive and see if we could get a head count this time so I would know how many to expect, and see if we could determine if we were going to have troubles getting going again this time. Unfortunately when it came time to xray her the vet was having trouble with their developing chemicals and couldn't get a clear enough image due to her girth and the old chemicals that their supplier was supposed to replace earlier that week but hadn't yet. So we were still in the dark on the number of pups this time, but I was certain just from the shear size of her that we had a bigger litter in there this time than the previous one. As it came into the week she was due I planned on putting her up in her pen for close observation, and so if she started having them she wouldn't have an opportunity to spread them out across the yard.

 Sunday morning arrived and I hadn't put her up because she was not due until Wednesday, it was our wedding anniversary and Misty decided to give us an anniversary present. My wife left for work at 5:30 and there was nothing out of the ordinary occurring, but when I took our 3 month old beagle pup, Bailey, out at 6:30 I heard what sounded like 2 cats calling inside our front yard. I immediately thought it was strange that Mr.T was doing absolutely nothing about it. I brought Bailey back in the house and went out the front door to investigate, I found the source of the calling to be 2 pups under the tree in our front yard and one laying next to Misty next to our yard gate. I quickly grabbed up the two and brought them into the laundry room, which has doubled as our whelping room in the past, I got some old towels and tossed them down on the floor. I went back out and picked up the pup that was with Misty and brought it in with the others, when I did so Misty came with. At first she was not content with the whelping room so I had to work on calming her down a bit. I had my daughter, who was awoke by all the commotion, sit with her while I went out into the yard to search the yard thoroughly. After a half hour or so of sitting with her she was content to have the rest of her litter here in the house, and pushed out a very small still born black pup. I cleaned up and started making breakfast while keeping an eye on her, about an hour later she pushed out a live blue pup and cleaned it up well, she was having no trouble at all with this whelping. The vet wanted me to let them know when she started having them, but since she wasn't having problems I figured I would be nice and wait until a decent hour to call them, I left a message since it was Sunday and let them know she was doing fine and there were no problems to speak of. They called back about 15 minutes later and let me know that if she started having any problems to let them know, they are a really great vets and having that kind of support as a breeder is great peace of mind. After another hour she birthed another still born pup, this time it was a full sized blue pup, I was kind of surprised she had two still born pups, but these things aren't uncommon. I kept an eye on her all morning, and labor seemed to have stopped, and after 5 more hours and no puppies she was showing no signs of distress so I was certain she had them all out.

She was caring well for the pups now, refusing to leave them to go outside for a bathroom break. I put some food and water down for her and she still wouldn't budge from them, finally at 6 that night I dragged her out the door and stood out there with her until she did her business. After a day of not eating much and drinking very little I began to have some concern for her, but she was steadily increasing how much she was eating and drinking so I just kept trying to push the food and water. After 3 days she was back to drinking and eating like normal, and finally willingly going outside to take bathroom breaks. Thankfully this litter came with no complications.

Below is a slideshow for this litter, if you are unable to see it you may browse the album here.

Our Current Pair

After deciding that we wanted to have mixed litters instead of nothing but blacks we held back a male pup from our 2009 litter from Bear and Nakita in hopes he would carry the blue gene from Bear. We officially named him Toby, but we call him Mr. T because his white mark on his chest when he was a pup formed almost a perfect T shape. We found a blue female in Oklahoma that had a healthy established bloodline with 2 previous generations of her heritage raised by the breeder with no health problems, we decided to name her Misty, partly because of her misty blue color and partly because of the play on words of having a pair named Misty and Mr. T.

We raised them together just like our previous pair and waited until they were 2 years old to breed them. With Misty's first litter she had trouble getting the first pup out so we had to make an emergency trip to the Vet and after an x-ray a shot and an hour of waiting for shot to kick in our vet decided it was time to do a C-Section to attempt to save as many of the pups as possible. Finally at 2 A.M. we had two live pups, both males, one blue, one black. After having a C-Section the vet warned us that she would most likely not recognize the pups as hers for a day or so and that we would need to keep them separate from her unless we were supervising her. They were right, the first time we sat the pups to her for them to suck she flipped out and attempted to flee the room. After calming her back down I had to hold her down and obscure her view from the pups as they sucked, we had to repeat the process every couple hours. After the first day she started to take to the pups and things started getting easier.

Below is a slide show from our 2011 litter, if you are unable to see the slide show there is a direct link to the album here.

Our First Breeding Pair.

I decided to get another Dane after Happy because I really loved the breed and was convinced by other Dane owners that his behavior problem was over the top for the breed. Having him convinced me that I wanted to become a responsible breeder to help keep this breed of dog strong and healthy. I found a black and white female from a breeder who had healthy bloodlines, which we named Nykita. A few months later I found a black and white male from another breeder with healthy bloodlines, which we named Bear. Plus he carried the recessive blue color gene as his mother was a blue. Seeing pictures of a blue Dane does not do them justice because if the lighting isn't right they just look like a shade or two lighter than black. Actually seeing one in person when we went to get Bear made us realize how big a difference there can be with the two colors, the coloring is absolutely gorgeous so this got us hoping that Nykita would also be carrying the recessive gene and we would end up with a chance for some blues in their litters.

There are several good articles on Dane color families out there but the basics are there are Fawns, Brindles, Harlequins, Merle, Mantles, Blacks, and Blues. Merles are not eligible for showing because it is not an acceptable color to many show organizations. In those 6 acknowledged colors there are 3 color families of Fawn/Brindle, Harlequin/Mantle, and Black/Blue. Breeding inside those families are considered acceptable practices, for example breeding a black to a blue is acceptable. Breeding cross color is generally frowned upon due to the increased health complications that arise from mixing the color families. For example one of the reasons that Merle is not an acknowledged color is due to the higher risk of deaf or blind puppies that result from Merle to Merle breedings.

Short color lesson over, now back to my story. We raised these as close together as we could, she was around 8 months older than he was but they played very well together and we never had any major problems with them fighting and neither displayed any sort of territorial behaviors. When Nykita was a year old she had her first heat cycle with Bear around, I had read everything I could about the breed and knew that this was too young to breed her. It was interesting keeping him away from her and vice versa. He chewed a hole through the wall of his dog house one day while I was at work and got in with her, he broke the chain link fencing from his dog run door a night after I sealed the hole back up. The instinct was very strong with him, getting them split back up was a feat of strength and patience. Fortunately either he was too young or just didn't catch her in the right part of the cycle to actually breed her. After this fiasco when the next heat came around in six months I penned them up, one at my house and the other at my dad's house down the street, which did the trick.

When Nykita was 2 years old I decided it was time, I let them do their thing and 63 days later we had a massive litter of 13 black and white Danes. As I said earlier we were hoping that somewhere in Nykita's lineage would be the blue recessive gene, and that she would carry it as well, and we would get a mixed litter, but no such luck. After having our first litter and getting no blues we decided to keep a pup back from the litter, who stood a 50/50 chance of carrying the blue recessive gene from Bear, and found good homes for Nykita and Bear.

Below is a slide show from our first litter, if you are unable to view it you may view the album here.

A story about our first Dane Happy.

We got our first Dane when I was 19, shortly after we moved into the house we currently live in. He was an abused Dane my dad seen at a livestock auction, no one bid on him so my dad went to his owner after the auction and asked him how much he wanted for the dog. He told him he was free to a good home since no one bid on him, dad brought him over that evening and we eventually named him Happy.

He was a 6 month old black and white and absolutely huge even though he was obviously malnourished, he was nothing but skin and bones. I went to the Vet and set up an appointment for his vaccinations and health check and bought some vitamin supplement for him to get him back in a bit better health. After two weeks of giving him eggs, high protein dog food, and the vitamin I could tell he was starting to fill out a bit and was looking much healthier all around. He got a clean bill of health at his first vet visit and weighed in at around 70 pounds. He grew and grew, eventually topping out at 165 pounds and stood 35-36 inches tall at the front shoulder. When he hit a year old I noticed that he had developed a few splotches where hair was not growing mainly on his feet and legs, and he would constantly dig at them until they bled. I took him to the Vet and found out that Danes can suffer from what they called hereditary mange, it is simply an allergic reaction to his own skin mites and hopefully a short round of steroid shots would get him cleared up this time around and if he continued to have problems that I would have to put him on allergy medication indefinitely. The shots did clear him up and he did not have any further outbreaks but I believe they had some unwanted side effects.

During the two weeks of steroid shots he became very territorial and aggressive, and our fenced in yard became his and no one except my wife, my dad and mom, and myself were allowed in. He had to be penned up if we were expecting guests as he would meet anyone at the yard gate put his paws on top of the gate and literally look down on whoever was on the other side as he barked aggressively at them until they left. Once well removed from the yard and in territory not his own he was perfectly fine with just about anyone, but the yard was his and only a few people were allowed in. Unfortunately this territorial/aggressive nature continued even after we stopped the shots. I don't know how many times I would come home from work when a package was delivered to find it sitting on the walkway 4 or 5 feet outside the gate with 2 or 3 dog treats still littering the walkway inside the fence in what I can only assume was the delivery persons attempt at calming him. He would completely ignore those treats, even though sometimes they were some of his favorites, just because of who they came from. Once I left them there for several days to see if he would eat them and after 4 days I got tired of stepping over them and threw them away.

While this was nice security it also made me a bit nervous as to what would happen to the person that accidentally got too close to the fence or if he were to get ambitious enough to leave the yard in pursuit of whoever came to the gate, because lets face it, if he wanted out bad enough my 4 foot yard gate was not going to stop him. But time went on and we had no mishaps. We had owned him for 2 years when our daughter was born, he showed an unnerving curiosity as to what exactly she was. She was born a bit jaundiced so we had to set her in the sunlight to help clear it up. He would stand in the yard and stare at her through the window until we moved her away. I decided it was time and tried to give him away to a good home. However due to his aggressive nature no one really showed much interest after the initial meeting and unfortunately I ultimately had to make the hard decision of putting him down, I could not live with the alternative of him possibly permanently harming my daughter. I have never had a Dane since go through the transformation to an aggressive territorial dog, in my mind the combination of him being so neglected before my coming to own him and the steroid treatments were both factors that played a role in his case.