[glencorgi]

Originally Posted by Michael Romanos

I am not encouraging people to breed Corgis. I am encouraging people with mentally and physically healthy female Corgis not to have this fear factor placed arounf their necks which I think is an horrendously baseless exercise in this day and age.

It isn't placing a wrath of God fear in someone to point out a realistic picture of all possibilities that can happen in order to make a more informed and better educated decision on whether they wish to delve into breeding or not. There are risks involved, how dire one might consider them is up to individual interpretation. Bad things happen even with every possible contingency being taken into consideration and being prepared for as best as is humanly possible. Plus there are some schools of thought that this day and age with all the veterinary care options we have before us have in some ways led breeders to perhaps breeding dogs that would have never survived in days of more primitive veterinary care. It would have been more survival of the fittest.

I've gotten down to a point where one prominent and regular breeder of Pems, has only heard on one case of a female succumbing in producing a litter - and that was through an undetected bad heart.

Just because one breeder isn't hearing about complicated whelpings or only has heard of one case, doesn't mean that in the larger corgi world it isn't happening. All it would take me is a little time to search the archives of both show corgi lists and I can come up with difficult whelping stories, losses of puppies and even dams from NZ even. The internet has made international sharing of this information possible. Even from mentioned cases from various list members here, they've already outnumbered the one case acknowledged by your source.

The good breeders don't allow their females to have too many litters during their peak productive years. I don't think one to three litters for a healthy female Corgi is overstepping the mark.

Spoken with true patriarchal chauvinism and as a man with an intact male he's dying to get laid.

The original question in this thread was about the length of a heat cycle. It segued into breeding. Another thing that needs to be realized is the audience here. This is basically a pet forum, where we enjoy the corgis we own and that own us with each other. John and Sally Petowner rarely have any idea of what they are getting into with a breeding, whelping and raising puppies, that both male and female need to be tested for brucellosis (doggy VD) or what the gestation period is for puppies or what signs to watch for to indicate that their girl is going into labor or how long to let their girl go between puppies before it might be time to call the vet or that c-sections are very common in Pembrokes or that they can't take off to the zoo and see if their girl does okay on her on or that help will be needed to get puppies started or that some might be born dead or that they will lose puppies or that they might have to supplement if mom's milk doesn't come in right away or what kind of formula to even use for that and this is with NO complications. Puppies are a lot of work, even when there are no problems. Someone even contemplating breeding needs to be made aware of all contigencies and possibilities so they can make educated decisions and better prepare themselves. The better prepared one is, the less "dire" risks might occur.

Debbie