Dear Visitor,
Above you will see all the things that make up me. They all sound wonderful and I am happy to have them, however, the true me is often procrastinating and flitting from one talent to another never quite sure where to concentrate my time and energy, but for the purpose of this web site, I need to talk about my interaction with Border Collies.You will already have seen the list with each dog's name, and maybe have visited their page and read about them and I thought it best to also talk about me, their owner and their breeder for the purpose of you gaining enough trust in me to buy one of my puppies.
The best place to go to would be the Craileeau Border Collies Facebook group, where all new owners of my puppies are invited to chat among themselves, swap experiences and arrange reunions and talk to and about me, and I am a great believer that a critic brings growth, and those that speak through rose tinted glasses see only that which is applicable to them, nonetheless I am indebted to them all for the trust they have in me, the friendships I have gained, and the people that they are and I hope one day to find you among them.
I have been fortunate enough to live on a beautiful country estate in Lincolnshire with my husband Richard, my son David and his girlfriend Gemma and many Border Collies and cats. I have two other children, Joanne & John who have married, left home and provided me with beautiful grandchildren. Prior to living in Lincolnshire pre 1980 I lived with my parents at Canvey Island in Essex from age 2, and I was born in the East End of London. I have written stories since I was 7 years of age and been around animals for most of my life albeit that my mother had asthma and we were unable to have animals inside the house. I filled the shed with mice, rats, and guinea pigs and I bred pond snails & mice and sold them to pet shops to make enough money to buy a pony.
I have a favourite saying "I started with nothing and I have most of it left" but in truth, I started with everything and I have gained more since, but not monetary, my treasure is the family I have, the dogs I live with, and the cats to whom I am a servant to and the beautiful, wondrous spiritual gifts that I have that I use to help and teach to anyone that has the time and inclination to listen to the information and experiences I have gained.
That apart you will want to know the relevance of my experience with owning and breeding Border Collies....so to that end....let me begin...
I was born in 1955 and it was 1973 when I met my first Border Collie she belonged to my husband, then my boyfriend, and her name was Sindy. She was a sable and white Welsh Border Collie and she lived for 20 years from 1960 to 1980 on the farm. Sindy was past having puppies by the time I met her, and my husband's father had bought another collie, a black and white traditionally marked bitch named Lassie aka Fleabag.
One weekend when I was visiting the farm, my father in law (to be), said 'Come out to the barn and help me choose which puppies to drown." I was a city girl, my family had never owned a dog and I thought nothing of this request. I went with my father in law out to the barn and I selected about 6 puppies with a lot of white on them those that looked nothing like their mother, and my father in law commended me on selecting the right puppies. He then did something that broke my heart.
Filling one bucket full of cold water he dropped the almost white puppies into the water and pressed another bucket of water down on top of them. They whimpered and their mother was frantic, running back and forth and trying to reach them. I stood watching, feeling sick and tearful, and asked him to stop, but he said he could not even give away white puppies and it was either this way now or he would have to shoot them when older and I thought he must know best.
The following year he asked me to help him choose puppies to drown again, but this time I said to him 'do we have to drown them?' He reminded me he could not even give white ones away, and I said to him 'I bet I could sell them.' I had no idea how, but I had sold pond snails and mice successfully so surely puppies, even almost white ones would be a doddle? My father in law said 'if you sell them you can keep the money.' I did sell them. I got £30 each for them but I gave him the money as an incentive not to drown future puppies and he never did drown another one. Basically that is where my interest in breeding Border Collies began for having no one to ask that knew anything really helpful I decided that finding Lassie a mate of a solid colour and producing traditionally marked Border Collies would be better.
Sadly, after one beautiful litter had been bred and sold, poor Lassie got kicked in the head by a carthorse and had to be put to sleep and do you know whom my father in law bought to replace her with? Spot, a black headed black patched almost all white Border Collie bitch! So there we were back to square one.
Spot had several white puppy litters and I helped to sell them but it was many years later before I bought my own first traditionally marked Border Collie. My husband and I went to Outwell near Wisbech and we bought Meg, a chocolate tri Border Collie bitch with a face full of freckles who had been found wandering around Bedfordshire on a long rope with a sable puppy attached to the other end. She had been taken to Wood Green and transferred to Wisbech Border Collie Rescue Centre where we met her and took her home, and wow, what a fabulous working Border Collie she proved to be!
The first day we had her my husband discovered that the horses had escaped. They were not our horses but were being looked after by us for the people that used them along the promenade at Great Yarmouth. Using binoculars, my husband Richard, sitting in the Landrover, wondered how on earth he was going to get them back to their field, when Megan leapt over his shoulder from the rear, and shot out across the fields to where the horses were and herded them back to their field. She did not know the area nor had Richard given her a command, she had just read his mind, and helped him out. She was brilliant!
A few years later we wanted to take the children for a holiday to Centerparcs in Elveden Forest but could not afford their prices, so we opted to breed Megan to earn enough on puppies to pay for a holiday. We chose a lovely red tri dog one who was KC registered, and Megan had a litter, and we kept one of the puppies, a sable and white one and named her Sindy. Sindy was an environmentalist and when I took her for walks she would carry home any rubbish that she found and leave it next to the dustbin for me to discard. I did not train her to do this, she was self taught.
The children loved the holiday and so for 3 more years we bred Megan to take the children back to Centerparcs.
Sadly, many years later and long after her last litter of puppies, Megan by then aged ten years of age, was herding rabbits on the Old Roman Bank at Kirton Marsh, while Richard felled hawthorn bushes and put the logs into a trailer. Richard whistled her when he was ready to leave and Megan appeared hot and happy from herding rabbits. Richard beckoned her to jump onto the seat next to him, but she ran off again after another rabbit. The next thing he knew she was darting back and ran in front of the tractor before he could brake to avoid her, and the wheels of both the tractor and the heavily laden trailer went over her and broke her back. We had no choice but to have her put to sleep, and Richard lamented for years over this tragic loss of Megan.
Before Megan died I had given her daughter Sindy to a friend desperate for a sable bitch and who now returned the favour after we lost Megan by giving us a lovely red tri KC bitch named Bannetstane Sulvan Dawn and she became the mother of the wonderful Timba in July 2002 who was the best dog in the world as far as we were concerned.
In 2009 we moved from our home in Bucklegate to the farm at Sandholme where my husband's parents had lived, and once there I purchased 3 more Border Collies, and started to get involved more seriously in dog breeding and working the dogs with cattle.
Over the next 9 years I really got into breeding in a big way. I learned how to whelp puppies, sitting with every bitch and help her deliver the litter, offering her comfort and help when she needed it. 99% of the time over the years I have been at the births, missing only those that caught me unawares by whelping days earlier than expected. In time though I learned to recognise when a bitch was going into labour, and would sit with her in the barn even through the coldest of winter nights to see that she was coping and her puppies were born safe. One bitch used to stand and deliver directly into my cupped hands, and I would break the bag, tip the puppy sharply and firmly 3 times to remove mucus from its lungs, and give it to its mum to remove the placenta and lick it clean, then I would wait for the next puppy, and we would deliver them in this teamwork way until all were born.
I have learned many things by myself, using my own logic and my healing hands and have saved many puppies that may have otherwise died.
One year Molly had ten puppies and her milk did not let down. The puppies were hungry and I was frantic. I took Molly to the vet for an Oxytocin injection to bring down the milk, but it did not work and the vet said that I would have to hand rear the ten puppies because Molly was not going to get any milk in a month of Sundays, no way no how. I had successfully hand reared 5 puppies at once in the past, but I was daunted by ten and I needed to find a way to bring down Molly's milk.
By now her puppies had grown weak with hunger and they would not suckle from Molly, and they needed colostrum not milk to oil line their tummies and I had none to give them, I did not want to just pour warm watered powdered puppy milk into their new tummies so I left them with Molly to keep warm and rushed up to the vet to buy some 'puppy stim', which is a form of processed colostrum, not as good as the real thing but better than none at all and gave each puppy some.
While I did that and recognising that Molly needed something stronger than newborn puppies to suckle on her teats, I suddenly had an idea! I started gently tugging on her nipples with my fingers, simulating a puppy suckling, and then as another bitch had a litter of 5 ten day old puppies, I placed two of these onto Molly's teats and they sucked so hard that they brought colostrum down into her two back teats, near her tail end. Elated by this result, I took the other 3 ten day old puppies and gave them to Molly, and then covered Molly's newborn puppies with warm melted butter and gave them to the other bitch so that she would lick and stimulate them enough to make them suckle and being that they were hungry they soon latched on and began to nurse off of their surrogate mum. The two bitches trusted me with the switch, and within 24 hours both bitches had their own puppies back and I was able to ring the vet and say that the month of Sundays had passed quicker than expected and that Molly was now feeding her own puppies. All of them survived.
This method came in useful again during the next bitch to whelp. I knew that once a puppy was born and suckling, it helped a tired bitch to contract enough to birth the next puppy, and so I used the method of gently tugging on and caressing the nipples before any puppies were born. This stimulated contractions in a tired bitch and she would then start to give birth rapidly until all the puppies were born.
I taught myself many things by dwelling on situations, using logic, using Reiki and prayer, and asking for angelic assistance and I thoroughly enjoyed puppy births, the teamwork with myself and the bitch, and it was easy to tell that they valued my assistance and my company. One day I intend to write a book entitled 'In The Lives of Border Collies.' detailing all my experiences of life with this wonderfully intelligent and trusting breed of dog.
After 45 years (it is now 2018) of working with Border Collies in one form or another, I intend to retire soon, and settle to enjoying the 15 Border Collies I will grow old with and to quit breeding puppies, but what a joy it has been I will never forget the beautiful puppies, their antics, and that delightful puppy scent in their lovely fluffy fur, or the people I have met that have returned time and again to buy another puppy, and have become good friends and briefly, because it is relevant, I will end this narrative with how your puppy was likely brought into the world between myself and its mother and father.
1) Select first the health of and the temperament of a breeding pair of dogs. Make certain both have had worm and flea treatment, their booster vaccination and the kennel cough vaccine before the mating takes place. Make certain that the bitch has been well rested between litters and has been fed good quality holistic high protein food before her season has begun.
2) Never breed any dog to any other dog if either has a nervous tendency or too strong an eye, unless with the latter, breeding for working homes. A strong eye indicates a dog whose gaze is consistently locked onto another animal, be it cat, rabbit, chicken, duck, sheep, cow etc with a view to herding that animal. However, any dog displaying a strong eye that would threaten a bite to kill, thus displaying more of a hunting instinct, would not be bred from.
3) Bring the two dogs together and watch while they flirt and until they 'tie' then count how many minutes the mating lasts for and note the time of day the mating takes place. Mate the two dogs again 2 days later to ensure conception. The time of day is relevant as fertilisation takes place 12 hours after mating. Thus if a pair of dogs mate late afternoon or early evening, I would start counting day one from the following day, and expect puppies to be born 63 days later. Bitches can go into labour from day 59 gestation, so I must be aware of this also. If she was mated in the morning I would start counting day one on that day. Praise both dogs after mating and put the bitch into her kennel to rest.
4) During the next 3 weeks notice any changes in the bitch and ensuring that she does not rush about too much, nor feed her anything extra at this stage. Week 3 will see her go off her food with a dog form of the human morning sickness. They do not vomit but they have nausea and refuse to eat for as long as a week, just picking at a little food and drinking plenty of fresh water. Offer extra praise and hugs during this time, for she is hormonal and needs comfort and understanding.
5) Week 4, arrange for a vet to scan the bitch with an ultrasound machine to verify pregnancy, and judge the likely amount of puppies by counting the amount of heartbeats seen. This is appreciated for the breeder at the time of whelping to know that all the puppies have been born, but no good breeder will leave a bitch until she is absolutely certain that this is the case for many is the time that there were more puppies than was seen on the scan.
6) Sometimes a bitch will dissolve her unborn puppies, for whatever reason, and less will be born than is seen on the scan, and it is advisable at this stage to return the bitch for a scan post whelping to check that no puppies have gotten stuck in the birth canal. If a puppy is seen and others are banked up behind it, an oxytocin injection can be given 'if' the puppy is not stuck in the birth canal, but if it is, then a C section will be advisable to save the life of all the puppies and avoid a uterine infection developing in the bitch 48 hours later for if this occurs the milk will be contaminated with poison and all or most of the suckling puppies will die.
7) The bitch determines the size of the litter, and at the time of mating upwards of 200 eggs, so a vet told me, can be fertilised but the bitch will dissolve most of these to a manageable number. Some bitches over count and have only 2 or 3 puppies and some bitches under count and have upwards of twelve puppies, others manage to count just enough to provide one puppy with one teat each, so she may have 7 or 8 puppies. The father determines the sex of a litter, and it is advisable not to use him again with mating if he produces a higher percentage of same sex puppies unless a breeder knows that she can sell them all.
8) It is not advisable to feed the bitch great quantities of food during the gestation period, but to ensure that she does have good quality food. The reason for quality over quantity is that one does not want the developing puppies to grow too large and hinder the birth. I have found that the best food to give a bitch during her pregnancy is much of what she would normally be fed up until week 5 and then give puppy food for the higher protein along with fresh raw chicken wings and thighs for the extra calcium she will require. Calcium tablets should not be used as these can start labour too early.
9) From day 40 the bitch should have the appropriate amount of wormer for her weight each day until labour begins. Panacur is usually recommended as this is a safe product for pregnant bitches. Other wormers may cause spontaneous abortion.
10) I have always monitored the pregnancy of my 'mums to be' and prepared for the birth my own way, depending on the time of year, but for the the last 3 litters I hired a room at the veterinary hospital to whelp the puppies. The cost of this was only £130 and I considered the comfort and the help of the nurses invaluable, besides which the nurses were elated to see a live birth rather than one by C Section and it was educational for them and if any puppy was born ailing for any particular reason, the incubator with oxygen is on hand to help with its survival.
In a nutshell that is it really. More is involved, but basically that takes you from the conception to birth of your chosen puppy and all that remains now is for me to wish you a lifetime of love, joy, loyalty and fun with your Craileeau Border Collie and my thanks for choosing me to bring the two of you together.
Sincerely, Wendy Tunnard de-Veryard.
