Dr. Lee Payne - Lab Breeding, Genetics, Gundog Health

He is one of , if not the best reproductive veterinarians in the lab world and I'm fortunate to live only an hour away from his clinic and to have become good buddies with Lee over the last decade or so of working together .

He's been an awesome resource for my kennel , southern Oak and for so many other kennels around here , and this is a fun conversation if you want to kind of nerd out on the breeding side and the health testing side . For some of you that might be pretty boring .

For me it's a massive part of my life and I know for a couple of you guys it'll be hopefully educational and entertaining . Thanks again for checking in with us and listening to the podcast . Welcome to the Lab , a Cornerstone Gundog Academy podcast focused on all things gundogs , good times and the great outdoors . I'm your host , barton Ramsey . What's up everyone .

Welcome back to the lab . I have my friend and my veterinarian , lee Payne , on with me .

But before we get into any of that sort of stuff , I don't know a whole lot about your history . I know that you're a little bit of an outcast living in oxford , mississippi , because you went to school in starkville , mississippi . Uh , when did you go to vet school and when did you decide to become a veterinarian ?

So I was gonna be an engineer like everybody else , luckily had good grades and , on a whim , brian Huggins my roommate in vet school , kind of lifelong one of my best friends took a tour of the vet school Our freshman or sophomore year of college . The admissions counselor said hey , why don't you walk through it with us ?

And I said nah , I'll sit here , there's no point in wasting your time on me . She talked me into it and then 30 minutes later I was like I think I want to be a vet . That was awesome . The rest is history . A random start , but after that I started shadowing a few vets . This career path has been perfect for my ADHD self . I'm one of the lucky ones .

I truly love what I do . I couldn't really do anything else .

So , yeah , I did two years , two years northeast , one year at state , um , had all the prereqs I needed , applied for vet school and they let me in . So , um , I didn't even finish an undergrad degree , um , just so , um four years at state . And uh , here we are I was .

She's also thought about possibly going to Auburn , since we're not too far from either and we're Auburn fans or Eagle . But uh , To me .

So , um , you're , you're going to learn everything you need to know to pass the board exam while you're in vet school , and in your first year out of school you'll learn everything else , and so that's that's kind of how it works . So , yeah , go go in state . That would be my strong advice , Bob .

Did you start in Oxford ? Where did ? Where'd you start practicing before or right after vet school ?

And so I bought into this practice , probably six months after I'd graduated from vet school . So just I wouldn't recommend do that to any kid coming out of vet school . But it worked for me . So we uh did that , moved to Oxford and um been been here ever since , and

so I graduated vet school in 2000 . I moved here in 01 . In Oxford terms that's an old time . I mean I've been here forever in oxford , so transient , but yeah , I've been here a long time and when I was growing up . So I deer hunted a lot as a kid and then we live in corinth .

You're not close to the delta but we had a place , kind of one of the little river bottoms there , that would go shoot wood ducks and and always grew up outdoorsy and really enjoyed waterfowl hunting probably the most . I just liked shotguns and clay pigeons and shooting ducks and doves and all that .

I got a just kind of backyard bred Labrador retriever my senior year of high school and had fun with him but I I like , I like good things and he was not loved but he was not the best , yeah .

And so then I guess probably my I don't know first year of vet school somewhere in there I got kate who was they're still descendants of her running all over the place . She was , but I shopped her pretty hard and she came out of two grand champions with really nice pedigrees and so I bought her . Bill Rath was a big hunt test guy over in Arkansas .

He had the female and Barry Lyons had trained , kind of helped Bill train his dog and train the stud dog that she came out of . Barry and Becky , both of the Siren Dam owners , said hey , this kid is going to call you Help him out a little bit .

I went to Louisiana several times and went to some of their seminars they had and would call them just incessantly about okay , you know we're at force fetch in this phase . What do I do next ? And then you know just the . You know the whole process , your cornerstone thing . I drove these poor folks crazy .

They talked me through it on the phone and in person , but , uh , they were instrumental in like helping me , they . They helped me train my first dog , who went on to be a grand champion , um too . And so I was , uh , in vet school , um , and didn't really plan to be so much a working dog guy .

In vet school I , like working dogs , thought reproduction was cool but wasn't really sure which you know where the career path is going to go , um , but that dog , you know she's . We all have a special dog . That would be that . The Kate would be mine . You know it's the best dog ever .

I , as you know , we produce puppies all across this country for Southern Oak kennels and you deal with a lot of guys that produce a lot of puppies and they go home at eight weeks and a lot of the times I get really good updates and then you'll get a text from guys like , hey , I'm at my vet and they'll send a question and I'm like , well it's , it's on

the sheet of paper I sent with . You know All the info's there . Well , they're wanting this , this and this and three or four questions in . You're like any chance you could go find a vet that has working dogs Like any , and I'm spoiled by you guys and just the overall .

There's an amount of institutional knowledge that's not taught at vet school , that comes with being around Labradors , working Labradors , that , uh , you don't learn that in the classroom and so it's great to hear your journey into that .

But like , did you , were you , uh , were you working Kate , handling Kate and hunt tests as you were doing vet school and becoming a veterinarian ?

Marty had a great house on a big , really nice bass fishing lake . My wife happened to love the house and , uh , so I bought marty's house , marty bought my farm , um , and we pretty well passed on the highway and high-fived each other as we're moving each other's house , but down it worked out good that's awesome .

But Mark Harefield was getting me into all this stuff and I was like I like this female a lot and he said , yeah , she's pretty special , she's a good one , you need to have her bred , but you need to go get her hips done . And I didn't know anything about anything . And uh , everybody was like you need to go see Lee pain .

And that was my first trip up to Oxford to get hips done and I just thought that was the going to see just anyone and everyone that does hips . I didn't know . I was going to see the hip and elbow guy .

And for those of you who are listening , who are I mean , we have a lot of people listening to this who are lab folks but if you're not a lab folk , if you're not a dog guy and you're just a waterfowler , when you breed Labradors , there are a handful of tests . It grows , it's growing every year .

There are a handful of tests that are sort of like you have your kind of bare minimum requirements for , hey , this dog is fit to be bred . And then you have some stuff you can kind of go above and beyond and uh , I'd love to hear just your journey into becoming .

You know , two of those tests are a hip x-ray and an elbow x-ray , uh , which , if I go back and open my history of texting with you and look through the photos , 90 just x-rays . What do you think about this one ?

And uh , how did that all start like , how did you merge sort of the , the working dog , and the we'll get in the reproduction side of it in a second , but the prelims , uh , of reproduction , doing all these ofa tests and that sort of stuff .

But so with Kate the great black lab , I had put HRCH on her while I was in vet school and then kind of checked up , got out of vet school , moved here and got a really good training group together and we were working dogs all the time and like , hey , let's go run a grand , see how this thing goes , and um , and we did , and she passed and um , and so

in there I bred her . I wanted to ship in some frozen semen from a dog in the northeast and it worked . And then my brother wanted me to and it worked , and a buddy and and fast forward .

And so with that , just when you're in the the world of breeding dogs and you're out running hunt , test and you're just seeing everybody , knowing everybody , they , I'm just I'm kind of one of those guys like something's wrong , just call lee , he'll fix it . He's just the , he'll figure it out . Um , not the smartest guy , but I know a lot of smart people .

So the uh and

and that's been kind of history of my career . But just with uh being around so many working dogs , you're gonna do a lot of ofas and with me having them .

I want the best possible picture that I can get for ofa when I'm submitting it for my personal dog , and my opinion has always been , if if I going to take 10 pictures of my dog's hips to get the perfect picture , then I'm going to do the same thing for Barton and for Marty and for everybody else . That's kind of it when you're doing OFAs .

A lot of people sedate the dogs . It's a lot easier if the dog's sedated . They're not fighting you and wiggling quite as much . If they're awake , though , you've got muscles kind of contracting and helping push the hip into the socket and still letting it relax and slide out . So I've always kind of been a non-sedate the dog fan .

Again , going back to if I want the best picture of my dog , that's how I think I can get the best picture , and statistics back that up and prove it , and so if I'm going to do it for me , I'm going to do it for you .

They test it one year , which is beneficial because you know two years is a lot of time to put into a dog only to find out , oh shoot , not going to be able to do anything with this . Prelims are always good , but again , I think the BVA may require Well , I think they may say you're supposed to sedate . I don't know the actual requirement .

And then you've got some newer stuff that's come out in the last , I don't know . You got pin hip that hadn't been around for so long . Do you do a lot of those Well ?

You care about the breed of Labrador Retrievers as a whole and that's your only mission . Penhip is pretty fabulous because with Penhip you sedate the dog .

You put a metal rod between their back legs and torque the feet in so that you're creating I'm holding my phone so I can't make my hand do all the talking through but you're trying to distract the femur out of the pelvis .

The more laxity you have in there they've done a correlation so the more lax the hip is , the greater chance of having hip dysplasia later on down the road . So if the hip is completely seated inside of the rim , then that would be a zero . If it's totally out of the socket , that would be a one , and they score those from zero to one .

An average lab score would be like 0.45 or 0.5 , something like that . Greyhounds have super tight hips . An average for a greyhound would probably be a 0.3 , 0.35 , something like that . Um , greyhounds have super tight hips . An average for greyhound probably be a 0.3 0.35 , something like that , um .

And you can do pin hip as early as four months old , which is handy for if you got a young dog you're getting ready to send off to a big time pro , when you're going to put a fortune into this dog , you can do pin hip on them early and get a early reading on it now . So that's a good place for it .

Also , with some kennels , if they're looking at keeping a couple of females as now future breeding stock for them , they will will pin hip two or three puppies and the ones everything else is the same the ones with the tightest hip scores are the ones in your breeding program , which is a really pretty cool way to use that tool .

Well , I would prefer to talk about the fact that my dog got OFA excellent than she's in the bottom quarter of the breed standard kind of thing . And it's also there are some breeds that are accustomed to it , and so all the people in there know the lingo and like oh , my dog's 0.54 , and everybody knows what that means .

In our Labrador retriever world it's a bunch of jargon . Nobody , nobody really like people just don't do pin hip , and so in the lab world you're all we really care about . Is your ofa good or excellent ? Um , I want them to be excellent , but good's fine . There's a huge gap between good and fair .

Like fair won't play in our world , um , and I'm I'm always fighting to . You know , you gotta have good . That's this , that's that good , that's what we've got to have . And just because a dog has a lax pin hip score doesn't mean they're going to develop hip dysplasia later . It just means they have a higher chance of it .

So you've got a dog that scores poor on the pin hip score . It doesn't necessarily mean the dog's not going to be able to hold up to be a working dog , or you know , like we know , that that's not your preferred breeding stock .

But also , if you're only breeding dogs off of a hip score , there's a whole lot of other stuff that goes into not having a nice working dog .

I'm like , oh , no , hold on , there's , there's a little more to this . When it of this , you have a six-year-old male who's never been health tested , and well , we bought them from you . I'm like , well , that doesn't matter , I've bought some dogs from insanely nice pedigrees and that doesn't guarantee . Let's talk a little bit about that .

Elbow dysplasia , hip dysplasia .

We've been , by and large , on the working side of things , testing hips for darn near 35 years , 40 years , testing elbows for probably 20 , 15 , 20 . I mean , I would say very regularly , and we have not eliminated dysplasia . I'd love to hear your thoughts on that . Obviously , you're pro-health testing .

I mean , how many sets of OFAs do you think you do a year ? Gosh .

How is it that we haven't , even within just let's remove backyard breedings , but like in the british side , the American side , a dog that you can see ?

There's a field trial winner or field trial champion , or there's a HRCH or a master hunter or even just a senior hunter , all the way back In every generation there's tested dogs and with dogs obviously you can go way back . I mean , they , you know , breed it two , two and a half , three years old .

You can go back eight , nine , ten generations and see health tested dogs . How is it , or why do you think it is , that we haven't been able to breed those things out completely ?

know , you have a dog that's got six generations of clear elbows , like man , but he's so nice and they're , you know , you , um , I , I had one that , uh , field champion , female , um , and was six years old , never limped a day in her life , had a bad elbow , yeah , and the owner's like , I don't care , I want another one of these and you don't blame them

because that's a nice sucker right there .

Out of seven puppies we had out of her , I know four of them had bad elbows , yeah , and she comes from generations and generations of clear dogs , and so that's just one example that , like , I was totally on board for breeding that dog because she was a nice sucker , but then after doing it , it's like we don't want to do that dog , cause that was , she was

a nice sucker , um . But then after doing it , it's like we don't do that again . You know it's a failed experiment right there , um , and so when you get um , like you just see that happen . So we , we breed specifically and we breed clear stuff across the board and then , but it pops up .

Then when you do breeding the ones that have the trait that has come to the surface , then you're just bringing it right on back up to the top , and so now we'll , we'll , we get it all the way out of Labrador retrievers . One day maybe , but probably not neither one in our lifetime , but we're doing it , but I think we are .

We don't see it often , but we see it .

I think that number is ridiculously off because there's a lot of people that just look at an x-ray and say these are garbage . I'm not sending this to the BVA , I'm saving my money , which they actually have some standards over there .

You're not supposed to do that , um , but I mean , look , when it comes to saving a couple hundred pounds or a couple hundred bucks on or whatever it costs , you know , you get a picture you're like well , these are going to be really awful . But that does skew the average . I think the average is probably a lot worse than I think they say .

It's either eight and a half or nine as a total hip score now , which there's no way it's gotten improved to the point where single digit is now the average .

So their numbers , their database , I feel like are pretty accurate , because I've sent them some junky hips because I told them I wouldn't , I told them what I do . Yeah , ofa , on the other hand , there's no requirement for that and like I mean the ofa fees only like 50 bucks .

But still , if they're just total garbage , like sorry , I ruined your day , you go have a good lunch . Like there's no , there's no points , right ? So , yeah , the ofa numbers are and in that regard , bva I would think are skewed , because the the real bad ones we just , you know , suck and there's no point sending it right , which you ?

Um , you've taken some pictures of a pup we produced one time that we really wanted to bring back into our breeding program , and I don't even think she had a left hip socket . I mean it was just almost gone . You , I mean I think she's probably seven or eight now and still runs . I mean , we'll chase down a snow goose like no other dog .

You've seen no signs of limping . And so , yeah , there's a human element where you say , hey , she's totally fine , she doesn't have any symptoms , she's not clinically dysplastic by any stretch of the imagination , she's a very athletic dog . But when you go , look at the numbers .

If you were to breed her , your chances of having dysplastic puppies go through the roof , yeah , um a study OFA put out years ago and they may have put something out since .

It's just not , it's not cool to breed those guys Right . But there's back to having a vet , not not just me , me , but somebody that does it and does a lot of them . It makes a huge difference on your ofa score . I had um . It's a british lab that um got a master hunter on him early , made it to the third , fourth series of the grands a young dog .

Several times um took him to just some vet louisiana . They sedated him , took hip x-rays . They came back mild as plastic um and he called me and said , yeah , bring him up , let's look at him , because you could just tell there was a lot of laxity in the pictures they had taken . Um , I took the pictures and they were perfect .

I mean , like the dog deserved OFA excellent , no doubt about it , um . So I sent them in and they came back fair because OFA just didn't want to cave that much . So , okay , you want to play , we'll play . So the second time we sent them in fair and I still it was like every two months forever .

We're going to send them a set of pictures because this dog does not deserve to fail . On the third attempt they gave us a good and we said thanks and carried on with the rest of our life .

But that dog was super well bred I mean just a phenomenal working dog and he needed to be bred , and the fact that somebody took a bad set of hip x-rays could have potentially ruined his breeding career . Um , and so you know , in that I was , I was willing to play ball to get , get the pictures that we wanted , and eventually we did or get the score .

There's a way , and it's always been an honest response yeah , let's get those reshot . Those may have a chance , or those are garbage . Don't shoot them . Sorry to ruin someone's day , but no chance .

So it's not like you're trying to be dishonest and get and get a failing hip to pass , it's just , hey , like you said , let's get the best possible picture of what we're working with here so that they can and look the elbows .

When it's crazy to me , I never know I could see a thousand elbow x-rays and not tell you the difference and you're like well , that one , I don't even know what you guys are looking at in the elbows .

There's a little bit of positioning room in there , but elbows for the most it's just a tight flex lateral x-ray and that's what it is . Hips you can torque and twist and play a little bit Um and and again . If they're bad they're just bad , but um , but you can .

If you're positioning them well , you can get a better picture um than than some other people would . Yeah .

But , like for those of you again listening , you have to know there are a handful of guys around the country that are trusted with what I would consider like the big wig dogs .

Uh , whether it's british dogs or american dogs , there are some dogs that you know they're highly valuable , their reproduction is highly valuable and storing up semen from those dogs is super important If you want to continue that , that lineage , into the future . And Lee , you're at the top of .

I mean , I've been to Montana and people were like dude , you live close to Lee Payne and you get all the access to all the . You know the vet , you know all the reproductive vet stuff that everybody wants . So what got you going down that path ?

And I'd love for you just to share a little bit about that , that journey , and what it's like , cause I you have to have ADHD to do what you do . There's no telling how many people are driving you nuts about a breeding at any point in time throughout the week .

But I can just in my head imagine him driving over the Tennessee River , ceremoniously throwing his cell phone in the river and driving away like see you suckers , I'm out of here . That would be the only way to make it in . No , it's . Yeah , I definitely severe undiagnosed ADHD and it makes this game really fun . But I started it just with again .

I mean , I just wanted to breed my personal dog with some cool semen from a dog that we couldn't get our hands on , and it worked and it was pretty cool , and so then it just other guys that I trained with we did the same thing and it kept working and it's uh . You know all of breeding with anything but especially frozen semen .

You're watching progesterone numbers like a hawk and watching the curve and reading into the numbers , and so some of it was you know . Again , my original plan was to be an engineer , and so I like numbers . Math's always been fun to me and and I numbers are fun , and so that is . Uh , all of reproduction is a number-based game .

You got to have so many progressively modal normal sperm cells to get a breeding done , and when you're freezing semen you got to have a hundred , 150 million good sperm per breeding . So just all the numbers clicked in my head and it was . It made sense .

It was kind of fun and I I liked the fact that I was able to make plenty of money off of a breeding myself , but my client was making money instead of me . It was not like a broken leg and we fix it , and here's your dog and I get a thousand . We're both winning on that , and I loved that aspect of it was that it was a win-win .

I say all the time as long as puppies are hitting the ground , everybody's happy , and so I've always liked the aspect of , yes , I'm getting paid , but you guys are too , and so I really I've always liked the aspect of yes , I'm getting paid , but you guys are too , and so that makes it .

That part was always a real bonus to me in the reproduction end of things . So I started off with , you know , I had a lot of contacts with trainers , and then there's a lot of breeders in this part of the world , and so I was just kind of in a good spot for the reproduction business to to take off .

Um , and for the first , I started freezing semen in 2007 . So I've been in school seven years . Before I started freezing , I was using a good bit of frozen semen , but that was , um , my . My next step from just breeding dogs was we started freezing semen here , and then a few years later , I got in-house progesterone test .

Before everybody had one , I went out and got a really expensive human grade one that that works really well for doing that , and then the nicer semen analyzer for freezing semen with , and then I got endoscope for doing tcis with . And you know just , you do a lot of it .

You're able to get all the cool toys , and the more cool toys you get , the better you're able to do it better , and so that's that's the way it works .

This includes folks who have zero experience ever handling a dog and people who've been handling dogs their entire lives , but they just want to extend their knowledge and teaching their dogs the skills that will impress their buddies in the duck blind .

If you want to become a more efficient and proficient , a better , more skilled and talented dog trainer and dog handler , look no further than cornerstonegundogacademycom . Man , you were the first person to really share that line of reasoning with me . You know , hey , what does an extra progesterone test cost ? Back then I think it was 80 bucks .

Now maybe 100 , $110 . Okay , what's an extra puppy worth ? What's two extra puppies ? What are missing or not missing the litter ? What's that worth ? And it's definitely . I love that perspective of yeah , I mean you fix a broken leg or remove an obstacle lodged in a dog's stomach , they pay you and then on they go and they get to keep their dog .

But when you do a good job with the repro stuff I mean

even with shipping frozen semen I know I'm your problem child , but you collect it and you're like dadgummit . I don't want to put these people out by shipping them something that's not going to give them a litter , and I can always appreciate that aspect of it .

Talked a little bit about progesterone , I've got Well , including Marty , I think I have three people right now testing PG , waiting on either live cover or shipping . So I'm sure Chris or myself will see you guys in the next week or so . What's the ideal numbers ?

What are the ideal numbers for live cover , for a chilled or even a side-by-side AI , which may be the same as live cover , I don't know and for doing Frozen ?

So every dog , at the beginning of their cycle they're going to be at 0.2 . That's baseline , and so typically they're at baseline for the first week or so of their heat cycle and then we see the progesterone starting to rise , usually between day 7 and day 10 . So you see the numbers starting to go up .

Once the progesterone gets to 2.0 , that's one of the big numbers that I'm looking for . At 2 , the body releases luteinizing hormone , or you'll hear it called LH surge if you're reading about this stuff and looking on it . The luteinizing hormone softens up the ovary and gets it ready for eggs to ovulate and pop out .

2 is one of the big numbers we're looking for . If the dog's running the perfect trip , just like in horse racing you get off the rail and you go the perfect trip would be where , at two , 48 hours later we check them , their progesterone's jumped to six At . Six is typically where they ovulate at .

And then 24 hours after the six , we check them and they jump to nine . So a three-point jump from six to nine . That shows us they've ovulated . And so from five to eight six to nine , four and a half to eight that those numbers are what we're looking for for ovulation . Okay , we need a graph and a powerpoint for you , all this stuff .

But I'll keep talking . We can go back to it with dogs . Typically conceive puppies four days after they ovulate . Okay , with fresh semen , it's going to live five days inside the female's reproductive tract . So after we've documented that she's ovulated , we're good to breed natural or with fresh semen . If I'm TCI , I'm in the office anytime .

It really doesn't matter Anywhere in there . We're good because semen's going to live that long . Chilled semen is going to live 24 , 48 hours after we get it here . So typically I'm going to breed chilled semen three days after they ovulate . Is what I'm looking for . Weekends always throw a branch in there and you deal with the headache of it .

But in a perfect world I want to do it three days after ovulation . Frozen semen is going to live 12 to 24 hours . I do it four days after they ovulate To answer the perfect number thing . So really , with fresh semen , anything over eight to 10 , you're good to go , okay . Chilled semen is usually going to be mid to upper teens .

Frozen semen is usually going to be low twenties .

So dogs are different . So once they've ovulated , their progesterone is going to stay high . And so , yeah , you bring me the dog that's at 16 , 18 , 26 the first time we check it . Well , if we got there today , we're good . If we got there three days ago , we're not good .

And that's where , that's where I'm telling , like , we can roll the dice , barton , like you put it in , I mean , it's not gonna hurt to , but there's no guarantees .

If I catch her at six and then the next day she's at 10 , like okay , I compare that to if you're bass fishing you feel the bump and you see the line move and like , okay , boom , set the hook , I got you um the high numbers , you're just . You just don't know , um , and every dog is different on what number they peak out at .

So I'll have some dogs , dogs that they ovulate and the progesterone makes it to 16 , and that's as high as they go . I'll have other dogs that go into the low 30s , and so you can't just play it off of numbers , because some progesterone numbers don't go as high as others do .

There's a lot of stuff on Facebook groups about how the numbers have been incorrect for I think , the last three or four months with this company . I don't want to throw them under the bus , but typically .

The most common one that you see in vet clinics is an IDEX test . Idex is a great in-house lab company . That's what all of our in-house lab work is . Their progesterone test isn't that great . It goes from levels that are two and under . It's typically pretty spot on .

From two to five it's pretty good , and then over five it's just you can't tell If it says she's 12, . The problem with it is they may be 12 or they might be six and there's no rhyme or reason for when it runs high . Yeah , and so in the idex test is better than what you're running . Yeah , no offense , but it is , but it's all .

Of them still tend to run a little bit high and it's a little bit screwy as to what the the correlation of how high it is . So I put , like when you call with progesterone numbers or any of my breeders that I work with that have got an in-house test . I put more weight on the low number . Okay , where was she at two ?

And then usually I work off of that number more than I do . Dude , I checked her and she was at 26 today .

It's really for us like , hey , you know she's been bleeding eight days , is she ready ? Oh , no , she's a . You know point four .

They're not super accurate , but you see the rise going , and when you see the rise starting to go , if we're using fresh semen

, then you kind of know , and usually it works just fine . Now again , if somebody calls and like , hey , man , we've been doing all this frozen semen , let's breed her on Thursday . Yeah , I don't really want to do that . I count all my numbers .

Because some of these girls are sneaky and if you're out there operating a breeding program , you understand Some of and how clean have you been keeping your kennel . And some of them bleed a ton and we've had several the last few years , especially the really , really strong athletes . You don't see a lot of blood and you may not see it for a few days .

So when I met you and we did some AIs thinking back to the days of like with Apache Joe , with Prince when he was younger everything that you did was surgical . That was the . That was sort of the cream of the crop on . Hey , let's just put it , put it right in there . And there was a transition .

I remember the first time you did a TCI with one of mine . It didn't work and I was kind of like I'm out on this whole TCI thing . And then , over the course of maybe 48 months or so , tci sorry , yeah , tci . Over the course of 48 months or so , that kind of morphed into the new thing .

Technology changed , I guess , and you had some updated mechanism toys , you call them to get that stuff done properly . What's the what's the shift there ? And do you do surgical anymore ? Is it all TCI ?

You can't just blindly put an AI rod through the cervix . And a cow you can , and a horse you can . A dog is too small .

And so when you're AIing them in the backyard or at the kennel or whatever , you're taking a pipette , running it to the cervix , putting the semen in , holding them upside down for five minutes and hoping the semen goes through the cervix and gets into the uterus . And it does most of the time . But they're still .

You know , those are probably 70% successful-ish , kind of , depending on who's doing them . Surgical AI we're just going in and putting semen straight into the uterus . So you're past the cervix and you got good semen and you've timed them out , especially when you're using fresh semen , you just never miss . And so I did tons of AIs and they always worked .

And when things work , your reputation grows . You breed good dogs , they come back to you , you get dogs , pregnant , people come to you and so that was surgical . A is for a huge part of that um , and for years before I started doing the trans cervical insemination I had clients like come on , dude , you got to go like you do so many .

You got to go get trained up and doing that and just if it's not broke , don't fix . It was kind of my mantra on that and I just didn't want to change because it works so good . Um , the perk to tcis . And now that I've been doing it for what ? Six , eight years , maybe longer than that , I don't know a long time I've done a bazillion of them .

Now you don't have to date the dog . They stand up on the table . Um , you put semen and and with the tci . So I'm driving an endoscope , go in vaginally , take the endoscope to the cervix , um , and then you pass the catheter through the cervix and run it into the uterus . We're still putting semen in the same place doing a TCI as we are with a surgical .

You just don't have to sedate the dog , you don't have to cut the dog . They walk in , scope in , do the deal , boom right back out the door . Our success rate is just as good on a tci with fresh semen , as it is now with a surgical . So you know I morphed into doing tons of tcis with frozen semen . We still do a lot of frozen semen surgically .

Um , a dog's uterus is shaped like a Y and the TCI catheter goes into one horn . But you can't see it so you can't direct it into both horns . So with frozen semen it's not going to live very long .

I'll go in surgically so I can get both sides of the uterus completely filled up instantly , versus with TCI you put it in and it works its way around and fills up the other horn . But I just feel better with frozen semen instantly covering all my real estate . Yeah , fast .

I don't know why it's in my noggin like that , but I'm glad it is so successful and it's really nice to be able to go in and do an AI like that and walk right back out and then be back to you know she can be back working , uh , the next day .

Um , yeah , back when I first started I probably spent . I went to um wisconsin and did a three-day course on it and got trained how to do it . And then I came home and for six months I didn't tell anybody I had it .

Before I do a surgical underdog , I take them in , take the scope in , get the catheter into the cervix , then pull it out and go to a surgical ai and just wouldn't leave . I would just practice on every dog , just getting rep , um , and then started doing it and it .

You know it , I'm so fast with it now and my daughter is a junior in high school now but when she was 10 , 12 , she was my permanent sidekick up here . I'm like , hey , let's go , tci dog . It's like , oh , dad , it's gonna take forever , because it always take me forever .

Back in the day of it 10 , 12 , she was my permanent sidekick up here , I'm like , hey , let's go TCI dogs . Oh , dad , it's going to take forever , cause it always take me forever back in the day of it . Now , if I'm not done , if I don't have a catheter in a minute , I feel like a failure . So perhaps make everything better .

You know , I had my knee scoped last year and these surgeons who can go in a little tiny hole and go in and they're like , well , we shaved this down and we cut this out and we vacuumed that out , and I'm like you did all that with a scope . You know you never even cut my knee open . It's pretty , pretty bizarre technologies .

Well , we've come a long way from using a turkey baster and hold a dog upside down . For sure , I love that . I have a couple of just quick questions before we hop off .

I know you probably got your phone's probably blowing up from people like me wanting to know if you can do an AI this afternoon or whatever , wanting to know if you can do an AI this afternoon or whatever .

But I have a few questions that just I think there are a lot of people that listen that that are Labrador folks but not breeders , and I think that this will still be helpful for them .

A lot of them are going to want to buy a dog in the future , at least understanding the importance of health tests , and there were some we didn't mention , like DNA tests and eyes . Those are also very important , uh , but you can see about that on on any Labrador retriever breeders website that's reputable . It should be on there .

Um , a couple of quick questions for people who are breeding and for people who aren't . Um , if you have a , a , a female , who has been bred , should you continue working her and what are some things you should should avoid ? Should you continue working her and what are some things you should ?

Um , but let's just say you know , we bred the dog naturally at your kennel . I'm fine for them to do light work until six , seven weeks into their pregnancy . Yeah , Um , I tell folks every time I discharge one , you know , but our , our job right now is to grow puppies . It's not to win a ribbon or a field trial .

So if , um , it's not to win a ribbon or a field trial , so if and I talked to a guy last week that picked his dog up hey man , I got a couple more master passes . I've got one scheduled . She was going to be four weeks into her pregnancy at the time of this I've got no problem with the dog even running a master level kind of event .

But just be mindful of them . If they go out front , foot their marks and do quick work on their blinds , go do the thing and carry on . If you get into a big old , huge gorilla hunt . The dog's getting hot and everything's just going to hell in the handbasket . Call them in and call it a day and uh , let's , let's live to fight another day .

I don't want their body temperature shooting up to 106 , 108 , doing all the crazy stuff that um , and and you can check dogs after hunt tests down , when they come in there they get hot , you know from parking . So , um , it's , you just want to be smart with it .

But a dog has been bred going out , doing doubles or singles and and running some blinds , that's . I think it's really good for them down , mental standpoint and physical .

But we don't see any higher incident of trouble with a pregnant dog than we do an un-pregnant dog . So no , I don't have any problem with them going .

But maintaining a stud dog , health is a big deal , and so if they get too hot , especially , um , but if they get too cold it can affect it too .

But you can really see your sperm levels drop and then , most importantly , the quality of it , um , you'll see a lot of defects in the sperm cells if they've gotten too hot , gotten sick , any of that kind of stuff , and so you've got to monitor that .

But I'll have stud dogs that train six days a week in Mississippi all summer long , and they come in and they've got perfect semen now . And then you got some guys that just give you trouble in the middle of February when everything should be good . So there's not you going to be mindful of it and you also have to kind of watch them .

But also when you get a stud that's being bred a good bit , you kind of learn the tricks of the trade . You know what , how that stud's going to be .

And then you've got some that start giving you trouble at five and six , and it's just the way it is and there's no real way to predict it or know which way it's going to go .

But the ones that the guys that are giving you trouble early on , then you really get mindful on giving them supplements and working them first and and not letting them get so hot , and you know all of the

, the little things you can do to keep them down . Keep things lined up as good as you can .

It's going to be 87 in the South tomorrow , and so I'm already thinking all right , where are we going to park ? We're going to rotate these boys out . Water temp still cool , so we'll make sure to get in the water a good bit , Cause I'm . This is the last thing I'm going to do is get them hot .

After the last several years of of battling that kind of stuff , If you've got someone out there who's at a training event this weekend or this summer and they notice their dog getting too hot we've talked about this a good bit .

We talked about this inside the Cornerstone module actually years ago when we did vet talk , which is still in the Complete Academy what are the signs to look for ? And then , when you notice you have a dog that's too hot , what's the first things for ? Are the first things they should do ?

Now , one of the things that I was told a long time ago seemed to hold kind of true when their tongue starts going sideways in their mouth they're going to be breathing hard because they're working , but it should be between their canine teeth in the front , let's say they're kicked sideways . That's one early sign to kind of watch for .

But if they start getting , you know , uncoordinated , weak , wobbly feet blowing you off , you know , a lot of times we all , especially the younger members of this guy listen you're sure your dog's screwing with you . He's just screwing with me today . He may be real damn hot and about to lose his mind . The uh in the heat . You just gotta be careful .

So if , if they're quote unquote screwing with you and blowing you off , you might better bring them in and you start seeing any of those kind of signs , you want to cool them off . Always after work , either have them tied out , have a fan on them , that type of stuff , access to good cool water .

They start getting hot and they're stumbling and falling that type of stuff . One of my preferreds keeping a bottle of alcohol in your your dog blind bag kind of deal that evaporates really fast and alcohol in their ears and on their feet helps cool them off . Um , don't give them in a bucket of ice water .

You can drop your temperature too fast , which is equally scary . So I like cool water , air blowing on them , that type stuff , and then , if they're not cooling off quick , get them to vet Watts IV fluids and all the things that go with it .

He was mentally just a different dog and that made me very nervous because he was an expensive import and I was like dang , that poor guy spent a lot of money on that dog and he never produced puppies again after that either .

And you hear a lot of horror stories , you see a lot about it , and every year during hunting season people ask about dogs getting too cold . But in the summer I see a lot more of dogs just overheating .

We had a client this past year won't name any names but he had a dog with a pro trainer and the dog overheated and then the pro didn't get into the vet in time and I think he died like 36 hours later from organ failure , I want to say and just liver , kidneys , everything just shut down and um , it's scary stuff .

Um , and when they're getting too cold , you get them out of the water , you get them dry , you wrap them in your coat , get them in the truck , like typically those guys do . Pretty okay , um , the , the heat stroke stuff is the . That's the , the scarier part yeah , it is avoidable .

So , uh , check the water temps . We do a lot of shallow water stuff early morning , get them wet and then work them on the land after they've already gotten wet and try to keep them cool , try not to cool them down too fast . Lee mentioned having a bottle of alcohol . He didn't mean whiskey or tequila , just rubbing alcohol .

We keep a bottle of that in our first aid kit and pour it on their stomach and their ears and their feet , get it evaporating .

The dogs aren't accustomed to it and so it's . I think we see more heat stress , heat stroke-related injuries early summer than we do later summer . So be extra mindful this time of year . But yes , the water's still cool right now , so the water's your friend this time of year .

Once you get in July and August it's just as hot as the air temperature is , so it doesn't do you a whole lot of good .

And then I realized this is the first day we've reached these temps , that we've been out working and they're just not , they're not acclimated , especially the ones that flew over this past winter from northern scotland , you know they've never felt , they've never felt humidity like this .

So I'm like , hey , you want to get out there and run wind sprints in a fur coat , feel what it's like . Last , uh , last little bit . This is super helpful . I really appreciate you taking the time to hop on very different episode uh than my , my duck hunting . I'm gonna take you duck hunting one day . I send you pictures all the time .

I'm gonna break you away . We're gonna go somewhere really fun uh and get it . One thing I thought about this when I was driving last week , thinking about chatting with you and it's not reproductive . It's not anything to do with what we've been talking about , but just from an athletic dog perspective . We keep our dogs in really good shape .

We keep their body index low . You can see a rib or two , a lot of muscle tone .

But one thing that I've been hearing a lot about recently really I've heard a lot about since I started doing this but I have not experienced a ton of this and I think it's probably safe for me to say I've seen it more in the taller American lines than I have in British lines , but it's ACL tears .

I've talked to several people even this year who have dogs that have torn their ACLs . I was told years ago hey , if a dog tears an ACL and you repair it , just get ready , they're going to , they're going to tear the other one . I've seen that a lot . What are your thoughts on that ? Are there things people can do to avoid that ahead of time ?

there's not a lot . I think they're just like with the pin hip or we're seeing how much laxity there is in the hip . With the knee the femur sits on top of the tibia , just like it's on a tabletop essentially , and so we're finding that the tibia bottom bone in the joint has a little angle to it .

A typical dog like would like for them to be five , eight degree angle on the tibia . A lot of these dogs will have a 15 to 20 degree angle on there which allows the femur to slide backwards .

When femur goes backwards they see l tears boom , and so I think they're starting to do some of it and in time there's probably going to be a score we put on the knees that will be able to hopefully help breed better angles of the knee to help prevent some ACL tears . Definitely . We see it in American field trial lines . There's family lines of them .

Those guys tear knees like crazy . We know it . So it's a big deal . We do see , I would say , considerably more cruciate ligament injuries in the American field trial lines than we do in the British guys . But it's out there for any of them .

British dogs , they get a little . They get a little iffy with that . After that life is a pro con list . It's all what it's . That's the way it works , but on these knees , the good thing about a it's a cranial cruciate in dogs because they're on four , and an anterior cruciate people , because we're on two .

But , um , we'll call it acl for um , for the sake here , um you . The good thing with it is the tplo surgeries work fabulously well . Um , they cost you a chunk of money . You rehab it , but the dog is as good to go post-surgery 90% of the time or more , than they were pre-injury , like they just get right back .

The problem is they're going to overuse the now good side and you're going to get an overuse injury on the other one , and there's a high percentage chance when one goes , the other side's going to .

When the front end starts giving you trouble , it's just always a nagging problem .

All of the drug companies have figured out that moxidectin is the go-to and they all want a moxidectin product on the market . Now , when we're having all the breakthroughs and all the heartworm positives , it seems to have died down a little bit in the last five years .

Or maybe we've just changed our preventatives and some of our stuff . But the uh , your ivermectin and milbomycinoxine , which was interceptor and heart guard those guys were having more trouble with them than we were with Advantage Multi back originally . It was the first moxidectin product that came to market and that would seem to be the go-to .

So I don't care which one , I just want moxidectin .

It was terrifying Like I've given this dog heartworm prevention every month the same day since I brought it home and yeah , I had so many buddies like you that I just call them two-time losers .

I mean you've got so many British lab breeders right here within two , three hours of you in Oxford . So we'd love for your last answer just to be tell everyone why Southern Oak Kennels is your favorite . I'm just messing . You don't need to answer that . I know you get to see some awesome dogs . I'm always a little jealous .

You get to kind of see all of us and all the stuff that comes over and all the imports and , uh , it is go ahead .

I ran , hunt , test and trained and then I had a really smart old man tell me one time he's probably my age now when he said it but you can't do everything all the time , son , and I'm one of those that likes to do everything , but I also like doing things well , and when kids started getting bigger and practice started getting busier , like I just I was not

doing a dog justice to have it , because I didn't have time to train it and I like doing it myself . I didn't want somebody else to do it .

So I've gotten to where I'm not doing really any lab training , but I still get to see all of you guys and I see the new dogs that come over and I see the dog that won the trial and I get to make the puppies , and so I've still got this weird niche in the game that lets me still feel like I'm kind of playing it down and it's a .

That's a really fun side part of my job .

I'm not going to speak on behalf of a whole lot of people that I don't know , but the ones that I do know , uh , who are around here .

You're a incredible resource for all of us in this area and uh have , without a doubt , made it so much easier and more enjoyable to do what we do from American and British dogs and probably some Boykins and other stuff too .

So I appreciate you very much and all the things that you do , and very much appreciate you taking a little bit of time out on a Friday to chat about all this , and I'm sure our listeners will enjoy it too .