 Hello, this is James with Love My Pups and we're going to talk today about how you can decide when to AI your dog so you can have a successful litter and maximize litter size so that you can have pretty little fringes like this little girl right here. And also I've got her in the video here so you don't have to look at my face so you can look at something it's a little bit more interesting as I talk about this. So how do you time at AI? So I ship Seaman using my product shipmate all around the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. And so the problem is that these people don't have the luxury of having to start on site and getting the timing right is very important. You may want to AI once or twice and you've got to get present that Seaman at the right time to successfully get a pregnancy. So I want to talk a little bit about what the process that you go through here and how you go ahead and decide when's the right time to do this. So the normal situation for a dog is that it starts to go into heat. The day that happens is the day that you see the first signs of blood spots on the ground or on her bedding. You count that as day one. The progesterone level at that point, you can do the progesterone level for a blood test. The progesterone level at that point is something less than one. Progesterone levels slowly rise and then over typically most dogs will ovulate some time around day 9, 10, 11, something in that time frame. And the progesterone level at that point will be five. Then the day after that the progesterone level will be in eight and then you should AI the second day after ovulation and then you should get a progesterone level of about 15. So for me what I like to do is I like to ship, seeming that I'm doing a single insemination on a progesterone level of eight. It then gets there the following day and that day the progesterone level should be close to 15. But the problem is is not all and that would leave a dog this bread sometime between day 11 and 13. That's the normal dog. Some dogs, their progesterone level rise quicker and then be AI on day 9. Sometimes you'll have a dog that said their progesterone level is rise slower. They might be bread on day 14 or 18 or even 20. And then sometimes you can have dogs to have what are called split heats where they start the whole process. And then the whole kind of mechanism of this rising progesterone stools out. And then they may go backwards on their progesterone levels or stall out of that number. Sometimes this might take another week to two weeks. They may go out of heat completely and come back in two weeks or a month later. I see that typically in younger dogs, dogs where this is their first or second heat. So the secret to this though is to do a progesterone test. This is the safest way to get it right. Now the other thing that you'll see is if you look at the discharge color, not the volume of blood that's been produced or dropping on the ground, but the color of it. Typically you'll see the color get much lighter as they approach ovulation at around day 10-11. And it will go almost a straw or vanilla color after that. And that's a sign of a dog that's probably ready to be bred. And of course there's one more thing that you can do. If you've got a male dog around, you'll see the male dog start to pass to the female probably before she ovulates. And she may show some interest in that dog and start kind of flirting with him, dancing around, swiping her back end in his face. But typically what'll happen is the male will try to get up on the dog's back end and mount the dog, but the female won't have any of that. And we'll kind of move out of the way, may even turn around and snap at him until the day that she's receptive. So they've got their own kind of system. They've got, they can smell these pheromones that are going on and they, from that, they can time it themselves. Of course we can't do that. We have to rely on the dogs to tell us this. And even the activity when you've just got females around, you'll find females that will start humping each other. And that's a clear indicator that probably a dog is going into heat or is in heat. But it's certainly not a very good indicator as to exactly when you should AI. So, progesterone test, the best way. So how do you do a progesterone test? Well, to do it, you have to draw blood. You can go to your vet. Most vets do not have the machinery in place to give you the progesterone numbers immediately. And they have to send it off to a lab. So that can involve one day's worth of weight. So be careful about that because if you're going in on a Friday to have a progesterone test, you didn't get the results until Monday. That's not particularly useful information. What I do is I use the target canine ovulation test kit. I buy it from Hamilton Research. It's about $118 for 12 tests. It'll keep for a year in your fridge. You do have to draw blood. And you do have to go through a little process to get the results from it. But it takes about 10 minutes to get the results back. And it doesn't give you a specific number. It's not a quantitative test. It's a qualitative test. What it does is it's a little white cylinder. And it changes from color of being a fairly dark blue for a dog that's not even remotely ready to white for a dog that needs to be bred. So I use that all the time. I have pit lots of my customers who use that. I have other people who don't like those kind of tests. They much rather have a lab test. Lab test is great, but it's not always available to everybody. And it can be pretty darn expensive. So the price on lab tests seems to vary from a low end of about $40 to a high end of about $200. So if you go have three or four tests done and it's costing you a couple of hundred dollars a test, you can go run up. Vett bills are approaching $1,000 just to decide when's the right time to AI. For me, the cost for me is typically two tests and $10 a piece is 20 bucks. That's what about what it cost me to do it. But again, that's not there for everybody. And not everybody likes that test. But certainly the more information you have on when is the right time to AI will result in more puppies like this little Liwett and Tan girl who's actually gorgeous. So there's more written information on this whole process including the test and how to actually perform the test. You do have to draw blood to do that test. It shows you how to do that to my website, my website is www.lovemypups.com L-O-V-E-M-Y-P-U-P-S.com. And I've also got another website called MyBreadersupply.com that has a lot of information on various different bits and pieces and ideas and things that you should have to be able to go and have successful leadership puppies. So that you can have beautiful Frenchers like this girl right here. And again, if I can be of any help to you go to my website, I'd be glad to answer any questions. And good luck with your breeding. Bye-bye.