Doctors differ, and patients . . .
Michael Watts MRCVS
Back in the day the traditional approach to breeding greyhounds was to watch for your bitch coming into heat, then ‘phoned around to book the stud dog of your choice. You then counted the number of days after she started bleeding or the number of days after she stopped bleeding, depending on the school of thought to which you adhered.
On the appointed day you popped her in the back of the van and chauffeured her to her hot date. Arriving at his place, introductions were performed by the respective chaperones, both parties being suitable muzzled in case the bitch decided she was not a consenting adult and was going to make war rather than love.
If the course of true love ran smoothly, before very long the two were making whoopee. Mission accomplished, you had a quick fag, then headed home and returned for round two a couple of days later.
That works the very best if both dog and bitch are reasonably fertile, if they are physically fit enough to successfully achieve a natural mating and if they are compatible enough to attempt a natural service without trying to eat one another. It restricts your choice of stud dogs to those within driving distance or a journey on the transporter away from home.
The leading lights of the Australian scene and the top dogs in the U.S. of A. were definitely off limits. The traditional route is all very well, but for the owner of the brood bitch, it means putting all her eggs in one basket.
If everything does not come up roses, you have at least six months to wait to try again or a year if the bitch is a twelve-month breaker or if the whelping date is of great importance, as in the case of coursing pups destined for trial stakes in Ireland.
Breeding dogs is inherently a gamble, but it makes sense to tilt the odds in your favour. Artificial insemination potentially allows you to breed from stud dogs who are old or who are unable to mate naturally through injury.
It allows you to breed from the bitch who wants nothing to do with the dogs, even on the day which blood tests or vaginal swabbing suggests should be her most fertile time. It allows U.K breeders to use frozen semen imported from all airts and parts and potentially to use the semen of stud dogs who are no longer to be counted in the ranks of the living. It greatly reduces the risk of transmission of disease between dog and bitch. In short, A.I. has revolutionized greyhound breeding
Getting down to the nitty gritty, there are in theory two techniques that can be used to inseminate greyhounds artificially. There is Transcervical Insemination (T.C.I.) in which the semen is squirted into the womb down a catheter that has been introduced through the cervix and there is surgical .I. where the semen is injected through the wall of the womb while the bitch is under anaesthesia.
In a natural mating, the dog deposits his semen in the vagina, on the “wrong” side of the cervix and a few lucky sperm manage to find their way to the cervix and swim through it towards their goal. Either of these techniques increases the chances of any individual sperm meeting up with an egg before the warmth of the womb kills them all off about twenty-four hours post service. By so doing it allows stud dogs of reduced fertility to father litters.
When combined with blood testing to identify the optimal date of mating, by depositing large numbers of spermatozoa close to the site of fertilization of the eggs, it can also improve the chances of conception for some bitches whose fertility is lower than normal. Surgical A.I. is particularly useful in those bitches whose poor fertility is related to problems with the cervix.
There is only one problem: the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons has this week clarified that surgical A.I. is currently not legal in the U.K. Following a meeting of the College’s Standards Committee last month, the R.C.V.S has updated Section 27 of its Code of Professional Conduct, which is entitled “Miscellaneous Procedure: Legal and Ethical Considerations” to make it clear that surgical A.I. is a prohibited procedure under the terms of the Animal Welfare Act (2006). Prohibited procedures are defined as those which interfere with the sensitive tissue or bone structure. Some procedures are specifically exempted under the Mutilations (Permitted Procedures) (England) Regulations (2007) but surgical A.I. is not one of them. In a statement the Registrar of the College Eleanor Ferguson reportedly said that “due to an unfortunate oversight the guidance had not been updated following the legislative change, although in the interim the guidance still made it clear that surgical A.I of dogs was unlikely to be in the animal’s best interests and could only be carried out and justified in very limited circumstances and for exceptional reasons. However we apologize for the oversight and as soon as the College was made aware that the guidance on surgical A.I. did not conform exactly with the legislation and regulations a paper was prepared for the Standards Committee to consider as soon as possible and update the guidance accordingly”.
Readers might wonder how the oversight went unnoticed for something like twelve years. They might even speculate as to how the College finally was made aware of it but I for one am not about to stick my head over the parapet here. Mine is not the most handsome head you ever saw and it may not contain much between the ears, but it is the only head I have got, I have got used to it over the years and would rather not have it shot off. If you want to be a hero, get yourself a white horse. I am happy to settle for a battered black Skoda.
I am sure that the esteemed members of the College’s Standards Committee had very good reasons for coming to their conclusion that surgical A.I. was not a legal procedure. The only slight fly in the ointment is that it is, as I understand it, a legal technique in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S.A and the Republic of Ireland, to name but a few countries.
Now I am no lawyer, for which the other members of the Dar are no doubt heartily glad, but it strikes me that most of the so-called mutilations that are banned under this legislation can be characterised in general terms as causing pain.
We are talking about the cropping of dogs’ ears and the docking of puppies’ tails for purely cosmetic reasons, for example. This works for me. I was never happy about docking pups’ tail but I did it in the past rather than see their breeders attempt it and botch the job. I still get asked pretty regularly to dock tails and I am more than happy to have a good to refuse to carry out the procedure.
Surgical A.I. however is a procedure carried out under general anaesthesia and so should not cause severe or intractable pain. A Devil’s Advocate might draw attention to the fact that the dehorning of adult cattle, a legal procedure done largely for health and safety reasons, is customarily carried out under local anaesthesia, which might only reduce pain for an hour or thereabouts perioperatively and that the castration of young calves without any form of anaesthesia is permitted under some circumstances.
There are suggestions that the legal situation surrounding surgical A.I. may possibly be anomalous. It might be instructive to find out more about the thinking of the members of the Standards Committee who advised amending the Code of Professional conduct.
Your favourite gumshoe will don his deerstalker, light his meerschaum and go fearlessly in search of the truth as always.
In the meantime if soft lighting, romantic music, champagne and red roses have not done the trick for your brood bitch and you feel that surgical A.I. might be the best path to parenthood for your bitch you need to send her on the transporter to the Republic of Ireland.
Go n-éirί an t-adh libh go léir.
