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I can’t count the number of times I had dreams, nightmares really, where my backyard fence was missing or broken, and the dogs were free to escape.  They were as unwilling to come when called in my dreams as they were in real life.

In reality, my fence was strong and never yielded to either barometric nor paw pressure.  Until last September.  L’acy had passed away a couple of years before that, so the breach wasn’t a nightmare come true, but the fence crumbled under the force of a strong windstorm.  Two posts snapped at their base and the attached panels, each some eight feet wide, fell to the ground.  No big deal, I just had to replace the posts and reattach the panels. 

Not so fast.  I needed to remove the concrete sleeves the posts were given when they were first installed.  They were about ten inches wide and sunk to two feet under the ground.  I called a fence contractor and asked for an estimate.  Hilarious.  You know a contractor really doesn’t want the gig when they ask for $2,500 to repair about twenty feet of cedar fencing.  Either that, or I really don’t know how much this stuff costs.

I managed to convince a friend of mine to help me dig out the concrete sleeves.  It took two lunchtime sessions and a whole lot of false anger, but we managed to remove the concrete and maintain the integrity of the resultant holes in the ground.  I ran to the home improvement store, picked up a couple new posts and some quick setting concrete.  In short time, I was back in business.

Until April.  Another windstorm blew through and more posts met their maker.  At this point I decided it was time to step back and improve the fence system as a whole.  A post that held up fencing between the garden and the back yard had also broken free, and the gates were sagging to the point where they were hard to use.  I think twenty-five years is long enough.

I started work on the new gate frames, but before I got very far, summer temperatures soared into the nineties and my outdoor efforts became focused on the landscape and garden.  The summer passed and very little work on the gates had been done.  As fall approached, however, old frames were removed, as was the fence between the garden and back yard.  You could stand in the street in front of my house and look all the way to the back alley.  For over a month, I felt exposed.

I slowly completed the gate frames, mounted them to posts, and tuned them to work with ease.  I was stoked.  What remained were three concrete sleeves stuck in the ground and I wasn’t sure I had enough energy to remove them by myself.  My friend helped me with one of them, but two lingered in the ground until a week ago.  Fortunately for me, a group of young men from the neighborhood church ward volunteered to help.  Actually, they were too skinny to help dig and pry, it was their dads, there to supervise, that provided the hard labor.  The kids gathered the shards of concrete and scooped dirt from the holes when they weren’t playing tag on the lawn.  It took about an hour before the last of the sleeves were pulled from their graves.

Over the next couple of days I replaced posts and rails and reattached slats.  The back yard is once again ready for dogs.

Plan A was solid. 

Magnus was going to be bred to Lottie, and to complete the plan, Rocky Mountain Epic Evelyn (AKA Evie) would be bred to produce the female compliment to my Magnus son.  That breeding would also be the result of a frozen insemination drawn from an historically well-known sire, Jack the Bear.  This plan brought history to life, both figuratively and literally.

A couple of weeks ago, both girls started their Fall heat.  There was a lot of excitement for this project among those of us involved, and optimism was high.  It’s amazing how someone with all my years of experience can ignore reality so effortlessly.  I forgot how random this process can be, and how frustrating it is to see puppies from an accidental breeding handed out in front of a grocery store while years of planning and thousands of dollars in expenses might yield nothing.  You’d think we were doing it wrong.

As both girls climbed toward their fertile zeniths, blood was drawn every couple of days and tested for its progesterone.  When the progesterone levels reached appropriate concentrations, the procedures would be performed.

Evie’s progesterone levels rose first, but failed to rise consistently.  Given the requirements to maximize chances that a female will get pregnant from a frozen insemination were unmet, that breeding was abandoned.  Evie was bred by a living sire instead, and ties were accomplished.  Although this was not part of the plan, it stands as a solid Plan B.

Lottie’s progesterone levels eventually rose as required, and at the perfect time, Magnus’s contribution was thawed.  The phone rang, it was the vet clinic.  Turns out, Magnus’s little swimmers were few and tired.  Maybe too few and too tired.  Another vial was thawed, and although it was better, it was still underwhelming.  This did not exclude success, but it certainly diminished chances and might limit litter size even if successful.

A decision had to be made, and despite the poor showing, we went ahead as planned.  We considered doing both the insemination as well as a live breeding.  With modern DNA testing, each puppy would have a legitimate pedigree, but we worried that swimmers from the live sire would win ALL the races, so we opted for just the Magnus breeding and hope for the best.  The next day, the procedure was repeated, and although the swimmer count was again low, it was a bit better than the day before.  Time will tell.

Pictured above is Lottie.  We’re rooting for her.

Ready or not, here I go again.

A year ago, a long-time friend reached out to me to see if I still had Magnus semen in the bank.  Don’t freak out, he is a Tibetan Mastiff breeder who has been in the breed for over 20 years, and someone I coached in basketball when he was a teenager.  He wanted to negotiate a breeding, putting Magnus to one of his females; my compensation would be the pick of the litter.

I must admit that I hesitated.  Not because of him or his dogs, but because I questioned whether or not I was ready to jump back in.  L’acy had been gone for two years and I got used to a clean back lawn.  Poof!  The thought of a Magnus son brought me out of my haze.

When I first got involved in the breed, the size of Tibetan Mastiffs varied greatly.  Just look at my first two dogs: Blaze was a heavily coated 85-pound beauty queen and Magnus was a short coated 190-pound gargantuan.  That summed up the breed variety pretty well.  Here we are some 25 years later, and not much has changed.  Sure, the overall quality of the breed has probably advanced a bit; improved joint and movement quality with extra wrinkles and fur, but the dogs still range greatly in size.  Same old same old.  Perhaps, Magnus’s genes still had value.

I called the sperm bank and verified that I hadn’t paid for upkeep in many years.  I sheepishly inquired about restitution.  Turns out, I needed to break the piggy bank to get my account up to date and find out the status of my cache.  Fortunately, there were 8 well-kept vials ready to give my dream a chance.  Unfortunately, dog breeding is highly unpredictable. 

By the time my friend and I got our act together, the female my friend had in mind had gone out of heat.  This breeding was put on hold for a full year.  Fast forward to today; that year has passed, and that female is in her fall estrus once again.

Pictured above is 6-year-old, Rocky Mountain Charlotte, AKA Lottie.  Her color is Gold Sable, just like Sindred, but her gold color is a bit lighter.  Lottie is a tall drink of water that will bring rear structure and coat quality to the party.  Again, Magnus will provide gargantuousness and his polite temperament.  This breeding is considered an “outcross.”  There is almost no overlap in their pedigrees until you reach back 5 or so generations.  This may produce a wider variety of outcomes than a breeding where genes are more shared, but it is a worthy roll of the dice.

Of course, Lottie’s ancestors are not lightweights.  She descends down two lines from champions Queen of Eden and Loki.  For the record, Loki is the son of Darth, Nika’s brother, and his great grandparents include both Simba and Lady; Magnus’s parents.  There’s the overlap.

This is just the first step, and not the only breeding planned.  Stay tuned.