Int Nord uch Sobers Seraphino and Batique’s puppies are born July 14^th 2003!

This litter is the result of a long and almost unbelievable story…

Back in 1996 we got a very flattering enquiry from the US where Maureen Lucas, “Lochinvar” and Sharon Gilb, “Sharbo” were interested in importing frozen semen from Int Nord Ch Sobers Seraphino “Titten”. We sent quite a few straws over – everything that was collected, in fact, because the specialists at the veterinary college in Oslo confirmed the semen was of good quality and because he was still young. The idea was to collect him for storage in Norway “later”. Well, “later” never came, and by the time he got another “date”, in Norway this time, the bitch wouldn’t be mated and we tried insemination. It turned out that “Titten” apparently had gone sterile. The experts offered few explanations as to why they found no sperm. He’d never been sick or injured and there were no obvious reasons why he shouldn’t still be able to father a litter. Whatever the cause, temporary or permanent, they weren’t able to collect anything from him at that point, and our hope of having a puppy sired by him seemed very unrealistic.

When Sharon heard about this she immediately offered to let us have the remaining straws back. It was quite a challenge to arrange everything to have them sent over to the US in ’96 – but fixing every detail needed to bring them home was almost overwhelming! It took well over 2 years to sort everything out, from import permits (or rather “re-import permits”) to transportation, etc. But people were incredibly helpful on both sides of the Atlantic, and finally, May 8^th this year the dry-shipper with the last 13 straws arrived safely and soundly in Oslo. As a lucky coincidence our blue bitch Batique, “Debbie”, (Multi Ch Fabian del Marchese di Rhieti x Swede Ch Hickory’s Nautica) had just started her season and could be inseminated 6 days later…so, determined to give it a try I put Debbie and her friend Sobers Elettra “Lettie” (to keep her company on the trip) in the car to drive the 600 kilometres from our home outside Stavanger to Oslo, where the Norwegian Veterinary College is situated. As it’s always difficult to find babysitters, our 2 sons (5 years and 2,5 years old) came along too! The trip went well, kids and dogs behaving beautifully, “Debbie” was inseminated twice (May 14^th and 15^th). After the last time we drove the 600 kilometres (8 hours +) home directely! Guess what happened there?

“Titten”, who has never been particulary interested in girls before and will usually stay with them even when they’re in season whitout trying to mate them – he was absolutely crazy about “Debbie” as soon as she walked through the door. She was the most beautiful lady he’d ever laid eyes on and he just wouldn’t leave her alone. So, we let her stay with 2 other girls behind the gate in the “doggy-sleeping corner” of our livingroom. “Titten” had the rest of the room to his disposal. At any other time he would have been content when having an overview of his “flock” and would have left it at that, whether they were in season or not… But now, we turned our backs on him, and he decided to have some say in the matter too! The very decisive 10 years old stallion (!) jumped the gate and mated “Debbie” whitin minutes! I have to ad that none of our 4 greyhounds have ever tried to jump over there before!

So, here we’ve spent time and energy (not to mention money!) using frozen semen that has travelled around the world a couple of times, driven for days, spent hours at the vets – and “Titten” decides to fix the whole procedure on his own! Veterinary Thommasen at the college laughed a little at the whole story too, and was only slightly “worried” that their statistics won’t tell for sure if it’s the actual mating or the insemination that eventually resulted in 8 puppies… To us it really doesn’t matter, we are just so pleased that we at long last can enjoy these puppies, and happy that even at this age Titten can mate naturally too!...