Breed a working dog only on purpose, from adults whose temperament and health have been proven over years, after you have costed the litter: six puppies of about 5 kg each eat the energy of more than half a family of four’s rice ration every day. If you do not want puppies, keep males and females apart through each heat, because an unaltered dog roams and fights, and the wrong litter is a burden the household cannot feed.
Part of Guard Dog Training
Breeding considerations are the decisions about whether, when and from which dogs to produce puppies, and the food, time and risk a litter demands from a household.
A Litter Is A Decision About Food, Time And Temperament
The parent article says to spay or neuter if possible, because unaltered dogs are distracted by mating drives and more prone to wandering, and that if you want to breed you should do so deliberately and selectively. Both parts matter. Dogs that are not neutered become a source of fights, roaming and unplanned litters. But where surgery is not available or too risky, the realistic control is management: keep the sexes apart during a female’s heat, which I recall recurs about twice a year and lasts around three weeks, figures to check against your own dog.
If you do breed, the principles in Selective Breeding, written for livestock, carry over: choose for the traits that matter for survival first, which for a warning dog are temperament, health and fertility, and keep records. The guard-dog article’s own warning applies to what you select: a dog that is nervous, aggressive or bites is not a breeding animal, whatever its size.
What You Need
- Adult dogs of proven temperament, assessed with Temperament Assessment and watched for at least a couple of years
- A record of health and behaviour for each parent, and what you know of their parents
- Food for the mother and the litter — see the worked example
- Space and shelter for the mother and puppies, away from children and other dogs
- Homes for the puppies, found before they are born
- A plan for socialisation, since puppies need regular, gentle handling during their early weeks
Method: Decide, Select, Cost, Rear, Place
Step 1: Decide whether you need puppies. If you have working dogs now and no prospect of losing them, the answer is probably not yet.
Step 2: Select the parents. Calm, confident, bonded to people, recovering fast from a startle, free of bites, and healthy. Avoid mating close relatives. Large dogs are prone to joint disease, which I recall as a common inherited problem, and without X-rays the best check is how they move after hard work.
Step 3: Cost the litter using the worked example.
Step 4: Plan the timeline. Pregnancy lasts around 63 days (recalled). Puppies are usually weaned from about 6 to 8 weeks. The early weeks, roughly the first three months, are when a puppy learns about people and the world; I am recalling a socialisation period of about 3 to 12 weeks. Handle the puppies daily, gently, with many different people.
Step 5: Rear and place. Keep a puppy until at least 8 weeks, then place it with a household that can feed and control it, and keep contact with the households you give puppies to.
Step 6: Keep the line honest. Do not rely on one pairing; keep records of how the puppies turn out.
Worked Example: What Six Puppies Cost In Food
The feeding article gives the resting energy formula, RER = 70 × body weight in kg to the power 0.75. Take six puppies of 5 kg each at about 8 weeks (a size assumed for the example), growing puppies needing about 3 times RER (recalled).
- 5 to the power 0.75 is 3.34, so RER = 70 × 3.34 = 234 kcal a day for one puppy.
- At 3 × RER: 234 × 3 = 702 kcal a day each.
- For six: 702 × 6 = 4,212 kcal a day.
- In rice-equivalent energy at 3.6 kcal per g (Emergency Caches): 4,212 ÷ 3.6 = 1,170 g, about 1.17 kg a day.
- A household of four eats 4 × 0.55 = 2.2 kg of rice a day (Inventory Management). The litter’s 1.17 kg is 1.17 ÷ 2.2 = 53% of that, over half.
That is the energy only; puppies also need protein and calcium in the right balance (see Feeding Without Commercial Dog Food), and the mother needs extra food while she nurses. A litter is therefore as large a food commitment as another adult or two for weeks, which is why it must be planned before mating.
Common Mistakes
- Breeding the dog because it is a good worker, without checking its temperament with people. A hard worker that bites is not a parent.
- Keeping the whole litter. Six extra dogs cannot be fed or controlled.
- No placement plan. Unplaced puppies become strays.
- Mating close relatives. Inherited faults concentrate.
- Leaving the sexes together during a heat when you do not want puppies.
Safety
A mother with puppies defends them, and puppies carry worms
A bitch with young puppies can bite even a person she trusts; keep children and strangers away and never reach for a puppy while she is anxious. Dogs bite most often the children they know. Puppies commonly carry worms and other parasites that infect people, so wash hands after handling them and keep them out of kitchens and children’s beds; see Zoonotic Diseases. Whelping can go wrong and a field cannot fix every problem; an obstructed or exhausted bitch may die. Do not breed a dog that is thin, ill or too young. Do not train or sell puppies for attack work; a dog taught to attack cannot be safely rehomed or handled by a vet.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Care of a Working Dog in a Survival Setting — keeping the adult dogs fit
- Combine with: Selective Breeding — records and selection pressure over generations