Hello and Best Wishes for the Holiday Season! 
Merry Christmas!  Happy Hanukah!  Feliz Navidad! 
(Please don’t feel excluded by my meagre list.  I’m happy to add to it.)

 

Here at the ranch, we have big news.  We drove home from Arizona in early November, anticipating that Nakita could go into heat and not wanting her stressed by flying in a crate.  It was an uneventful trip and we arrived home to a wonderland of snow.  Nakita’s OFA hip results arrived soon after – with a score of “Good”.  So she is all clear to breed.

 

Nakita went into heat on November 20 and we have now had two successful, well-timed ties.  At the moment, our best guess is that puppies might arrive at the beginning of February.

 

What’s unique about this planned litter?  We imported Nakita from France intentionally to lower the Wright’s Co-efficient of Inbreeding (COI) of our puppies.  The COI involves a lot of math and pedigree accuracy.  Fortunately, the National Entlebucher Mountain Dog Association (NEMDA) has collected pedigrees for our breed and calculated our COI with the following results.

 

                        Nelson               Nakita              Pups

     COI5           5.71%                4.72%               0.37%

     COI10       21.24%              18.00%             10.65%

 

These puppies will have COIs that are 10 times lower than either parent – the result of new genetic material being combined.  We hope that offspring from our litter will create a line of lower COI Entlebuchers that can improve health, fertility and breed survival.

 

What’s next?  Canine gestation is roughly 63 days from ovulation.  Mating can be successful from about 3 days before to 5 days after ovulation but realistically, there are generally only 2 to 3 fertile days each heat cycle.  Given our dates, we anticipate pups somewhere around the first week of February, 2020 in Cottonwood, Arizona.  We will plan an Ultrasound Examination in about a month to confirm pregnancy and try to get an idea of the number of puppies.  So until then, please keep your fingers crossed!

 

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to submit your Puppy Application.  Once we have an idea of numbers, we will request references, conduct interviews, select homes and request a deposit.  If you already have found a puppy or have committed to another breeder, please let us know.  Similarly, if you have decided to wait for a future litter, perhaps a litter in Alberta, just let us know and we’ll remove you from the A Litter communication. 

 

We will keep a ‘Reserved’ list in case someone drops out or we have more pups than expected.  These families will be on the top of the list for Litter B.  We will collect information on the best kind of puppy from you as well, in case we need to move you up the list, (Puppy Match Information) but we won’t ask for a deposit. 

 

You can expect an update in about a month as we learn more about this hopeful pregnancy.  We hope you are as excited about an Entlebucher puppy as we are. 

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Laureen, Ian
Nelson & Nakita

www.bar-tt-entlebuchers.com

www.bar-tt-cowhorse.com

www.tall-timber-cattle-company.com