Pre-Breeding Veterinary Exams and Why They Matter

Dr. Marty Greer, DVM joins host Laura Reeves to discuss pre-breeding veterinary exams for female dogs and why they matter. Among the important clinical observations may be vaginal strictures.

“I think stricture kind of lumps together a couple of different disorders that probably shouldn’t really be categorized together,” Greer said. “But we don’t know where else to put them. So, a stricture is, by definition, the inability of the vaginal vault or vaginal opening to stretch adequately to allow either a natural mating with a tie and a penis or the vaginal delivery of puppies.

“So what does that really mean? That means that when we do a vaginal exam, for whatever reason the normal amount of space isn’t there. It can be that the lips of the vulva, the skin part are really tight and you just can’t adequately get them to stretch. It can mean that there’s a circumferentially stricture meaning all the way around, it’s just not stretchy enough once you get into the vaginal vault. It can mean that there is a column of tissue, a septum, down the middle, usually it runs from top to bottom, so we can reach in sometimes and feel these when we’re doing our pre breeding exams.

“If you do find one, you may decide that you’re not going to do the breeding at that point. You may see if it’s something that’s surgically correctable. Some of them are and frankly some of them aren’t and until you’re in that situation it can be really hard to know. Then we have to make a decision, do we put the semen in? Do we plan a C-section? Do we see what’s going to happen…”

Greer noted that brucellosis tests are currently being sent to outside diagnostic labs, so results are taking much longer to return. Regular testing of breeding animals should take place at least every 6 months, she added.

Listen in for Greer’s recommendations about additional complications that may hinder natural matings, including size mismatches, lack of libido or pain in the stud dog and poor ovulation timing.