What do you require to breed dogs?

Here at the Animal Hospital of Statesville, we're committed to helping healthy dogs produce healthy puppies. So all of our requirements revolve around the health of the dog. We require that the mother dog has been seen regularly by a veterinarian, preferably with a visit in the last year—that they're up to date on vaccines or titers, their heartworm test, and a Brucella test, which is a sexually transmitted disease in dogs that can be passed to humans and cause infertility. So we cover our bases to make sure they have the best chance of getting pregnant and are healthy to carry the pregnancy.

Some of the things that we can do at the visit if we need to - like the heartworm test and vaccines - are not safe to give before pregnancy, so we can pull titers if we need to in order to check that they have appropriate immunity. Or we can wait a heat cycle if we absolutely have to, to make sure that everybody's healthy.