[MyFairLacy]

Originally Posted by Pruett

Great information MyFairLacy, I appreciate it.

No one is spewing slanderous innuendos E Toi. What is wrong with you? I ask a simple question.

The one female that we know about having the virus had a lot of problems. The litter before she was spayed, she lost the whole litter of 5. The litter previous to that one she lost 3 out of 4 and the one before that 2 out of 4 survive. She has not had a very good success rate and that is why she was spayed. Apparently she never built up any antibodies and I'm sure it has happened in other cases.

So it's better to go ahead and breed a bitch to a male that has herpes to strengthen her immune system? I just have a hard time thinking about losing puppies like that.

I had a bitch abort a litter a week early and one puppy survive. It took round the clock care to keep her alive and body temperature was a big problem. I ended up making an incubator and she came through just fine. Mom hated being in there, but she tolerated it for her baby.

It's possible that there could have been more going on with this particular bitch and her puppies. It's hard to know. It is possible that stress during pregnancy caused the dormant virus to become active again or for her to become reinfected more easily. It seems like in most cases after losing a litter to herpes, a bitch has as much chance of having a normal litter as any other.

I probably wouldn't breed to a male that was showing active signs of infection on his genitals, but the infection should only last for so long and then he should be fine to breed again. As the articles said, most dogs have had herpes at some point. Most show no symptoms or respiratory symptoms but they were still infected just as much as a dog showing symptoms on their genitals. It's the same virus. I would just give him a little time for his immune system to clear the active virus.