Has anyone done AI the surgical insemination method, wondered how successful it was or not?

tried twice and failed twice with frozen semen / surgical AI .. both times bitch in whelp but reabsorbed at 4.5wks :(   Same bitch produce two litters to natural matings , one pre AI (8 pups) and one post AI attempts (10 pups)

Karen

thanks for the info Karen, did you give the herpes vacine

Haven't done it personally but my dog (now 8 years old) was from a successful AI litter of 7. It was a repeat of a previous successful AI litter of 6 (same batch, different straw :-))

From my understanding, if frozen is used then surgical is likely to be more successful than trans-cervical.

I know of a successful litter of 8 produced recently via this method (not in UK)

what do folks think about giving the herpes vacine supposed to be given due to semen carrying the fading puppy syndrome virus..

yep ... alway use herpes vaccine.

karen

I have only ever used the herpes vacc once & never again. My bitch re-absorbed at 6 weeks the first time round so the next time I mated her I gave the herpes and yes she carried full term. However, the puppies were mummified in some cases, some had their innods out and another was dead. I did have 1 surviving pup who is blind in 1 eye :(  I know a lot of people who do give the vacc but not for me again I'm afraid.

The timing of the insemination is the crucial factor.
With frozen semen inseminations it is not simply a case of inseminating once the bitch has reached a certain level of progesterone.An insemination should never be done on numerical results alone. 
Pre mate test kits are useless with frozen semen inseminations,the only reliable test is the immulite quantitative assay,even then,there are other factors to be taken into account on deciding the exact time to inseminate.TCI requires substantially more viable sperm cells post thaw than surgical insemination.When all these factors are taken into account,the sucess rate is broadly similar