My vet estimates £100 per test. Can anyone recommend any good postal services that are reasonably priced please? (vet will draw bloods obviously)

Your vet will ship the bloods to the lab. They need to be transported properly as biological products and kept at the correct temperature. The shipping should be included in the price your vet quotes, just as with any other test you'd have carried out at the vets.

As soon as a Lab is involved , up goes the cost.  Teazel's recent fecal cost just under £78. to reveal nothing.  At least I know there are no internal parasites I suppose.

Why not go by the reaction of the stud dog/her?  Unless you have to go a distance for the dog, and prefer not to go until she's right on?  I say because we travelled from Toronto down to Pennsylvania for a mating (12 hours by road).  We made it into a break.

Yes, I had an awful experience with progesterone and we would have missed a breeding if we'd gone by the results.

>I had an awful experience with progesterone and we would have missed a breeding if we'd gone by the results.

Me too; we mated a couple of days after my bitch's behaviour told me she'd ovulated although progesterone tests said she was no where near and to retest in a week. I got a very nice litter which I'd have missed out on.

Yes, sounds the same. We were told to wait and re-test. If we'd done that, we would have gone over and not got to the stud in time. We just tried them together on the most common days for the breed and then bred again 2 days later and had a litter of 7.

I know we would have missed because I counted back from when the litter whelped to find out when ovulation occurred (it's very accurate in reverse like that!) and we would have missed...

> My vet estimates £100 per test

I've used idexx labs in the past. Price was cheaper but it was years ago I used them.

Where abouts are you? There are some canine fertility places popping up all over the country and many offer testing.

> Teazel's recent fecal cost just under £78

Was that threw your vet?
I had one done the other week, work egg count and lung work screen was about just under £30 with wormcount.com

I am in Cornwall, UK. Thanks everyone, I have found a fertility clinic which will run the test for me for £20 & my vet will draw bloods for £18.

Reason for testing is travel & a maiden bitch who from her last season and the physical signs exhibited, appears to have a shorter than average cycle & only ever achieved a slip mating with no pups (she wasn't too keen and he lost all interest by day 15)

I thought prog testing was super reliable? These comments are a bit worrying

Progesterone testing has always been absolutely spot on for me. I have allowed people to bring bitches before the bloods have said she’s ready because their owners have panicked that her behaviour said she was ready, but bitch has always said otherwise when she’s arrived and bloods have been correct.

Croft in Newquay are good. Vets can draw blood for you to send to IDEXX or Ann Morley (spelling might not be correct) as well.

My bitches have a small window it seems, if I mate 2 days post ovulation I will miss, or they will I should say.
Mine need to be mated day of ovulation and day after. Always best to start early than go too late imo. So once you know she has ovulated you can then make the decision yourself when to travel

>I thought prog testing was super reliable? These comments are a bit worrying

Dogs don't read the books. And there are a few problems. First - The problem is that the test can only tell you where the dog is at on the day the test is taken. And you will get that result not immediately. For me, it was the afternoon of the next day. But I couldn't get a test done on Saturday because then Sunday was the next day and there was no point waiting till Monday to get a result. And I of course couldn't get a test done on Sunday either because the vet was closed. So really I could only test Monday to Friday. And bank holidays really mess things up.

Second, the test result will come with some kind of "advice". Like test again in 3 days or something. That is based on the average dog. Dogs don't read the books and they can progress much faster than this.

Our dog was tested on day 5 at 1.1nmol - that was a Tuesday which was really low. The advice given was to test again on Monday. So we did. But as that was day 11, I was nervous not to travel to the stud by then. So we decided to just get ourselves near him. So we did the test on Monday, day 11 as advised but then immediately travelled and got a mating the next day, day 12, Tuesday - with a 20min tie, easily.

Then we went back to our accommodation and got the result from the day before's progesterone - which was (from Larry at Idexx):

"Progesterone result is 4.9 nmol/l.
So she hasn’t ovulated, and resampling on Thursday indicated."

So you can imagine my distress, feeling that I just did a breeding for no reason because we were too early. We were now away from home and rather than take her to an unfamiliar vet for the progesterone, we decided just to wing it. We put the 2nd mating as late as we could before we had to return home - which was day 15 - Friday. The stud owner thought she was less into it and was about to go over, but we got another 20min tie.

When she whelped, I counted back the number of days to the start of anestrus ('going over') - which is v reliable - and found that she went into anestrus on either that Friday or (latest) the Saturday.

If we had tested on Thursday as told to by Larry, we would not have got the result until Friday afternoon - and we wouldn't have been able to arrange to rush to the stud instantly that afternoon. We probably wouldn't have made it there before Saturday, when she would have gone over. And if we had stayed home with our familiar vet to continue progesterone testing on Thursday, then there's no way we could have gotten to the stud in time.

I've run this past a few people and there's absolutely no way she can have gone from 4.9nmol on Monday to anestrus on Friday or Saturday, so the only conclusion is that somehow the progesterone was wrong. Whether that was IDexx which screwed up, or something my vet did with the bloods, I've no idea.

I'm just glad I didn't rely on it.

Next breeding, I didn't do progesterone and we just bred day 12 and 14, got 2 ties and 6 pups. My preferred approach really is just to hang out near the stud and try every 48hrs right through from day 10 on. But not many stud owners want to be doing that these days because it's quite time consuming. I realise some dogs ovulate really early or really late, but the vast majority are in the middle on most cycles.

PS I should add that on the 2nd progesterone test we did, the vet had to stab her about 20 times or something to find her vein and she ended up with a haematoma. It was all quite stressful. They had to take her away round the back to put pressure on it so it would stop bleeding. And it took forever for the hair there to grow back...

>I know we would have missed because I counted back from when the litter whelped to find out when ovulation occurred (it's very accurate in reverse like that!) and we would have missed...

I did the same; my girl had her first puppy (of 6) 63 days and 2 hours after the first mating, when the progesterone test said she was nowhere near ready to mate. I'll try to remember to look for the results because they were incredibly low.

Yes, my via my vet.  I wasn't expecting the cost to be quite that high but two fecal samples were given, and sent away to a laboratory and I asked them to test for worms, giardia, salmonella etc.  The lot.

How does wormcount.com work?

]Wormcount. U take the samples over a couple of days and having ordered the kit on line use their things then send of in the post. All instructions are in the kit
They are very good and will happily explain anything if u ring them .

Many use them regularly instead of using chemical wormers

https://www.wormcount.com/dogs-and-other-companion-animals/

Wormcount is good for testing for parasites (worms) whether intestinal or lungworm (if you buy the separate lungworm test), and I think they now have a giardiasis test - but it doesn't or can't test for some other causes of runny stools like bacterial causes - ca.mpylobacter, e-coli and so on.

So it's a good starting point but not as comprehensive as the vet test.

Good point 1234

Going to their website, it looks as if to get the complete fecal check I had for Teazel, you'd have to click on more than just worms - which presumably adds on costs.   I was more convinced (wrongly!) she had picked up Giardia, salmonella or campylobacter, e-coli (especially relevant here as the gulls carry this, and maybe pigeons too)  rather than normal worms.  I'd seen none of that in her stools.   And then the vets would have had to package and send off the two samples, all adding up to the charge I had to pay.

TBH MamaBas, I strenuously resist the vet testing runny poops now because I've just had it done so many times on various dogs and either it comes back not finding anything or it comes back finding something which could very well be perfectly normal - because many dogs carry ecoli or salmonella with no adverse effects, so there's no proof that if a stool comes back with that, that that is the cause.

The last dog I had tested earlier this year was pooping every 30mins, straining, mucous-y poops for about 5 days - it was even aerated with bubbles in it, you could see the bacterial activity in the poop - and we'd tried all the usual stuff and it was just getting too much. Young new vet wanted to test for everything under the sun and sent off for the most comprehensive poop tests (I think there were 3 different tests, each one testing for a range of different things) - I took range of stool from the worst bits of many different poops.

Of course, poop tests take about 7-10 days to get results and you can't watch a dog suffering all that time, so he prescribed us metronidazole in the meantime.

The runny poop stopped instantly we started the metronidazole and then, as always, we almost forget about the incredibly expensive poop tests we ran... and when they come back, of course they didn't find anything.

This happened several times with other dogs in the past too. To the point that I now try to refuse the poop tests altogether, unless it is something persistent which the ABs don't fix. I mean, if we're going to treat anyway before getting the results, what is the point of doing them... and we can't wait ages for results with a dog suffering like that. I really don't get them.

Can't remember what I paid bit brooke went in for a dental and before they started managed to do according to vet a lake of very runny poo.
This isn't brooke at all and neither had she showed any signs at home.
Unusually I agreed to test poo as vet wouldn't touch her for dental until she was checked.
  Also because I feed raw and according to vet its so common for raw fed dogs to have something nasty  i didnt agree bit obliged
I was positive it was stress and she did not have anything wrong but this time went along with it
Yep results were all clear as I expected and no reoccurrence ! Costly dental in all

Mmm.  Interesting.  My vet wanted me to give them 2 samples (which by that time were firm, not the slop she'd been doing) so they could hope at least one might show some shedding going on even if the other didn't.

When this started, I asked for some Pro-Kolin which not only did she not like, and it was difficult getting the number of units in, didn't seem to help much.

Frankie's Giardia, which he came to us with at 4 months,  was successfully treated with metronidazole after panacur did nothing.   I certainly got a pos. for roundworm ova and Giardia with his early fecals.

With Teazel's recent bout of bad stools which she almost never has, I just thought we should go the whole hog and actually over the years and compared to Frankie, she's really only cost me with her corns.

Yeah it's just the worms, undigested fat and oil, microscopic non-stop specific particles and other artefacts. Not sure what comes under other artefacts.

>Our dog was tested on day 5 at 1.1nmol - that was a Tuesday which was really low. The advice given was to test again on Monday. So we did. But as that was day 11, I was nervous not to travel to the stud by then. So we decided to just get ourselves near him. So we did the test on Monday, day 11 as advised but then immediately travelled and got a mating the next day, day 12, Tuesday - with a 20min tie, easily. Then we went back to our accommodation and got the result from the day before's progesterone - which was (from Larry at Idexx): "Progesterone result is 4.9 nmol/l. So she hasn’t ovulated, and resampling on Thursday indicated."

I progesterone tested on day 4; result <0.6nmol/l resample 3-4 days. Tested again on day 7; result 1nmol/l, resample 3-4 days); tested for a third time on day 11 (when the ovulation strips showed ovulation had occurred); result <0.6nmol/l, ovulation not occurred etc. We mated on day 13 sand got a nice litter.

Sounds v similar! Was that with Idexx as well? One person I spoke to suggested using another lab but I know they are the main one...