Finally Home
After a long weekend of a lot of driving, Roxie and I are finally home. The drive to Cedarville, CA is about 6 hrs from Sacramento but only the first three hours to Redding are boring. The three hours east of Redding is a beautiful drive driving through mountains and valley and mountains and valleys. The photo above is Surprise Valley just a few miles from where Charley lives with his owners and black lab sister Perle. These are also some of the mountains that he hunts every fall.
We arrived at about 6:00 on Thursday evening and Roxie and Charley seemed to remember each other from a year ago. They got right down to business with a good solid mating. The next day, we prepared for mating #2 which based on past experience would be better than the first one, but unfortunately was very short. Mating #3 was to happen on Sunday before heading home, but out of concern that we may have missed the window, I opted to breed again on Saturday. This one was very short as well. 
So what does all this mean? In simple terms, I think Roxie’s “prime” breeding time started earlier than I thought it would so rather than catching her at the beginning on the first mating day, I think we caught her at the end. So we hope that Charley had some really strong swimmers on the first mating.
For the next couple of weeks, Roxie will take it easy and give her wombmates a chance to develop and grow and attach themselves. An ultrasound will be scheduled in about 3 weeks to see if there are any walnuts growing in there. The ultrasound will only confirm pregnancy, it will not tell us how many there are. That comes closer to the end when an x-ray will be done.
Please send positive thoughts our way.
