Oz goes to the sperm bank

A few months ago, my dogs had a nasty tussle. Oz grew up with R-dog, but now that he is three, he won't take herdominance anymore, and she won't back down, so I have on my hands a dangerous dilemma. I have a few options. 1) Keep the dogs separate, which is hard because of the way I live with my dogs; 2) Sell Oz, which I don't want to do; or 3) Neuter Oz and hope he calms down.

I don't like any of the options, but the third option looked the most viable in the weeks after the fight as I limped around healing from three puncture wounds to my thigh. So because Oz is such an awesome dog, I sent him to the sperm bank in the event he was, as I call it around him, "tutored."

What I know about banking sperm is nothing, but his trip proved quite interesting. Only one vet in Phoenix banks sperm, and they had an in-heat female, what they call a "teaser dog" there on a Sunday. I couldn't take him that day, so my friend Pat volunteered.

First, they took Oz into a yard where females in heat have been urinating. That got Oz' attention right away; he was pretty much out of his mind in moments, Pat said. She led him inside and in a few moments, they brought in the "tease." I don't know what he was expecting, probably a big Teutonic dish named "Hilda," but what he found was a char pei.

Pat said Oz swung his head and looked at her as if to say "What the heck am I supposed to do with that?" But even given the wrinkley view, he did the deed, then afterwards went out in the yard. Pat said he spent at least a minute kicking gravel many feet into the air, a dog's way of spreading its scent. "Gravel rained down on my head," she said laughing.

I told the story at my home group, which is mainly made up of horse people and ranchers, and they cracked up. "You should have given him a six-pack of beer," one said, "then he wouldn't have worried about how bad she looked."

He then told an insemination story of his own. He was a vet tech when he was drinking and helped orchestrate cattle artificial insemination. Apparently to inseminate a cow, one uses an artifical vagina which is heated with warm water and inserted into the cow. The bull then does his bidness in the artifical vagina and voila, future cow progeny.

On one occasion, he said, a vet tech assisting with a breeding between a particularly prolific brahma and a gurnsey cow, used an overheated vagina. The brahma entered the cow, bellowed and then took off. After that, he would never touch another gurnsey. "Those gurnseys are just too hot to handle," I'm sure he thought.

As an addict, I'm not sure I can relate to a brahma who has the "once bitten twice shy" mentality. No, I normally have to hit the same speed bumps on the road of life again and again before I finally realize, "Hey, I can take a different route." And that ain't no bull.