We Bought Dog Semen, here's Why.

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining: Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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Hey, dog peeps! Before we get into the episode, you may have already realized from the title of this episode that, uh, this content May not be appropriate for smaller ears. So just a word of warning prior to getting into the episode. Hope you enjoy it. It's the Dog People Podcast with your host, Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go, oh my God, that's Awesome. And then I get one like, oh my God, what the fuck? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, it's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence. Max O'Neill down at The Dog Trainer today. Max, we're talking semen. Please let me explain. Please let me explain.

And not Men at Sea.

Max actually made a post the other day. You have made a purchase, which I'm interested in because it's something that could— that we should— it's dog semen. Can we just point that out? Yeah. It's— and it's from Nelson's father.

Yep. No, Nelson's grandfather.

Oh, grandfather.

Nelson's grandfather. Nelson's grandpapa. So yeah, I bought Rottweiler semen. I didn't have to collect it myself.

That's such a bizarre statement to make. Yeah.

When I told Mel, she just went— Mel was in the kitchen cooking, doing something, and I was like, guess what I just bought? And whenever I say that, it's always another guitar or something like that. And she's like, oh, what now? I was like, I just bought Rottweiler semen. She just went, what the fuck? How is that even a sentence in our household at this point? Honestly, words I never thought I'd utter. But yeah, guess we chat about with you guys because you're dog people. You probably find this sort of stuff interesting. First of all, question I get asked the most: Did I have to harvest it myself? No, I did not. It's in a store.

I didn't even know it was for sale.

Perth. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's a it's a big industry, big trade. The dog semen, dog semen trade.

Such a weird episode.

So reason I did it is, and I guess like. Well, I'll kind of talk about how the whole process is and why it was a thing, and but kind of talk about how it might affect you guys. Is we did it because when I initially was looking for a working line Rottweiler, we're really picky on what we wanted. Is I wanted a dog who had the drives and the, you know, the aggression levels to be able to compete in a sport like PSA and do well, but also a dog that was going to be safe with our family, safe with our cat, and we're about to have kids at the time, so safe with children as well. And it was Pretty hard to find. We could find a lot of dogs who could typically do one, but not the other. And that's kind of what I want to lean into with this episode is have another little chat about genetics, because it's such a strong thing. Is if, you know, the parents that you're looking at going, oh, I might get a litter from these parents. If you are going down the breeder route, if the parents are good at something, there's a good chance the puppies are going to be good at that thing too. If the parents can't handle something or aren't great at something, there's a very good chance that gets passed on. So when some breeders we'd speak to went, oh, he's an amazing dog, he'll do all the sports stuff. He goes, sweet. What's he like with kids? Don't know. Not proven. Nope. Sorry, I'm, I'm good. And vice versa. We had lots of people go, oh my God, look at him with the children. He's amazing. How does he go on the sport field? Don't know. Never done it. So we go, okay, so it's a good chance that this puppy we get from it just wouldn't have what we wanted. So eventually we stumbled upon this dog. His technical name is Heiselwood Congo. He's over in Finland and he was known for having multiple titles in the, you know, IGP or bite sports. If you don't know what that is, we did an episode a while back with Sharónica. on IGP, but he also had titles in child's cart pulling, which we thought was really cool.

Child's cart pulling. There's a sport we haven't covered yet.

Yeah. And was known for pulling his family kids to school every day and, you know, meeting all the kids there and being totally social and safe and also doing other things in his spare time like, you know, like water rescue and retrieval. You know, there's— I think there's photos of him towing a fucking boat back to shore.

So yeah, right.

Cool stuff like that. But it's like, okay, he's a versatile dog. He doesn't just do this. He's pretty well-rounded. And at the time when we're looking at him, they weren't breeding from him. The guy just had the semen, you know, on ice and wasn't using it. But we found, luckily, there's an ancestor of him that was being bred from. We got Nelson. But anyway, I was just flicking around the internet and saw that someone was selling this semen and I could not pass it up.

Just flicking. Just flicking around the internet. Where do you have the ability to find dog semen? Just flicking around the dark web when all of a sudden I saw someone selling Rottweiler semen and I thought, that is what I've been looking for.

I'm missing that in my life. I need some of this in my freezer. And yeah, so I went, yep, got to jump on this straight away because again, at some stage we'll want another dog and I want a dog who is again proven to be great with kids and great with sport. And that's kind of again how this chat affects you guys is if you are going down the breeder route, guys, is don't just find the first breeder, stumble across them and go, yep, I'm going to go with that one because Is again, if those parents, whatever those parents are like, the apple's not going to fall far from the tree. And actually just yesterday this popped up on Jack and I's desk is one of his neighbours. I hope that's not a—

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. One of my neighbours is looking for a new puppy, sadly lost his German Shepherd all of a sudden last year. And him and I have been chatting recently and I've been trying to convince him to get another dog because he's been really down in the dumps about the whole thing. I said, mate, And the best way to not get over it, but to, you know, to get yourself sorted is get another dog in the house because that's what you're missing. So he's been looking at breeders and he sent me a text the other day. He said, look, I found these breeders. The dogs look incredible, which they do. These German Shepherds. And the first thing I did was send them to you. And then all of a sudden you went, hold on, couple of red flags. The dogs look incredible, but—

They're all, they're all working line German Shepherds. So these are not your typical Fluffy, happy-go-lucky, chill dogs. These are dogs who want to fight, want to bite, want to work. And if you don't give an outlet for that, they'll become, you know, self-employed working dogs. They'll find their own job. And for this guy, we said to Jack, I was like, hey, I don't think your neighbor wants to compete in—

Yeah, no, no, no, it doesn't.

Then this isn't the dog. This will ruin his life. And it's, it's like that, guys. If you have something pretty particular in mind, if you go, look, I really want a this breed dog who's capable of doing this but won't be too much of this is, find a breeder who aligns with that and has proven that. Because otherwise you're just going to live with a square peg in a round hole, and it can make things pretty tricky. So I don't expect you all to go out there and buy a bunch of dog semen and stick it in your freezer. Um, it'd be pretty weird to do that, but—

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I do. I have some more questions about said semen. Can we just tick these off? Now you don't have to go into specifics, but is, is this particular semen, is it costly?

Yeah, semen can vary quite a bit. You can typically pay for it what you'd kind of spend on a dog.

Right.

You know, you'd probably spend similar or sometimes double or triple.

Yeah. Because at the end of the day, when you get this, and I don't know why I thought this, but I was like, you said, oh, this will produce a full litter. And I was like, I don't know why I was surprised by that, but of course it would. But so—

Well, I thought I needed to have the talk with you. Can we split it in half so I can have one?

You understand how this works? Let's talk about the possibilities. Well, yeah. I mean, it doesn't happen with humans. Well, it does sometimes. Anyway, so yeah. So, so you get a litter out of them. So assuming the specimen you get from them, once you have this litter, do they have any claim to anything after that?

Well, it sort of depends on the arrangement you do. So I'm obviously not a breeder and I really don't plan to get a female dog, put, you know, impregnate it with the semen, and then try and find 8 homes that need a working line Rottweiler. That sounds like a lot of—

A lot of hard work.

A lot of hard work. So the aim is, and we've already been in contact with a couple of people who are really interested in this dog, and I just said, hey, look, I now own, um, some of this dog's semen. I'd be happy to work with you at some stage. And a typical arrangement might be you guys can have the semen and you guys can put it over your bitch, and you guys can then Get the litter. I just want one of those dogs from the litter. I want to pick one out. And then you guys—

You get first dibs, basically.

Yeah, I get first dibs. And then because I've done all, you know, I've paid my fee for the semen, I've then got a dog that I really want in return. And we'll pick a bitch and a breeder that really complements that nicely, that also has those same sort of attributes we're wanting. And then because they're doing the hard work of housing the bitch for the few months of her pregnancy, raising the puppies for 8 weeks, finding homes, they obviously make money out of it where I don't. Yeah, that's cool. It's kind of worked out for me is I paid the money, I got the dog. It kind of works out like that, I suppose, is the way that would go.

Okay, fair enough. So another question is, does this stuff get delivered to you or does it stay where it is until you want to use it?

Right now it's at a facility in Perth. That's where it was. And when I purchased it, we just paid the changeover fee and said, look, just keep it where it is because I'm not going to use it for a while. And, you know, every time you transport it, there's a risk of something happening.

Yes.

But, you know, lucky I've had a couple of amazing breeders reach out and said, hey, And he was like, hey, look, when you— it comes time to moving it, I've got a really good transport company that specialises in this. And if you do want to move it to Queensland, there's also a really good storage facility here. So it's not kept— I joke about it, but it's not kept in my freezer. That's what my wife— she's like, you better not put that.

Yeah, yeah. But right next to the peas. Yeah, right next to the peas.

I don't want to bloody accidentally get that out. But no, it's kept at like a facility. It's kept—

This is a whole world. I mean, you talk about facilities that hold dog semen, there's transport companies that move it around the country. It's just like it's all going on in the dog semen world.

It's just sitting there. It's at a special temperature. I think it's sitting at around like—

Don't tell me you've got an app where you can focus.

Sperm can be frozen for over 40 years.

40 years?

Over 40 years. But typically 10 to 15 is, I think, the average people keep it in storage. And I think it's frozen at like -196. So it's like, again, it's not just your average fridge. Like, it is like You know, proper rock, rock, rock hard frozen.

Yeah.

-196. I think they use liquid nitrogen and shit like that.

Yeah.

To keep it so cold. And then, yeah. So it's obviously very delicate and you can kill sperm cells if the temperature's imbalanced. So it's at a proper facility where all sorts, you know, dog semen, horse semen, human semen and things like that are kept.

Oh, don't get those mixed up.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

God. Ethical breeding.

Why has my puppy got hooves? Yeah.

More to the point, why's my child got a fluffy tail?

Why is my kid biting everyone now?

He's got reactive issues. Oh dear. All right. So I've already, I've already sort of dibs'd a dog from that. Yeah. I'm saying I want, I want, I want some of that semen.

Well, it's a good pitch to a breeder now. Cause they go, hey, if I come, I've already got one good home. So—

Oh, there are so many euphemisms in this entire chat. All right. Okay. Fantastic. Well, look, that's, that's really fascinating stuff. I don't think I'm going to say I don't think there's a podcast episode in the sphere of the world right now that says the word semen as much as we've said. So there we go. We can like, don't sit there thinking about what podcasts could be saying that word over and over again. Yeah, well, it's fascinating. I'm very happy for you.

Thank you. Yeah, it was a nice little early birthday present to myself.

And yeah, I know. Absolutely. Happy birthday to you.

Yeah.

What would you like for your birthday?

Can I get some dog semen, please?

It's what I've always wanted.

Oh dear.

I know what you mean. All right. Well, I mean, can't wait to see the Nelson. So what relation will they be to Nelson? Cousins?

It'll be Nelson's uncle. So when— so because it's Nelson's—

Oh, Nelson's grandfather.

Of course.

So Nelson will one day have this little puppy come in the home.

Which will be his uncle.

Which will be his uncle.

Isn't that a story? Weird.

Yeah. And it's weird to think that this dog's sadly already passed. Like he was— he's gone. He's not around anymore. But he lives on. It's a, it's a weird thing to think about. And there's some people like when I, you know, While we're on the topic, like when I was looking around at Rottweiler breeders where people were like, this is an AI litter or artificial insemination. And they said, we're breeding from this dog. And you look at it and they're like, oh, that dog died back in 1985.

Holy dooley. They're still doing stuff like that. They're still selling the same dog.

They come across a dog who is so exceptional that they harvested a lot of semen from this dog. You've got vials and vials and vials of it, and they still sell it and make money off it to this day because that dog's stellar reputation. And it's It's huge, especially in like working agencies where it takes a lot of money to develop dogs. Think police, military, guide dogs, etc. Is if they find a dog who has all the right stuff and is an excellent producer, is good at passing on those traits, they—

Have a happy life.

Yeah, those dogs get harvested. Yeah, there's a lot.

Yeah.

Freezers full of it around the country.

Always got a smile on their face.

Yeah.

All right. Fantastic. Well, look, watch this space.

When's your birthday, Jack?

July. I'm not buying semen.

No, I might get some for you. It might be a present. Oh my Lord.

All right, Dog People Podcast, for any questions, if you've got any for this particular topic, we'll be happy to get them. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

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