Breeding Practices 

While I am relatively new to breeding, I have been mentoring under experienced breeders since we got our first hound. Countless hours have been spent poring over pedigrees and discussing them with other breeders. I am fortunate to count as friends, many long time Irish Wolfhound breeders, several of whom also follow a more natural path.

Many of the health issues that arise in Wolfhounds, appear around the ages of 3 to 5 years. For that reason, I like to wait until a bitch is at a minimum of 3 years of age before breeding her. I am in no rush to breed our girls, as we breed for ourselves, and we can only care for so many hounds at one time. I also prefer to wait until past the age of 3, as I have found that between 3-4 years is when our bitches really fill out and reach maturity. Only then can I truly know what I have to work with. We test our breeding stock for heart, hips, and elbows, and we would expect the same testing protocol for any prospective stud dog. All puppies are tested for livershunt after the age of 7-8 weeks.

Our puppies are whelped in the privacy of our living room, so that the dam is not overly stressed with the other hounds wanting to know what is going on. Once the dam is over her initial protective phase, by around 3-4 weeks, the puppies are moved into the central family room/kitchen area of our house. There they are exposed to all of our hounds, and the sights, smells, and sounds of life. Depending on the time of year, puppies will also be spending a great deal of time outdoors by 4 weeks of age, to give them a head-start on house breaking. We found that our last litter, born at the end of April, spent more time outside than in while they were growing up! A nice benefit to that is all four of them can sleep through the wildest of thunderstorms without being bothered. We watch our adults and teenagers carefully around the young puppies, and we find that the older hounds are good about playing away from the puppies, and the puppies are good at hitting the floor in need be! It's great fun to watch the babies mimicking the play style of the older hounds. Our puppies all get loads of one on one time with us.  We work at handling them so that they will be better prepared for things like veterinary exams. We do not expose young puppies to the vet office, but rather have our vet come out here for house calls to do routine checks and livershunt testing. We let our puppies go to their new homes around the age of 12 weeks.

If you are potentially looking for an Irish Wolfhound puppy please feel free to contact us.  We are planning to breed Brigid this winter.