Striving for the best, and hard decisions

First Posted September 2025

When Star had her litter with Remy, in summer of 2022, we knew that one female pup would stay. Trixie was the one, intended to be Jeff's dog and also to continue our breeding program into the next generation. She matured to be a beauty, tall and graceful, gorgeous sable coloring, very in tune with our farm and especially the tree rodents (don't say the word "squirrel" out loud...).

She shaped up to be Jeff's constant companion, with great Embark results, but... several hip tests showed that her hip health was not what we had come to expect... Parents with excellent scores, and grandparents in that same excellent range... We had taken hip health for granted!

From 2 or 3 generations of "exceptional" hip scores, Trixie drew the short straw. We tested her three different times (PennHip, and twice with OFA), following all the theories about testing too close to a heat cycle, too early, and then just right... in between cycles, after the age of 2).

The hip score is something we've gone by for all of the other litters, and could not ignore the writing on the wall for potential of passing on poor hip health to any pups out of Trixie.

Trixie's first litter would have been fall 2025. Instead, we made the very difficult decision to spay Trixie, about the same time we made the fairly easy decision to keep Sunni from the Trip and Star litter born in June 2025.

Ironically, although we didn't know it when we scheduled the spay appointment, Trixie and Jeff were recovery buddies. Jeff's back was injured in an automobile accident, and he spent about a month working from home, set up to work in the living room rather than the office floor above the garage. Trixie was with her person, as they both maneuvered through the next few weeks of recuperating and healing.

Trixie will be quite happy to continue her role as companion to her person, and will not be asked to interrupt that bond by raising a litter or two. The unexpected becomes a blessing as a solution we did not plan.

Little Sunni will take her big sister's place as the future of Evening Song, if Sunni's hip health is the "excellent" score that we are striving for.

(Update: Sunni's Embark test came back with flying colors, and her PennHip test shows a score of "excellent". If Sunni continues to mature and show great promise, she will be the next daughter of Star to carry litters at Evening Song.)