Las Vegas Weekly : - A trip to the Canine Semen Bank
The poodle, according to the American kennel Club breed standard, should have "an air of distinction and dignity peculiar to himself."
Lidos Tequila Sunrise, a Vegas champion poodle, had this plus a puffed apricot coat; a rare auburn body bouffant that owner Susie Osburn has bred into several generations of ginger winners — the extended dog children of Tequila Sunrise, who, despite being dead for more than a decade, continues to produce apricot offspring.
Tequila's line lives on, in liquid nitrogen, at the International Canine Semen Bank of Nevada — a misleading name, really, since the bank also stores semen collected from 15 or so dolphins, and could do the same for any number of animals. (A canine semen bank in Oregon has collected samples from sea turtles, pandas, gila monsters, wolves and boa constrictors, among others. The only reason Nevada doesn't have a frozen menagerie is because nobody's asked yet.)
Tequila is one of roughly 400 dogs who have semen stored at the Nevada bank, which is run out of Dr. Dennis Arn's Desert Inn Animal Hospital, and is the only one of its kind in the state. The entire operation fits into a back room at the vet's clinic, where samples are stored in one of six waist-high metal tanks.
Inside each tank, there are dozens of clear vials, and inside each vial, small yellowing pellets — molded and frozen almost the size of lentils for easy reheating and injection. The first sample was collected and stored in 1998. Properly cared for, it will outlive the doctor and all his patients. Semen kept this cold remains usable for hundreds of years, Arn says. And once frozen, it can be shipped all over the world. The bank just mailed a few vials of Great Dane to Australia.
There's an art to artificial canine insemination — the timing has to be right, the vet's catheter skills have to be sharp, there are assorted veterinary matters to consider.
There's no real art, however, to canine semen collection — our species' shared lament. The male dog is brought to the vet clinic, where he is introduced to the "teaser bitch," a female dog in heat. Enticed, the dogs are stopped just before mating, and the vet collects the semen using "manual stimulation," as a brochure for the bank explains it.
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