Hello, my name is Lynda and I have been a reader and customer of Leerburg for the last two years.

I have a couple of questions I would like to ask the experienced breeders on this board concerning my first litter of puppies. (A BIG thank you to Ed btw, for his whelping puppies DVD. What a wealth of information!)

I should first state that I did not plan this particular breeding for the following reasons.

Neither dog is titled(they are however registered). Our male is my husbands personal pet and we never intended to breed him for that reason and we did not intend to breed our female(not at that time) as she was just over a year old and only in her third heat cycle.

Our female is a granddaughter of grim, titus, cordon an-sat and norbo ben-ju from czech republic. Our male is a grandson of mink and crok.

Our dogs are crate trained and rotated outdoors. However one of my children accidentally let our female out before the male had been brought in. She was out there for no more than 10 mins. when I realized what had happened. By the time I got out there they had already tied. I was hoping she wouldn't get pregnant but no such luck.

Anyway my questions are, what do you think of these two particular lines being crossed? After reading some posts on another site about mink and crok, I am a little concerned. I would much appreciate input from anyone who has experience with this line.

Also I am just not sure as to what to charge for the puppies (and we were blessed with 9 of them...yikes!). We finally decided on $850.00 for the aforementioned reasons. Do you think that amount is reasonable? I didn't want to go too low and risk them going to inappropriate homes.

I have come to love the working german shepherds and would like to contribute to the breed at a later date when I feel I have enough knowledge to make good breeding decisions and am more comfortable with the whole process. I feel terrible about our mistake but I have learned some good lessons (one being just how much DAILY work, time and expense is involved in breeding a litter and oh and did i say WORK! ) I am exhausted!!

Thanks in advance for any and all opinions!

Lynda

P.S. I apologize if this in not in the correct forum. I couldnt decide whether it should go the breeding section, the puppy section, the czech section etc.