Sometimes it's difficult to know if it is a problem. That's why I recommend checking with the veterinarian because, again, you could see a cat straining to urinate that you might not think is a problem that could mean that the cat is blocked, which is a serious medical issue. Again, these issues can be caused by stress, so I would say any time a cat has a change in normal behavior lasting for more than 12 to 24 hours, it's imperative to contact your vet.

I would make an appointment with the vet or at least call them because there are a lot of things that cats can do that might not seem like a problem, and that might not seem serious at home that can be an indication of an extremely serious issue, so it's best to talk to the vet right away.

Actually, you can inseminate your dog at home if you choose to do vaginal insemination. Anything more sophisticated than that requires a veterinarian's assistance, of course, but vaginal AIs are allowed. In fact, a few years ago the AKC determined that clients are allowed to do their own vaginal inseminations and still register the litter as an assisted semen breeding. So yes, you can do them as long as you're using fresh semen. Frozen semen should never be put in any way other than with transcervical or surgical because the success rate of inseminating frozen semen vaginally is about 11% as opposed to about 80% when it's put into the uterus directly.

Surgical insemination is pretty much what it sounds like. It is surgery. The incision is made similar to a spay incision with a dog under general anesthesia. As such, we want blood work, EKG, IV fluids, appropriate anesthesia...the whole bit. We anesthetize the female and exteriorize her uterus far enough to adequately see where we want to put the semen. Then we inject a catheter or a needle with the semen into the uterus. We close the female up, suture up, wake her up, and send her home the same afternoon that she came in for the surgical breeding. But the alternative to that is transcervical insemination, and that's done with an endoscope. It's a rigid endoscope. The female is awake. There is no sedation. There is no anesthesia and there is no surgical incision. So by using the scope instead of surgical insemination, we can still deliver semen frozen, fresh, and freshly chilled directly into the uterine horns without anesthesia and without the stress of a surgical procedure.

There are sperm banks for dogs. In fact, there are many sperm banks for dogs. Some companies have franchises. There are other veterinary clinics that have independent semen banks. So there are a number of them just depending on who you're working with, but they are all across the country and the world. In fact, we get semen shipped into our semen bank from semen banks from all over the world. So there are many semen banks, many sperm banks, and depending on who they're affiliated with, there are two different kinds of semen that we work with. One is in pellets and one is in straws if we're using frozen semen, but we can ship fresh semen and frozen semen all over the country and the world.