Episode 3 Kate Humble: My Welsh Sheepdog's Tale

This is Teg, my beautiful soppy sheepdog.

You are the best dog in the whole world!

Teg is part of a rare breed.

She's proper Welsh, isn't she?

Yes, Teg is a Welsh Sheepdog,

a breed brought back from the brink of extinction.

We found 80 of them, but of the 80, 20 were too old to breed.

I want Teg and I to contribute to this story,

so, much to the joy of my husband Ludo, I've made the decision

to breed from her.

It's going to be a nightmare! It's going to be a nightmare!

My logic is that her puppies

could help the survival of these ancient working dogs.

We need new blood lines, really, in Wales, in the Welsh dogs.

But the path to the pitter-patter of puppy paws is not a simple one.

She doesn't even seem too keen on puppies.

SHE SNARLS

Oh, Teg, that's not very maternal.

Should I help my quirky dog Teg

deliver a basketful of pure Welsh puppies

or will this all end up as a shaggy dog's tale?

Earlier in the series, I went on a Wales-wide search

for the perfect mate for my three-year-old Welsh Sheepdog, Teg.

If she's going to have puppies, I wanted to make sure

the father was the most handsome and suitable suitor in the land.

There's another potential husband.

Not Simon, obviously. He's married. I'm not...

For Teg - Tango, I mean.

Ludo and I eventually settled on Tango,

an intelligent, fine-looking fella who spends his working days

flushing feral sheep out of the Welsh forests.

I can't wait for Teg and Tango to tie the knot,

but whilst Teg takes her time to come into season,

there's one thing I want to clear up.

Whilst it's absolutely undeniable

that Welsh Sheepdogs have a distinctive way of herding,

throughout this journey I've had one nagging doubt about the breed.

Rightly or wrongly, modern popular convention appears

to associate a breed with the way a dog looks.

Well, the Welsh Sheepdogs don't have a uniform look

so can they truly be considered a breed of their own?

There's one way to find out.

We're teaming up with researchers from Aberystwyth University

to get to the bottom of it.

Matthew Hegarty is a DNA scientist,

and this morning he's collecting a sample of Teg's saliva.

What we'll do now is take that into the lab

and go through the process of extracting the DNA from that.

Fantastic. It'll be fascinating, hey, Teg, to find out what you are.

Hmm? Find out what you are instead of just a ginger monster.

Matthew and his team are studying the genetic markers

of the Welsh Sheepdogs to do what they call a breed assignment.

What we're aiming to do with the help of the Welsh Sheepdog Society

is to get DNA from maybe 20 to 25 registered Welsh Sheepdogs,

as well as as many Border Collies as we can,

that we're going to then take through and compare.

That should give us the basic information we need to tell

if the two breeds are different.

Using the latest technology, the DNA of all the dogs

taking part in the study is captured on little slides like this.

The complex job of analysing the DNA matrix of letters

is done by Rob McMahon.

As far as I understand it now, the Welsh Sheepdog is a tricky one.

It doesn't have a particular look.

They're different colours, they're different sizes,

they're different shapes, and so

they don't seem to have a breed type.

It may be that Welsh Sheepdogs behave the way they do

-because of their training.

-Right.

But it may be that they behave the way they do

because of their genotype.

The problem is that we don't have

-a scientifically agreed definition of what a breed is.

-Right.

A breed is something that the breeders say it is.

It's a human construct, so if we can persuade the breeders that

what we are looking at represents a unique mixture of genes,

then there would be good reason for defining that as a breed.

Before Victorian times, a breed was defined by what a dog could do

and not what a dog looked like.

Its behaviour was everything,

and so if the herding behaviour of the Welsh Sheepdogs is marked

in their DNA, then the Welsh dogs

could challenge the modern concept of what a breed is.

As for my ginger monster, Teg, by throwing her DNA into the mix,

the scientists will hopefully be able to tell me

how Welsh she really is

and whether her puppies can make a difference to the breed.

So before I get her in the family way,

I head to Llangurig in mid Wales to meet Veronica Morgan.

Veronica has bred and registered more Welsh Sheepdog puppies

than anyone else in the country

and I'm hoping she can calm my last-minute nerves.

PUPPIES YELP

Now, you see, Veronica, I have to admit that

I don't have a maternal bone in my body, but now...

-Puppies are so much more fun, aren't they?

-Yes.

Do you tend to find that

if you have a bitch that is calm and good-natured like Teg,

will they tend to be good mothers or again, is there no rule of thumb?

-It's a hard call, that.

-Is it?

-Yes.

Dogs are usually very good mothers.

-Yeah.

-Ideally, for her first litter,

it'd be nice if she just had five, you know. Tell her only to have...

Well, if she has more than five, I'm going to have you on speed dial.

"Veronica! Help me!"

Is there such a thing as a standard litter?

Well, a bitch only has eight tits to feed off,

-so any more than eight is, you know, they haven't got a tit each.

-Right.

And what do you think, Teg?

What do you think? Gently now.

Hmm? Just be gentle.

SHE GROWLS SOFTLY

-Oh!

-Teg, that's not very maternal.

-No.

-THEY LAUGH

Oh, dear. I hope she connects with her maternal instincts

when the time comes.

But to become a mother, she first needs to come on heat.

That's when a female dog

is hormonally preparing her body for breeding.

Most female dogs come into season every six months,

but obviously, Teg, being a diva, had to be different.

Now, Teg, look at the diary.

Your last season was then, was in May,

which means that by now,

you shouldn't just be in season, you should have had sex.

I was slightly expecting her to come into season late October,

or early November, probably the most likely. It's now early December.

Still hasn't come into season.

I check every morning.

Which is really frustrating because I was hoping for Christmas puppies

but it's not going to happen, so I'm just going to have to be patient.

But at least my wait to hear from the scientists is over.

The researchers studied the genetic markers of the Welsh Sheepdogs

against the Border Collies.

The Borders became popular in Wales some 80 years ago

and were interbred with the Welsh dogs,

threatening their genetic integrity.

Is there something that makes the Welsh Sheepdog distinct?

They are very specific herding dogs.

-Is that something you can see in the DNA?

-Very clearly.

-Really?

The Border Collies, shown in red squares,

-split out from the Welsh Sheepdogs.

-Right.

Where are those differences occurring in the DNA?

The predominant message is one of neurological.

So, sticking my neck out on this,

it looks like the main difference

between the Borders and the Welsh Sheepdogs is down to behaviour.

If I were to bring you two samples,

one from a Border, one from a Welsh,

but I didn't tell you, and said,

"Test those, and tell me what you think",

would you be able to tell me

which one came from a Welsh and which came from a Border?

With approximately a 95% to 98% probability of being right, yes.

So are you saying,

in a groundbreaking moment,

that Welsh dogs...

could be described as a breed?

That depends on how you determine breed.

We've talked in the past about what it is that makes a breed.

-They are an incipient breed.

-And what does incipient breed mean?

-They are genetically distinct.

-Yeah.

And if they were line bread they could be made into a separate breed.

So is it because they haven't been

selectively bred to be a particular look?

Yes, and perhaps more to the point,

it is maybe because in the past they were bred to look differently.

-Right.

-Because some of them were used for herding sheep.

-Yes.

-Some of them were used for herding cattle.

-Yes.

-And some of them were used on Welsh mixed farms.

-Yes.

And therefore they kept components of the ancestral herding behaviour

that the Border Collies have lost,

because they become specialised Sheepdogs.

Right. How Welsh is my dog?

It looks like Teg is about 75% Welsh Sheepdog.

Welsh, right. OK.

-So she is more Welsh than Border?

-Yes.

There is a definite and obvious distinction

between the Welsh dog and the Border Collie.

He could absolutely tell which DNA came from which type of dog.

But the Welsh dog cannot be called a breed,

certainly as far as Rob is concerned,

because it has never been selectively bred for it looks.

It has been selectively bred for its behaviour.

To be recognised as a breed,

the Welsh Sheepdogs would have to be bred to look alike

and to specialise in herding one type of animal.

In other words,

all the dogs would have to share the same characteristics.

But for me the beauty of the Welsh Sheepdogs

is that they are all different.

And this DNA research scientifically validates

everything the Welsh Sheepdog is.

These dogs are unique and that is something to be truly proud of.

I am certainly proud of my 75% Welsh dog,

and with Tango's 100% pure Welsh blood backing us up,

Teg's puppies will be around 7/8ths Welsh.

That is, if she ever comes into season.

It is the New Year and we are still waiting for Teg to come on heat.

Unfortunately, I have to go to Asia filming,

and I am forced to leave Ludo in charge.

As it turns out, it is bad timing.

Absolutely bloody typical that the moment Kate goes

is the moment it all kicks off

and suddenly I am left holding the baby,

or holding the mother, as it turns out.

Poor Ludo. Mother Nature finally visits Teg. She is in season.

And with it comes the mess.

I just noticed a couple of little spots of blood behind Teg

as she was moving around the kitchen.

The joys of fatherhood, eh, Teg? Urgh!

Great. It's all over the bloody wall as well.

Kate obviously gave me a great long list of stuff, you know,

what to do when Teg comes in season.

So then, panicking, sending e-mails left right and centre to her,

saying, "Oh, what do I do now?"

If Kate starts going away filming quite a lot and I am left,

you know, with an armful of puppies, like 100 Dalmations,

or something, and they are all peeing everywhere, and then...

No, thank you, very much.

How many puppies are you going to have?

Will you do the decent thing and have about four then stop?

Good girl.

We're going to take you to see the vet. See if you can have puppies.

At the clinic in Usk, Ted has her blood taken.

This is to look at her progesterone levels,

indicating where she is in her cycle,

and when her and Tango can get it on.

Good girl, perfect.

I will get this running, give it 10 minutes or so,

and then we will have a result.

Cool. Thank you.

We are giving her the best chance to get pregnant

and believe it or not, Ludo can't wait for it.

Let's hope this doesn't go on for too much longer.

I'm kind of hoping that if we can get her pregnant

then I won't be doing this anymore.

Don't want to be mopping blood up for the rest of my life, eh, Teg?

Luckily for Ludo, the vet comes back with good news.

The sample is the one nearest my thumb here,

and we've got two controls, and what that means is

she's coming close to ovulation,

but we are not actually there yet.

So we think about three days away roughly?

We are probably roughly three days or so away, I would expect.

And how do I persuade the dog to only produce about four puppies?

Haha! That is the challenge!

So it is down to her, actually, in terms of how many eggs she produces.

-But, fingers crossed for a nice, medium-sized litter.

-All the best.

-Fingers crossed for her.

-Thanks.

-OK, take care. Bye.

Simon Mogford and his feral sheep catching Tango have been on standby.

Because bitches can be territorial, I asked Ludo if he could take Teg

to the Mogfords so she and Tango can hopefully mate without a fight.

-Are you Simon?

-How are you doing?

Ludo. Nice to meet you. So, this is the boy?

Hello, you can smell Teg on my...

Tango, knows that you've brought someone to see him.

-His nose is telling him everything.

-I think so.

-Well, shall we get Teg out and see?

-Yeah.

-Shall we see what happens?

Teg! Teg! Come here. Out you come. Stay there. Stay there.

Good girl, Teg. Hello! He knows exactly what's going on, doesn't he?

Yeah.

It seems like they remember their first encounter

when they danced on a Welsh hillside.

-He knows what it's about.

-He knows what to do then, yes.

-Yeah.

TEG BARKS

She's a combination of excited and nervous, I think, isn't she?

Yeah, she's not far away though.

-No, you recognise these sorts of signs, do you?

-Yeah.

Ludo hasn't been too keen on the idea of puppies,

but Simon has a surprise for him.

Oh, look at this!

This is Tango's latest litter.

Oh, my word! Oh, they're adorable! Look at this.

Hello, little puppy dogs.

Tango is a bit of a ladies' man and Teg

won't be the only girl he's got knocked up.

Are you going to come and say hello?

Am I a convert? Um...

Partly.

Steady now, Ludo. This qualifies as a change of heart.

I always grew up with dogs.

Puppies are quite sweet. So, you know...

Its just the mess, isn't it? All that poo, isn't it?

As for Teg, this is a reality check.

No, no, don't growl at them!

Don't growl at them. You'll have your own to look after soon.

What's going on, hey?

HE LAUGHS

Come on!

Come on! Pretend to be interested! Come on, pretend.

Just for the telly.

So, be nice to Tango, won't you, Teg? Don't beat him up, eh?

And try and make sure you ovulate.

Good.

At least she seems to be interested in the meeting side of the process.

Some of that behaviour there is quite sweet.

Some of the nose to nose and just talking to each other.

A bit of kissing behind the bushes, yeah. Well, I'll, erm...

-I'll bring the stuff in and then we'll leave her to it.

-Yeah.

See if she can get Tangoed!

THEY LAUGH

I wish I could have been there for Teg.

Oh, no. She's going to follow me down the drive.

But I know she's in good hands.

And although I'm on another continent,

thanks to technology, I haven't been left out.

-Hello.

-Hello. Oh, hang on!

-I can't see you.

-There you go.

-Can you see me?

-I can. Hello, can you see me?

-I can. Hello.

Actually, I can't. I'm lying.

HE GIGGLES

Love technology!

-I took Teg to go and see your lovely friends, Simon and Emma.

-Oh, yeah.

-We went to the vet first to see if she's definitely fertile.

-Yup.

And... You've disappeared. Tilt the... Tilt your...

That's better.

The good news is that the blood test says she's definitely fertile.

Brilliant. OK. So, is she now with Simon and Emma, is she?

She is now, yes.

When I went away with the other dogs in the van

she tried to get in the van and come with me, obviously.

When Teg got out of the car,

Tango was out with Simon in the howling gale

and he went straight to Teg's back end and had a good old sniff.

A good Welshman!

HE LAUGHS

What about her? Because, you know, that's the thing

I've been a little bit nervous about.

Sort of, foisting...

..sex onto my little girl. Did she do all right?

Well, it's natural. It's how dogs have survived up to now, isn't it?

I think after two or three sniffs from Tango at her back end,

she went, "OK, that's enough now", and just curled her lip.

Quite right!

Just curled her lip a little bit and said...

"That's my girl!"

Maybe. Then he came back and she didn't reject him,

so I think it looks quite promising, I'd say.

We did go and have a look at a very sweet litter of Tango's puppies

around the back there.

-Oh, really?

-And they were quite cute.

-Mmm...

-No!

-Did you tell Graham?

-No, not necessarily.

All right. Brilliant.

-Well, if you hear anything else let me know.

-All right. Good luck.

-Tanks!

-Ni hao.

-Ni hao. See you later.

-Bye.

-Bye.

Five weeks later and I'm back from the other side of the world.

Just in time for an exciting moment. That was really good.

Teg is getting an ultrasound. I'm getting a bit...

A bit nervous really.

It's sort of feels like a very big moment this, finding out

whether you're going to be a granny or not.

I don't know how you read these things.

-So, generally speaking, black is fluid.

-Right.

And then the white, or something, is the more sound it reflects. So...

So, that sort of wriggly...

-That round fluid filled sack there...

-Yeah.

..is probably a foetus. What I might have to do...

I might just pop the lights off for a second.

OK, can you just see in the middle of that,

in the centre of the screen...

-Yes.

-There's that little fluttering just to the left, below centre?

-Yes?

-That's a little heartbeat. Yeah.

-Wow!

-Oh, my goodness!

It's amazing! Tick, tick, tick.

As things look, there's probably looking like

five or six at the moment.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-Good girl!

She's definitely, definitely pregnant.

Everything has gone very much according to plan.

-Well done, Teg!

-Well done, Teg. Well done, Tango!

-Yeah, definitely.

-Yes!

-Your Welsh beau.

-Are you proud?

-Yes. I am.

-Did you want some pictures to take home?

-Yes, of course!

You know, I've never had baby pictures.

I'd much rather have puppy pictures, that's much more fun!

I'll get some in a second.

-It's great. I'm glad there aren't ten.

-Yes.

I think she's probably glad there's not ten.

-I don't think she knows an awful lot about it quite yet.

-No.

I think it's very, very exciting.

For a dog, the gestation period is about nine weeks.

Halfway through it and her mammary glands begin to enlarge.

We still have a few weeks until her due date, so, reluctantly

I take another job filming abroad hoping that I'll be back in time.

The main thing is I hope that Kate will be back from America

when the puppies are born.

Kate really wants to be there when Teg starts whelping.

I've been slightly dreading the possibility that Teg

might start suddenly giving birth

when I'm around or in the middle of the night when I'm fast asleep.

What can you do?

Eight weeks into the pregnancy and Teg's lost interest in sheep...

Look at her! I mean, is this a dog that wants to be chasing sheep?

..is stocking up on food... And showing the extra baggage.

I felt a head in there the other day, I think,

or a skull or something.

Come on, Teg. Let's go!

Then, literally, two hours after I arrived home from the States,

a week ahead of schedule, the magic happened.

PUPS SQUEAK

I got back this afternoon about four o'clock and I hadn't seen Teg for

just over a week and she just seemed very restless and quite clingy.

She wanted to be with me.

And she couldn't settle anywhere

and I thought, "I think she's going to have puppies... now."

And we weren't really expecting them, possibly, for another week.

I sort of left her in here and left her quiet and went

and unpacked my bags and then I came back in here to hear this sound.

PUPS SQUEAK

And Teg licking the first of her two puppies

that she's now given birth to.

So, the first one was born at about six o'clock this evening.

It's now ten o'clock and she's only had two

and she might be having five or six.

So, having not had any sleep at all last night or, indeed,

the night before, I was quite looking forward to an early night!

I don't think that's going to happen tonight, is it, Teggy?

Ludo was the proud dad on camera duty whilst

I played the role of excited and slightly anxious midwife.

It's normal, I think.

They were expecting that she would give birth every half an hour

to an hour between puppies, sort of thing.

And this had been already two hours so Kate was getting quite anxious.

So, she called the emergency vet number.

Would you come out or would I bring her in?

He said sometimes, if everything sort of appears to have

ground to a halt, it's a good idea just for him to check her over

and maybe give her an injection of something called oxytocin

which gets everything kind of moving again.

So, we're going to wait another hour and see and then call him back.

And make a decision. She might need to go down to the surgery.

I think we'll leave her in peace now.

An hour later, we popped in to check and, thankfully,

she's had her third puppy.

You clever girl!

Clever girl!

She's had another one?

Clever girl.

She says, I'm just doing it in my own sweet time.

Is that number three Tegan Jones?

If you're in the lambing shed,

ewes don't like to give birth in front of you.

They like to do it sort of discreetly and at their own time.

So, we'll just leave her in peace now and then pop in and out.

It was a rough night.

This is where I spent the night.

Bella and Badger keeping me company on Teg watch.

I checked her again at about two o'clock and she'd had another three.

So, I don't know if that was an indication that actually

I'd been a bit overzealous

and she just wanted to be left in peace to get on with it.

Two of those three puppies are absolutely healthy, fine,

suckling along with the other three.

But the other one, sadly, was dead

and I can't see any discernible reason why that was.

It was all cleaned up, not in a bag.

Erm... But not...

It was just sort of at the side of the whelping box.

Of course, you're incredibly upset at losing a puppy

and it's very cute and it's more than a sheep or a pig.

It's something that lives with you.

It's a dog and it's one of your companions,

or one of your companions.

So, losing puppies is very sad,

but, you know, it's nature and it just happens sometimes.

You sort of go, "Damn!"

You know, "What a shame they didn't make it."

It's not uncommon for a dog to lose puppies in her first litter,

but, happily, we've got five very healthy ones.

Four girls and a boy.

Three weeks later, they've opened their eyes and they're beginning

to look a lot more like dogs and a lot less like jelly babies.

They'll stay with their mum for another five weeks.

And I grab every moment I can with them.

It's hard to imagine that it was almost exactly a year ago

that I started thinking about the possibility of breeding Teg.

It wasn't a straightforward decision,

but now that she's healthy and she's turned out to be such a good mum

and we've got five absolutely captivating,

healthy puppies,

I kind of couldn't have wished for more really.

These dogs are rare and I think they are important

and I think they have a very crucial role in farming today.

Being able to contribute to the future of that breed

was always the reason why I considered breeding Teg.

And now there are five beautiful puppies. Four bitches and one dog.

My wish would be that they go to really good working homes

and they fulfil their wonderful potential.

But also that they, too, become part of the breeding programme

that will contribute to the future generations of Welsh Sheepdogs.

She says, "What do you want to hug those puppies for

"when you've got me?!"