The value of canine semen evaluation for practitioners

Compared to human medicine, little is known in canine medicine regarding specific findings on semen evaluation and their correlation with fertility. Suggestions to optimize quality of semen evaluation in veterinary practice include creating standardized protocols for evaluation of all semen parameters and updating those protocols as needed; creating some form of quality control for the clinic laboratory; educating owners about our inability to predict with 100% accuracy whether dogs with poor semen quality never could impregnate a bitch or whether dogs with excellent semen quality always could impregnate a bitch; and generating protocols for further diagnostic work-up for those dogs with abnormal semen quality.