We recently heard of a home-based kit (there are several manufactures) that simply and unobtrusively detects ovlulation accurately, painlessly, and cheaply. Now here is a technology made for the modern American...but being skeptical of nearly everything I had to learn more before shelling out $30 for the kit. One of the first things I learned was that because the hormones of reproduction (estrogen, luteinizing hormone, and progesterone) are all secretory hormones (meaning they are secreted into the blood stream and distributed throughout the entire body) they are present in all body fluids. Further, some laboratories have been using saliva to test hormones levels for years and report very good results. So...always loving a good experiment, we bought our kit and waited for the next heat cycle in our bitch.

The day finally came when the tell-tale spotting began and we started scooping and eyeballing saliva. Well, it was not really that simple...here is what we did:

• Once each day, we would show Julie some of her favorite treats. She would sit nicely and stare at the treat, showing us how good a dog she really is.
• In short order, the faucet would turn on and one of us would catch enough clean running saliva to run the test --all you need is a drop so we always had a surplus.
• Julie got her treat
• Meanwhile, a drop of saliva was placed on the home test kit to dry prior to viewing (note: it is supposed to be important not to bump or jar the test sample while it is drying).
• After the saliva had dried, we would hold the viewer up to our eye, press the light switch at the base of the unit and stare into a green light hoping to see a "fern-like pattern" emerge, indicating that Julie had ovulated.

During this same time, we had both blood serum-based progesterone tests (this is not a home procedure, but rather one that is sent out to a veterinary reproduction specialist using a chemiluminescence technique) and vaginal cytology performed for comparison.

Initially, the two tests agreed quite well. Julie's blood work indicated she was in proestrus (<1.0 ng/ml of progesterone) and the saliva test revealed to us only the clear green glow of the light itself along with an occassional dot or two someone in the sample. These results were consistent with proestrus.

Julie's estrus began on July 18 with a spike of luteinizing hormone and ovulation occurred on July 20th when her progesterone levels rose to 5.0 ng/ml and beyond. These are the things the progesterone tests --and a skilled veterinary reproduction specialist-- told us...but what about the saliva tests?

The saliva test failed. We never saw a fern-like pattern even when we tested twice daily...even when we knew she ovulated...even when we tried our hardest. To be fair, maybe we did something wrong in our handling of the saliva or our reading of the instructions. However, I will conclude that the home saliva-based ovulation kits simply do not work. Indeed if we were not doing the blood tests we would have completely missed a breeding opportunity.