Filucy Bay Dogs
At this time, Filucy Bay has three Berners, two on the farms in Longbranch and one on Mercer Island near Seattle. A girl, Umi, was rescued by Margaret from an ill planned backyard breeding scheme, one, Fridolin, was brought back from Germany by Clark and one, Roo, is from a mating between Fridolin and a girl, Jade. That is all the Berners that we need because we don't just breed within our kennel but we network with other BMDCA breeders in the area. Why breed the same male and female over and over again when one can pick the BEST males from the dozens in the NW? Fridolin has been bred with four different females in the NW and each breeding brings a new genetic mix.
Please note that all Filucy Bay dogs have all their health data posted on Berner Garde, even those we would not breed due to their health and/or genetic problems. We feel this is necessary for the future of the breed. The object is to allow breeders and adopters to make decisions based on fact and science to achieve better, healthier Berners. Filucy Bay applauds adopters who know which breeders to trust by verifying their health testing and results. The book liner notes of Marlies Bugmann's book on the Bernese Mt Dog, The Dürrbächler Story, Between Success and Failure." says it thus,
"An eye-opener for new Bernese Mountain Dog owners; what many breeders don't tell you. The breed's ability to survive another 100 years may largely depend not on the breeders or the clubs but on the countless, anonymous puppy buyers looking for a pet, companion, a family friend, a dog with a difference, the Bernese Mountain Dog. These puppy buyers, you, have the power of choice, the choice to decide whether breeders who produce puppies en masse to satisfy their greed for a quick return for their efforts are allowed to continue this destructive practice. Lets give the Bernese Mountain Dog a good start to the new millennium."
Filucy Bay does its part by testing our dogs and publishing the results on Berner Garde and OFA. The rest is up to the person looking to adopt, whether they take the time to find a quality breeder or just buy the first puppy that is offered to them.
To find a quality breeder start with the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of America, BMDCA, and also with your local affiliated BMD club. In the Pacific Northwest that would be the Bernese Mt. Dog Club of Greater Seattle, BMDCGS. Click here for the BMDCGS link to local breeders.
The Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, OFA, evaluates canine xrays and health test results for health certifications. People looking for a puppy should go to the OFA website and select "Tests by Breed" to find out what tests should have been given and passed by the sire and dam of a good litter of Berners puppies. Once you have identified the pertinent health tests then select "Search OFA Database." At this point, you can use the AKC registration number (e.g. WS63437201) or the official registered name which also includes the kennel name of the breeder.
Whether or not you find the necessary information on the OFA site you should also look for it on the Berner Garde website. Berner Garde is a non-profit organization that was created by BMDCA to record all the important information of each Berner in existence. It is free to use and free to add information to so breeders have no excuse for not publishing their Berners' health data on Berner Garde. Click here to go to the Berner Garde database.
Filucy Bay strongly recommends that you select a breeder that publishes all their data on the OFA and/or the Berner-Garde websites. Publishing on these sites is easy for the breeder to accomplish and costs them nothing. They only have to have to have the desire to be open about what it is that they are offering.
Finally, once you have adopted a Bernese Mt Dog, please find your dog on Berner-Garde or if the dog is not there then create an entry for your dog. There are simple online forms for adding data to Berner-Garde and it is free, no charge, to the user regardless of whether they are retrieving or entering data.
Once your dog is in Berner-Garde upload useful health information, photos, and titles for your dog. Finally, at the end of a long friendship, upload the date and cause of death of your lost friend. If you do these things well then you will be true to your buddy and true to the breed.
Below are the Berners that Filucy Bay has at this time and three rescues that have passed away. Click on the Berner's name to see the Berner-Garde data on each dog. Click the photo to see each dog's gallery.
For the better part of a year, Clark focused on Germany while looking for a boy from a completely new line to bring to the New World. Finally north of Munich in a little town called Nammering he found Fridolin.
His personality is friendly and outgoing and physically he's buff. His weakness in show is his curly tail but nobody is perfect. One other weakness is that he strives to be the center of attention but that is probably more due to his poor trainer, me, than genetics.
Umi is a girl that we rescued from a backyard breeding scheme. Umi is not a show dog but she is physically sound and has the sweetest personality of the lot. When our baby girl Roo came from her breeder we put her in a crib with Umi and Umi immediately assumed the job of mother. She also is more diligent than the other dogs in chasing the deer out of the garden. She tries very hard to please and we humans are the focus of her world. Umi's sweet personality has caught the attention of our neighbors and they have asked for a puppy from her. We bred her and she gave us two puppies.
Roo is a member of the first Filucy Bay litter in over 3 decades. The litter sire was our Fridolin and the dam was Sendache's Trouble with the Jade Monkey, (Jade.) Photos of Roo can be found on the Filucy Bay Litters page.
Roo is not timid. She was more than happy to be introduced onto Margaret's 20 acre farm with two adult Berners and an ark full of animals that she had never seen before. Roo coexists well with the other farm animals but has been trained to chase deer from the vegetable garden. She does this well.
Rescues
It took me one year to get Gunther's confidence. His insecurity is not unheard of in the breed but must be avoided by breeders and adopters. He was purchased mail order by a backyard breeder in Eastern Washington and then was rescued by Margaret under the most precarious of circumstances. Gunther also did not pass his OFA hip certification and at the age of 4 is already showing signs of hip arthritis. Gunther's story of being sold mail order should be a precautionary tale for the future Berner adopter. Whoever agrees to send you a Berner without meeting you in person is probably not a good breeder.
Gunther pass away from Histiocytic Sarcoma (cancer) at age 5 1/2 years. He was also crippled by hip dysplacia. We were happy to have Gunther on the farm and were disappointed that he had to die so young.
Rémy was another wonderful Berner that was poorly bred. In Rémy's case, he was whelped from a pair that both had the recessive Degenerative Myelopathy gene. Having both genes Rémy was a risk of contracting the disease and at the age of 9 he died from it. Degenerative Myelopathy causes nerve damage to point at which the rear legs do not work. You will never see this disease in your Berner from a good breeder because the pre-breeding test for these genes costs just $25 per dog. All club breeders are expected to never breed two dogs with the DM genes.