Filucy Bay Dogs
At this time, Filucy Bay has three girls, Umi, Roo, and Lucia, and two young boys, Grandham and Winston. Winston lives with a family in Marysville and the rest orbit between the city, Seattle, and the country, Longbranch. While we will use our boys for breeding with our girls, we offer the boys for stud for any breeder who would like to use them. Similarly, we use other breeders boys for stud with our girls. This ability to pick and choose a stud from a large pool is the advantage of the club breeder over the backyard breeder. Why breed the same male and female over and over again when one can pick the BEST males from dozens in the NW?
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 in order 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. Click here to explore the Berner-Garde website.
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 (click) 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, the health of the sire and the dam can be checked using the AKC registration number (e.g. WS63437201) or the registered name to search. Click here to see OFA record of our girl Roo.
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 very little or 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. Click here to see the data submission page of Berner-Garde.
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 Filucy Bay Berners that are in our lives.
Click on the Berner's name to see the Berner-Garde data on each dog.
Click the photo to see each dog's gallery.
I was not looking for a male puppy but I decided that the longevity in this pups line was so good that I could not pass him up. His call name, Grandham, is also the name of the small town in northeastern France where he was whelped. We spent a week in a hotel in Reims, France and he proved his outgoing nature by continually enjoying our excursions into the center of town and to restaurants. He is not a complainer and took to his crate well. He was relaxed and curious while being loaded into the (nonstop only) flight to Seattle. He was in the crate for a good 13 hours and did not make a mess at all.
Filucy Bay's Brambly Hedge or Lucia as she is called is a happy pup. In her gallery you see her playing with her mother Roo. Their two favorite things (besides eating and being petted) are tug of war and swimming.
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.
I adopted Winston from my favorite breeder in the Czech Republic. I picked him for the longevity in his line and his conformation potential. But, if he just matches his ancestors in longevity then he will be a great success. He also has an extraordinarily good personality, a trait of which I have noted in his line in the past. In his gallery you can enjoy highlights of our trip from Prague to Paris to Seattle and finally to where he lives with his forever family.