On the Way to Serious Looking

After many years of reading books, doing research, and meetings various owners and breeders for Bernese Mountain Dogs, Becky and I decided that it was time to at least start to seriously look. We had already attended various dog shows and had met many Berner owners. We also had attended a meeting for the North Coast BMDCO and talked with the members there.

Obviously, there are a lot of things that you must know when choosing a Bernese Mountain Dog. I think maybe the primary thing to understand is that the BMDs are prone to health problems, and have an average life expectancy of about 7 years. Health problems include hip displasia and Histiocytosis (cancer), various eye disorders, and heart problems among others. However they do have a friendly temperament that, when socialized well, can make a great family pet. They can be outgoing and seem to be very people-oriented (at least most of the ones we have met so far). They seem to be gentle giants, as the males of the breed can get up to around 110 lbs.

One of the things that we've seen is that they have this Berner "Lean". I'll try to get a video of one soon, but basically, it's when you start petting a BMD, and he starts to lean his body right into your pets...sometimes this leads to the Berner "plop" where is leans so far that he pretty much just plops over onto your feet and asks you to pet his belly. :)

It was important to us when meeting BMD breeders that the breeder was just as concerned about finding a good home for a pup as we were. Unfortunately today it's too common to find someone who is breeding just for the money and not worried so much for the pup's well-being. It's also too common that someone decides to get a puppy without understanding the time and money committment as well as the challenges of each of the various breeds. We wanted to find someone who took the time to ensure that the litter was properly socialized and someone who had an interest in us as owners.

We met Marsha from Carma Que who completely fit what we were looking for. The first good sign was that she took the time to allow us to meet. When we got there, we sat down and asked her our list of questions. She asked us questions about our lifestyle and what research we had done. We asked her questions about the litter and its pedigree. It wasn't until after talking to each other for about an hour, before we asked to to see the puppies. (Another sign of a good breeder - someone who doesn't force the cuteness on potential owners in order to get a quick sale).

At the end of the day, we drove home (~3 hours) with a very good feeling...