Author: Todd Grasse

The breed standard for the Bernese Mountain Dog lists inverted or everted eyelids as serious faults — one of the few places where a standard flags something that is genuinely a surgical problem rather than a cosmetic one. That tells you the breed has a history with it. Veterinary breed-predisposition references list the Berner for entropion and ectropion, and also for oversized palpebral fissures — an eyelid opening longer than it should be, which is the conformation that causes both. Most Berners never have an eye problem. But eyes are one of the five health tests this breed’s parent club…

A CHIC number does not mean a dog is healthy. It means the required tests were completed and the results were published. A dog with failing results can hold one. That isn’t a cynical reading. It’s what the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of America says itself: the requirements do not require results to be free from disease, only that the tests be completed and shared so that informed breeding and buying decisions can be made. The club goes further and states plainly that one should never assume a dog qualifying for CHIC has cleared the required testing — only that…

If you’ve booked a spay or neuter, you may have been offered a gastropexy as an add-on — a procedure that tacks the stomach to the abdominal wall so it can’t twist. For a Great Dane the answer is close to straightforward. For a Bernese Mountain Dog it genuinely isn’t, and anyone telling you it’s obvious in either direction is going beyond the evidence. Two things to understand before the rest of it. Gastropexy prevents the twist, not the bloat. The stomach can still fill with gas and distend. What it can’t do is rotate, which is the part that…

Two things to know before you plan anything. Every dog entering or returning to the United States must be at least six months old. That’s a CDC requirement, along with a microchip, appearing healthy, and travelling with a CDC Dog Import Form receipt. Which means you cannot bring an eight-week-old puppy into the US from another country. If you’re an American buyer looking at a Canadian or European Berner breeder, that reshapes the whole plan. And an adult Berner cannot fly in a cabin. At 70 to 115 pounds, your dog travels as cargo or doesn’t fly. Options for large…

There is one correct colour for a Bernese Mountain Dog, and every breed standard says the same thing: tri-coloured, with a jet black ground colour and rich rust and clear white markings. Not one of several accepted colours. One. The AKC standard lists any ground colour other than black as a disqualification, and the UKC standard disqualifies any colour combination other than tri-colour, along with albinism. Which answers the question that brings most people to a page like this. A “rare colour” Bernese Mountain Dog — the red one, the black-and-white one, the chocolate one, priced above the rest of…

Most of the time, a limping large-breed puppy has either a minor soft-tissue strain from playing too hard, or panosteitis — often called growing pains. Both usually resolve. Panosteitis in particular is painful but self-limiting, and its prognosis is excellent. But a Berner puppy is not a generic large-breed puppy, and there’s one thing worth understanding before you settle on the reassuring answer. Elbow dysplasia shows up at the same age, in the same legs, and this breed is more predisposed to it than any other breed studied. Telling the two apart is a job for your vet, and the…

Bernese Mountain Dogs have their own version of degenerative myelopathy — a genetic mutation that, as far as the research shows, occurs in no other breed. That matters for one very practical reason. A DM test that only screens for the common mutation can come back “clear” on a Berner that carries the breed-specific one. If you or your breeder had a dog tested, and the result was reassuring, it’s worth finding out exactly which variants that test looked for. This is owner education, not veterinary advice. It doesn’t diagnose anything, and nothing here replaces a neurological examination. If your…

Both of these are symptoms, not diseases. That single distinction is the most useful thing on this page, and it’s the reason so many dogs get the same problem over and over. A hot spot — acute moist dermatitis — is damage the dog does to itself in response to something painful or itchy. The raw, oozing patch you found this morning is the result. Something caused the itch. An ear infection is much the same. The normal ear canal isn’t sterile: bacteria and yeast live there in small numbers and they won’t cause otitis in a healthy ear. When…

Two things are worth knowing before anything else. The chews sold hardest for big dogs are the ones that break their teeth. A board-certified veterinary dentist, asked by the AKC what she’s currently seeing, named elk antlers directly: they create significant tooth fractures, often requiring extraction. The 2019 AAHA Dental Care Guidelines put it plainly — fractured teeth can often be prevented by appropriate selection of chews and toys. And anesthesia-free dental cleaning, which is marketed heavily to owners of large dogs, is opposed by every major veterinary body in North America. AAHA’s guidelines call it not appropriate. AVDC has…

The single most useful thing to know about insuring this breed is a clause called a bilateral exclusion, and here’s what it does. If a paired body part — hips, elbows, knees, ears, eyes — showed any sign of trouble on one side before your policy started or during its waiting period, many insurers will exclude both sides for the life of the policy. Not the affected side. Both. Now put that next to how this breed actually goes wrong. Elbow dysplasia shows up between five and ten months, it’s frequently bilateral, and it’s the condition Berners are more predisposed…