It must have been a very fast 3 years, what sort of problems did she have or health problems for that breed? I'm beginning to wonder if Wrangler really is an aussie from looking at Windi, they look almost identical. Execpt Windi is well groomed. Wrangler is fat too. We got him in Canada 6 years ago.
Generally Wendi looked more like Wrangler. I figured I would take her picture after a rare grooming. They do look pretty much twins. Wendi was built like Nate Newton. She would have made a heck of a offensive guard.
Here is what Wikipedia says about the breed's health:
Mortality
Health surveys of Bernese Mountain Dogs in Denmark, the UK, and USA/Canada all show that this breed is very short-lived compared to breeds of similar size and purebred dogs in general. Berners have a median longevity of 7 years in USA/Canada and Denmark surveys and 8 years in UK surveys.[4] By comparison, most other breeds of similar size have median longevities of 10 to 11 years.[5] The longest lived of 394 deceased Berners in a 2004 UK survey died at 15.2 years.[6]
Cancer is the leading cause of death for dogs in general, but Berners have a much higher rate of fatal cancer than other breeds. In both USA/Canada and UK surveys, nearly half of Berners died of cancer,[6][7] compared to about 27% of all dogs.[6] Berners are killed by a multitude of different types of cancer, including malignant histiocytosis, mast cell tumor, lymphosarcoma, fibrosarcoma, and osteosarcoma.[7]
Berners also have an unusually high mortality due to musculoskeletal causes. Arthritis, hip dysplasia, and cruciate ligament rupture were reported as the cause of death in 6% of Berners in the UK study;[6] for comparison, mortality due to musculoskeletal ailments was reported to be less than 2% for purebred dogs in general.
My Wendi, quit eating one day and started to pant all of the time. After a few days of this I took her to the vet and he started her on Antibiotics. She did not get better so I went back and he referred me to an internal specialist, who did a sonogram and determined it was not cancer, but her spleen was huge. He put her on stronger antibiotics and steroids and said she should start to get better after 48 hours. By this time she was lethargic, not moving and always hot and I had to hold her head and bottle feed her water. Called the specialist back and he told me that it takes awhile for the medicine to work and told me to bring her in the morning if she did not show signs of improvement. She did not make it to morning. Did not ever know the cause, I guess a massive infection.
That would be my home made raspberry wine from last year. Wrangle seems to be sleeping on the job. Got raspberry, rhubarb, and black berry wine a brew-en right now. Just love that home made wine. Going to try cherry wine next week, our cherry tree is just loaded.
