You should take your Bernese Mountain Dog to the vet at least once a year for health screening and vaccinations when they are young. Many health conditions are more manageable if caught early on. You may consider taking your Berner to the vet twice a year once they reach the age of 5 or so. Depending on what parasites are common in your area, you should keep your Berner on regular heartworm, flea and tick, or other preventative treatments to help keep your Berner healthy and free from parasites.
Cheap dog food contains a lot of fillers and artificial ingredients. Sure, it will keep your dog alive, but only up to a point. Feed your Bernese Mountain Dog the best large breed dog food you can to help prevent ailments related to poor nutrition. While Bernese Mountain Dogs, in general, have short lifespans, all hope is not lost. There are reports of Bernese Mountain Dogs living long, healthy lives, with one Bernese reported to have lived to be at least 25 years old.
From Great Danes to Chihuahuas, if a dog is overweight, we know this shortens their life expectancy. We know this because researchers followed two cohorts of matched litter mates throughout their life. The result was that the lean group lived an average of two years longer than their more chubby fellows.
These prevent avoidable early death from conditions such as parvovirus, heartworm or the disabling effects of tick-borne diseases. Statistically, the dogs that live the longest are neutered females. For the best chance of a long Bernese Mountain Dog life expectancy, choose a female pup and get her de-sexed between her first and second season.
From degenerative myelopathy to renal dysplasia, the list of health problems Bernese Mountain Dogs are prone to is all too long. Whilst this does not guarantee a problem-free pup, it at least gets the odds going in your favor. It would be great if there were more schemes in place to promote healthy pups.
It might even increase the short Bernese Mountain Dog lifespan. Currently, Bernese Mountain Dog breeders are only encouraged to screen their breeding stock for hip and elbow dysplasia. They do this before using them for breeding. As things stand, different countries take different approaches. A Berner is a working breed, meaning it has high energy and needs a lot of daily exercises to stay healthy, fit and to extend their life expectancy and average lifespan.
You can prevent your puppy from damaging their developing joints. Do this by not allowing your puppy to run on hard surfaces or jump until his joints are matured. There are also more serious health issues that affect this dog breed like elbow dysplasia, gastric torsion, mast cell tumor, and canine hip dysplasia, some of which can seriously effect your bernese mountain dog lifespan.
You should also keep an eye out to prevent heatstroke during warmer months. You can prevent most of these health issues with regular trips to the vet. This condition can lead to canine arthritis, with symptoms that might not show up for years.
These symptoms include stiff back legs, lameness, discomfort and pain during exercise, difficulty getting up, running with a bunny hop, loss of muscle tone in the back legs, and loss of enjoyment from physical activities. Your vet will take x-rays of the hip sockets on your dog and decide if your Bernese needs treatment, which could include surgery. Symptoms include pain with elbow extension, fluid build-up in the joint, lack of range of motion, forelimb lameness that worsens with exercise, and holding the affected limb away from the body.
These symptoms are usually present between four and ten months. Surgery is usually needed to correct affected joints. This is also an inherited disease where the retina degenerates and the dog develops blindness or impaired vision. There are late and early forms of PRA. The early version includes abnormal cell development that can result in vision issues as soon as the dog is three months old.
With late-onset PRA, cells normally develop but degenerate later in life that leads to vision problems around three to five years of age. Symptoms include dilated pupils, disorientation in new environments, night blindness, and reluctance to go to new places.
Sadly, there is no cure for PRA. Do you think we should be recording ages at death more routinely and making this information more available? Would you be pleased if you had a line with so many such ages in its pedigree? At the international Bernese seminar in a representative from the German club announced that members cannot renew their membership unless they give details of how and when any of their dogs passed away the previous year.
All these kinds of things contribute to a much better awareness that longevity matters and encourage people to at least be cognisant of it. Here we do nothing to put such thoughts into the public domain.
However I do feel there would be a will to contribute to this. Veterans parades and classes are always well received at our shows and fun days. Along with the rescue parade the veterans event is becoming a highlight of the Garden Party.
At the most recent GB club Champ show there was a marvellous reception for the well populated Veteran Bitch class.
Everyone you talk to is rightly proud of any of their older dogs and some do make the connection if there are elderly close relatives as well. Most people want to recognise longevity but maybe the time is coming to get in keeping with our neighbours and actually and actively encourage it. As well as launching the database the GB club will be taking a lead in this over the coming year and hopefully people will understand that no one is saying abandon everything else you consider in assessing your Bernese but simply add the longevity issue into the mix.
Ask the Breeder If you are looking to buy a BMD puppy then ask the breeder about longevity in the lines of the parents.
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