Are you ready for a statement that you won’t hear often from breeding programs? Conformation is a secondary priority to health.  That doesn’t mean conformation doesn’t matter.  In fact, we do everything we can to maintain high quality breed standards in our purebred dogs.  We believe, however, that no dog’s show titles, lineage, or physical features outweigh a healthy, long, able-bodied life with their family. To us, it’s that simple.  Your dog’s quality of life matters more than how they look, and that’s how we prioritize our program.  

Let’s dive into the topic of ensuring a dog is healthy.  The phrase “health tested” seems to show up more frequently on breeding websites, without any actual explanation of what tests are performed or the significance of their results.  It’s like buying an airplane from someone that claims it’s been “safety tested” without providing any further information.  You’d probably want more clarity on what that actually means to make sure the airplane functions optimally. While a Bernedoodle isn’t nearly as life-or-death of a purchase (unless you really really love Bernedoodles…which we totally condone), we believe you should be just as informed about your pup’s health before taking them home.

Naturally, the diseases common in Bernedoodles are those that are prevalent in Bernese Mountain Dogs and Poodles.  Berners most commonly suffer from Von Willebrand’s Disease (vWD), a blood disorder that causes serious hemorrhaging, and Degenerative Myelopathy (DM), a nerve disease resulting in the heartbreaking loss of limb function.  Poodles are also susceptible to these diseases, as well as Progressive Retinal Atrophy (PRA), deterioration of the eyes, and vertebral disease.  To top it all off, both breeds are predisposed to Hip Dysplasia, which we’ll discuss in our next post.  

The point here is that many diseases can degrade your dog’s quality of life over time.  It is not enough for a breeder to claim their dogs are “health tested”.  Make sure your breeder is being ethical and screening for as many of these issues as possible. Even more, make sure that the dogs are passing these screens, and not simply just having them performed. We’ve been shocked see some programs claim a dog is tested only to click into the results and see they’ve failed the test!

At the very least, your Bernedoodle pup’s parents should be cleared of vWD, DM and PRA, and have quality hips above the breed standard (once again, more on this next week).  In reality, testing is readily available for programs, so please make sure you’re asking your breeder questions about how they ensure the healthiest parents (and consequently puppies) possible. As always, we want to be transparent about what we believe to be best practices. If you’d like to learn more specifics about our approach to health testing, please visit our Health Standards page.

To continue the conversation about health testing, next week we’re going to kick off an in-depth look at what we believe is the biggest shortcoming in Bernedoodle breeding today: Testing for and minimizing hip dysplasia. It’s an incredibly important topic and you’ll be shocked to see the testing norms that most employ. Stay tuned!