The BMDCA has been involved in management of breed health since its formation. We support a variety of initiatives to improve the length and quality of life for Bernese Mountain Dogs.

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Please review the information we have compiled to assess Berner Health facts for yourself.

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Although we have many Berners living into their teens, we have far too many that don't. The lifespan of 7 to 8 years is too short for a large breed dog; and we've been working hard to understand health issues which affect our breed in our attempts to make improvements.

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We have done two breed health surveys. In addition, the breed's health and genetic database at www.bernergarde.org contains over 220,000 dogs including health data collected from sources worldwide.

The BG database will allow you to review information about the dogs of specific breeders. Any breeder you consider should be willing to review a potential puppy pedigree to explain any health issues in all of the dogs in that pedigree.

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To gain an understanding of the information and search capabilities available through the Berner-Garde database, please refer to BMDCA's Info Sheet, Learning About BMDs Through Berner-Garde.

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All BMD owners are encouraged to report health information to this open database and are welcome to utilize its vast databank.