Lulu’s Story, 23-12-06 to 17-11-2012 By Tim Mulligan, in Great Britain Many of my friends remember the ordeal we went through with our beloved Lulu in 2012. We lost her to Histiocytic Sarcoma ( of the liver in her case) which is the dreaded diagnosis all Berner lovers never want to hear. As a family, Maria, Katie, Amanda and I, did everything we could and for her; we went the homeopathic route with Richard Allport and support from Adrian O’Shea and his team at Avenue Vets (who knew Lulu from 12 weeks old) and Maria’s sister Caroline who stoically came round and did Reiki on Lulu most days - which gave her great comfort. Lulu fought like a demon to stay with us. We were her whole world, as she was ours. She watched the girls grow from youngsters into beautiful young ladies, Lulu was their rock at times, she was always willing to listen and go for a walk or just a cuddle on the sofa. She finally succumbed to pneumonia and we helped her cross the Rainbow Bridge and one day she will be reunited with us. I hope i have kept your interest and you must be wondering where this is leading? Well, we knew when Lulu adopted us, there were no guarantees, and one day she would leave us. What we were not expecting was to lose her so young and in such a devestating way. We realize now that she was never the most healthy girl, and a short stay with her breeder led to 18 months of weekly aludex baths treating Demodectic mange, which as many know is passed from the mother to the puppy and only appears due to stress. The breeder told us that the lesions were due to “puppy fighting” and the mange being caught from foxes. It took Lulu’s illness to open our eyes, during our mission to try to save our girl led us all over, BMDCGB, Bernese Welfare, and finally to Berner-Garde which was enlightening to say the least. It was there i learned about Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI). Berner-Garde is a database of Bernese Mountain Dogs. If you put in your dog’s information, DOB, Dam, Sire and at least a 4 generation pedigree with all the whelp dates, it can calculate the COI. “The Coefficient of Inbreeding, or COI, indicates the likelihood that both copies of any of a dogs genes come from the same ancestor. The higher the value, the more times ancestors appear in both sides of the pedigree. Line breeding is done to help fix characteristics of breed type. Excessive line breeding, which would have a high COI, leads to inbreeding depression which is associated with a loss of genetic diversity: decreased lifespan, fertility issues, reduced litter sizes and birth weight, increased incidence of cancer and autoimmune diseases.” 1-8% is a good score Lulu’s was 23.4% So the deck was stacked against Lulu from the start. I know that a low COI doesn’t guarantee a different outcome or length of life, but it would have given her a better chance. What can each of us do to help reduce the risk of our next Berners dying so young?
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 15:00:00 +0000
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