Question for Bernese Mountain Dog owners. (poop, vet, breeder, skin)
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Hello. I have an 11 month old Bernese Mountain Dog. All of a sudden he has been suffering from some crazy hairloss and I am curious if this is normal. I mean chunks of hair and it seems never ending and it being January, it worries me. He eats Iams dog food and i have recently heard bad things about that brand. Any info would be great. All I have is pics of him as a 10 week old puppy.
Agree that a visit to the vet and skin scraping is in order.
Iams isn't very good food. Corn is a major ingredient. Corn and sorghum (a corn product) aren't digested by dogs and act as fillers, providing little nutrition and resulting in VOLUMINOUS poops, gas and, sometimes, allergies.
There are many fabulous dog foods out there. Check some of the dog food threads on the board.
Vet. My mother's friend - against my advice given what I'd been told about the 'breeder' - chose to pay $2500 for a Bernie puppy. I warned her she was buying from a BYB, but she insisted this was a nice lady and they had good dogs. The puppy is 5 months old and has had 2 surgeries already. It's got a genetic disorder of some kind and may wind up being put down. The breeder won't return calls or e-mails - I'm shocked!!
I've heard - and don't know for sure myself, I'm not that familiar with the breed - that they have a good number of genetic problems. I'd call and see if I can find a vet that's familiar with the breed. But yes, a skin scraping should be done at the very least immediately.
I own a four year old berner and have had her since she was a puppy. The hair loss you have described, hair coming out in chunks, is not normal. It sounds much different than normal shedding, and he needs a trip to the vet.
Also, a great resource for berner health questions and other breed information is bmdinfo.org. Good luck and keep us posted about how your little guy is doing!
I have an adorable Bernese Mountain Dog and this post gave me a lot of food for thought. If you love these dogs like I do you might enjoy this read .....
[url=http://bernesemountaindogpuppy.blogspot.com/]Bernese Mountain Dog puppy[/url]
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Berner owner here
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