It has taken me several years to put down on paper our breeding Philosophy, but after serious thought to why we have done what we have done over the last twenty years and hopefully for the next twenty years I will attempt to explain it to you all. We started in this breed because we fell in love with the breed. We first fell in love with the striking look of the Berner, with it's tri-colors and unique pattern of black, rust and white, this drew us to the breed. But after getting our first Bernese we then fell in love with the temperament of the breed. That temperament is what has kept us going for all these years. When we got our second Berner, Phlip, he became our foundation of WINK Kennel. We certainly obtained longevity with Phlip's lines. He lived to twelve and a half and his son also lived that long, and so did several of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. We are so proud of that. With Phlip's lines we got both conformation dogs that are beautiful to look at and we got brains also with several performance dogs. Although we could get nice boys from Phlip we had a hard time getting nice girls. The girls from Phlip's lines were nice but they lacked the size that we were looking for.
So I began to look for a line that produced nice big girls, that is where I found Reese. After twenty years we have a line of dogs in Reese that has the temperament and size that we are looking for. Reese is now my new foundation girl to WINK Kennel. She has produced some nice dogs, several of them are working on their conformation championship. We are very excited about where the possibilities of this line can take us.
The future for WINK Kennel is so very exciting. We hope to combine these two distinct and different lines to produce, the longevity, size and temperament that we want for WINK Kennel. Always a concern with the Bernese Mt. Dog are their health issues. I always try to keep these issues in the forefront of my mind when planning a breeding. These health issues are numberous,but to name a few, all kinds cancer, hip and elbow dysplasia and cataracts are just some that play a part in the decision making process when we breed.
We know there is no perfect dog or line that does not have it's issues, whether it is hip and elbow issues, cancer, cataracts, size, bone, or typiness, we are always striving to do our very best when we breed two dogs together. I believe that I kind of play God when putting the Mom and Dad together, so I am always willing to help anyone that has one of my dogs to overcome a problem and find a solution for any situation that may arise. We do not breed all the time but when we do breed I always strive to create a better dog than Mom and Dad, so we are always moving forward with our breeding program.
Thank you reading our breeding philosophy and enjoy the rest of our website. We are looking forward to a very bright future with WINK Kennel.
Susan McCulloch
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