Gizmo was only 9.8lbs when I picked him up at 8 wks old, the smallest of the 10 puppies in his litter. I was allowed to take the puppy back for any reason after getting him checked out by a vet within a certain time period, but the second I picked him up and named him I was in love. There would be no going back. I mean just look at him! When I took him to the vet for the first time he had to be treated for a parasite and the vet noticed he was quite thin but otherwise seemed healthy. His vet suggested I get Trupanion pet insurance, so I did. I couldn’t have known then how critical that choice was to enabling Gizmo to live as long as he did. I knew the health risks of Bernese Mountain Dogs, but surely all those bad things wouldn’t happen to my baby bear and I was just being extra cautious in getting insurance, right?

Looking back at this I’m now realizing he’s never sat straight in his entire life outside of training/test sessions

Puppies can be trying little land sharks at times and raising a puppy alone while working full time is no picnic, but it didn’t take me long to fall head-over-heels in love with this boy. Gizmo loved everything: going to the beach & swimming, trips to the mountains to play in the snow, camping, making new friends, and endless cuddles. He loved to play “tug” by grabbing onto a toy and laying down while you pulled him around the tile floor (and when he got too big to pull around, he walked around as you led him by the toy in his mouth). We did everything together – we even got matching Halloween costumes! I spent hours every week on his training, he loved to learn, and our bond grew as quickly as he did. Life was great!

Gizmo started limping on his front leg at 8 mo. old. It cleared up with some rest and I was even more careful about his body’s limits than I’d already been. The limp randomly came back worse a couple months later. He was diagnosed with severe hip & elbow dysplasia, arthritis, and had pieces of bone chipped in the elbows that made it like he was walking with rocks in his shoes. I was distraught. I’d been doing everything I could to care for his joints: I used the recommended food, weighed him every week to ensure he didn’t grow too fast, carried him so he wouldn’t slip or have to do stairs, or jump, etc… so why?! I blamed myself for one time I walked him too far, but his team of vets all assured me that it wasn’t my fault. It’s the breed; there is a genetic factor for this level of disfiguration. Thankfully I had the insurance and cost wasn’t a factor for care. He had his first double elbow arthroscopy at 11 mo. He handled crate rest like a champ (with extra cuddles). I took him to the snow as soon as he was able to run around again, and everything seemed to be returning to normal.

Gizmo would sometimes still limp a bit. I was told he might always limp and we’d just have to manage the arthritis and joint pain. We started swim therapy, changed his food to a prescription diet, and put him on a bunch of medications and supplements to reduce inflammation and manage his pain. He would zoomy around like nothing was wrong. We did CGC and Rally training, and started draft training, which he absolutely loved! I bought him a custom-made cart that was very little weight for him to pull. A little limp became normal for us. It didn’t seem to stop him from doing anything he wanted to do. He wasn’t going to be going on any hikes, but we still did everything else together and he was always a giant goofball determined to live life to the fullest. No limp or joint pain was going to dampen his spirits.

Despite pain management efforts and Gizmo’s can-do attitude, I had doubts that I was doing all I could be doing. I sought a second opinion when his limping seemed to be worsening and his primary vet considered it a natural progression. I drove him a couple of hours away to a specialist to see if what more, if anything, could be done. They discovered more bone fragments in the elbows. We did a 2nd double elbow arthroscopy, and this vet also chiseled away the damaged coronoid process that was at risk of further fragmentation plus did a procedure to promote scar tissue formation in the joints to somewhat make up for the fact he’d already worn out most of his cartilage before he was 2 yrs old. Gizmo was on his feet surprisingly fast and I had trouble keeping him calm on the longer crate rest this time. He wanted to get back to running around and having fun! He mastered escaping from his pen and gave me a heart attack a few times when I came home from work to find him loose.

After taking medications daily and fairly frequent sedation dealing with his orthopedic problems, Gizmo started to get GI upsets. He started eating things he shouldn’t when he felt nauseous and this led to him needing a stomach surgery to remove an obstruction between the two elbow surgeries. We’ve been managing his flare ups of nausea and diarrhea ever since. When he starts feeling sick, he growls – like a really snarly deep throat growl that should probably frighten you. Yet he also comes and sits on your feet and begs for attention while he’s doing that. Talk about mixed signals! The first time he did it, it started us (by this point my partner, Colin, had moved in with us). Now we’re used to it. Murder noises and teeth? Let’s rub his belly, get him some fresh air, and adjust his meds for a bit. No big deal. I also had his stomach tacked when they went in for the surgery since large dogs are prone to stomach twisting that can be fatal and I didn’t want to take any chances of that happening down the line.

Between elbow surgeries we had to remove Gizmo’s spleen. He was feeling nauseous and eating a lot of grass, leaves, and even tore up and ate part of the living room carpet. As the week went on, the usual remedies weren’t working and he became lethargic. He was panting and growling a lot more than usual. I took him to the vet, who found a mass and assumed he had another obstruction related to his nausea and eating things. We did stomach surgery, but were in for a surprise. His spleen was twisted. Apparently this can also happen in large dogs and nobody knows what causes it, but it can be fatal and it can’t just be untwisted (possible blood clots and stroke if you do). Dogs can live comfortably without a spleen. However, the vet wasn’t equipped to handle blood transfusions if needed during a splenectomy so we transferred him to another hospital, which meant he was sedated and operated on twice in one day and resulted in a very high puppy that wailed for the first 24 hours at home.

We had almost 18 months without incident after the 2nd elbow surgery. He still limped a bit and we managed the pain and GI side effects, but otherwise got to live a normal life swimming, romping in the snow, camping, running around like doggies do, and demanding non-stop cuddles. We moved to Boise and he got to spend nearly everyday swimming in the lake. And then he started limping on his hind leg one day instead of the front, and we were back at the vet for more x-rays. He tore his ACL and needed knee surgery this time. The vet prepared us for the fact that a high percentage of dogs end up tearing the other one at some point. Well, another 8 weeks of puppy jail (crate rest) and he was back to swimming and regular life again. Crate rest was always an opportunity to learn new tricks for us to keep his mind occupied, but by now we were running out of ideas for things he could learn that didn’t require moving and had to get creative and search the internet for ideas. He’s such a trooper!

We had a good 6 months, during which we moved to Seattle. Then the next issue reared its ugly head. It started just before Gizmo’s 5th Gotcha day when he woke up and couldn’t walk on a front leg. It didn’t get better with rest and pain meds so we went to the vet. Nothing broken, torn, and no indication of infection. We were recommended to see an orthopedic specialist and just take extra meds and rest in the meanwhile, but I had to be put on waitlists. A couple days later he was limping on a back leg as well, so I was calling around and trying to figure out how to get him seen anywhere sooner. The next day he was trying to walk on only 2 legs when he had to go out and we practically had to carry him so I was sending videos around to the vets to increase urgency and try to get him squeezed in. We got him into a specialty center through emergency and it was a real-world dog episode of House with a team from surgery, neurology, and orthopedics trying to figure out what was going on with him. He spent 5 days in the hospital and was eventually diagnosed with septic arthritis.

About 9 months later, he woke up and wasn’t using the leg and was growling and refusing to come out of his crate. The way he held his paw looked an awful lot like the last incident so we went back to the emergency vet, and he did indeed have another flare up of septic arthritis. Like last time, they did a lavage to flush the infection out of the joint and put him on antibiotics.

6 months later, almost on cue, the more extreme limping began on the back leg, and I immediately knew it was the other ACL. He had his second TPLO surgery. Crate rest isn’t so bad when he gets lots of cuddles. I forgot to take his comfy cone to the hospital so he got sent home with an icky plastic one, but we switched it out to the comfy one after this photo.

Gizmo made it to 7 years old – an incredible milestone for any Berner, and especially one with as any medical issues as Gizmo had dealt with in his life. Many vets have told me how lucky Gizmo is to have me. When he began having orthopedic issues, his vet told me most people would put a dog like this down. He was barely 2 yrs at the time and I couldn’t wrap my head around that. Gizmo loves life, lived for the cuddles, and insisted on running around and playing in spite of any pain he lived with. As he got older and the arthritis worsened, he slowed down. We had to put more rugs down in the house and I looked for ways to keep him from slipping outside of the house. We tried boots, upgraded to an easy walk harness, and other things. Some things worked better than others. He continued with underwater treadmill and massage therapy and he continued to be on increasing doses of pain medications.

Gizmo slipped at the groomer around his 7th birthday. After that, I discovered toe grips: little rubber rings you put on the toenails to help them get traction. There’s a disclaimer on them about how you have to position them correctly or they can result in toe infections, so I checked them every day and repositioned any that had slid up. After about a month, the toes on his front paws got infected despite my diligence. I took the grips off, we went to the vet and got antibiotics, and all but one toe cleared up. We did a second round of antibiotics and it still didn’t clear up. A growth was starting to form between the nail and paw pad. It was bleeding and infected and smelled awful. The vets determined this was a sort of trauma response and if it kept growing into the paw it would be a bigger problem, and the growth might become cancerous. After consulting with an orthopedic, dermatologist, and surgeon the consensus was the whole toe had to go. I was so angry that we were chopping off a toe because of a stupid little ring of rubber on his toenail that was meant to help him. Luckily, it isn’t a weight-bearing toe and Gizmo never seemed to notice aside from having to go through the crate rest a bit again.

Likely related to the toe infection, his elbow got infected a little while later. Back to the hospital for another lavage and more antibiotics to treat the 3rd round of septic arthritis. After this, the team decided to proactively put him on antibiotics. He took them once a quarter in hopes of staving off further flare ups of infection in the joints. He continued to be an escape artist from his pen always keeping me on my toes during his recovery periods even in his old age, but was a calm little nap bug when supervised.

Gizmo was laying down, went to stand up, and screamed. Given how bad his hip dysplasia was, I assumed the left hip popped out. We gave him an extra pain med and I felt around the hip but couldn’t find anything. He calmed down and was gleefully cuddling, but when he stood up we realized he couldn’t use the right leg at all. Another trip to the ER, this time to discover he had a spiral fracture in the femur. A femur shouldn’t break just from standing so bone cancer was suspected. There were no obvious signs of bone cancer so they performed the surgery and put in a metal plate and pins. They prepared us that if it was indeed undetected cancer the bone wouldn’t heal. Given Gizmo’s orthopedic history, he wasn’t a candidate for amputation – the other legs can’t support him alone – so we just had to hope for the best. I spent a lot of time in the pen to keep him calm and even slept in there with him.

A couple days after femur surgery, he whined and stopped using the leg again. We went back to the ER. They initially told us the plate failed, but it was the weekend and they needed to wait until the surgical team came back Monday to make any decisions. Everyone suspected it was bone cancer, and we had a discussion about what the euthanasia process would be like if it came to that. He was so uncomfortable when we visited him in the hospital. We were sure this was the end and cried all weekend. When the surgery team returned, they found that the first plate didn’t fail. He had a second spiral fracture. Still not showing definitive signs of bone cancer, they were willing to do another surgery. But this was our last chance. I was all nerves every time he moved once we got him home and I slept in the pen the first few nights. The bone healed and every day since felt like a bonus. We don’t really know why the bone broke.

Gizmo lost mobility in his back leg after the femur surgeries, and lost confidence in walking on his own. We upgraded to a help-em-up harness and bought him a quad cart. I found a place that does rent-to-own so I could test it out without paying full price, and it ended up being an amazing thing for him. It kept him moving and to rebuild his confidence, and he insisted on making it all the way to the park many times with the cart! The draft lessons we did when we was younger really paid off. He took to this new type of cart right away. He enjoyed the mental work of using the left/right/stop commands while we’re out walking; it was like he had a job to do again, which is always a good thing for a Berner. We kept on going for months like this up to his lymphoma diagnosis.