Our first mastiff was Ninja, or Titano’s Aktive Anne, from the Titano kennel in Larvik, one of Norway’s very first mastiff litters. We got her 16 years ago, and way back then we were thinking and talking about breeding. But unfortunately she had an accident when she was a bit more than one year old, and because of incompetence at the Norwegian vet college with large dogs it took almost two years until we discovered that her problems were caused by damaged ligaments in one knee. The professor there didn’t know (well, we didn’t either – but we aren’t vets!) that to test for that particular problem in a mastiff you need to sedate the dog first. They are so strong that pure muscle power can resist in such a way that it seems there’s nothing wrong with the ligaments, and he was totally convinced that there was nothing wrong with her ligaments!
Finally we came to a vet in Jessheim who got his education in England, and he knew how to do it. But then it was too late, and she was hampered by that knee the rest of her life. Still she enjoyed life, and we made sure that she never put on too much weight. She had two operations that helped her a long way, but one day her back just gave up after years of uneven stress. Another operation could have made her better for a short while, but the recovery would have been long, and after a lot of tears we decided that the best would be to let her go. So we did.
Our second mastiff was Kira, or Farnaby Festina Lente. She was imported from Betty Baxter’s very well known kennel in England (like our current Hobbit), and was beautifully apricot brindle with a great temperament. To us she looked fantastic, and I guess she wasn’t too bad. We made her Norwegian champion in four shows. And we had very little experience from the show ring (in Norway most dog owners show their dogs, using specialist handlers is not so common). She did have a strange trait that we saw every now and then, her lips turned pale at times. Almost like she had light lipstick on. But we never thought much about it, something we still beat ourselves up about know! Because it turned out to be a hidden heart defect (non hereditary, a pure mutation), and it did of course manifest itself when we had our hopes up all the way.
She was mated to Sir at Birte and Olaf’s Kennel Hugedogge in Denmark, and according to the vet’s ultra sound test there were a lot of puppies in her. But the day of the birth she was very stressed and we could see that something was wrong. We got a lot of good help from Janne at the Titano kennel, who drove down her when we called her. We are still grateful for that! But after a few hours more we drove to the vet’s clinic and got her in for a cesarean section. And she died while she was sedated. I think I said “never again” (meaning trying to breed dogs) about a thousand times that night, but at least we wanted to know what had happened, so we got a post mortem. And as mentioned earlier it was a hidden heart defect, and nothing could have been done. She might just as well have died in her sleep.
But the “nevermore” didn’t last very long, and we got Hobbit, again from Farnaby. And she is a great dog, even though she has one problem, as you can read on her own page. But we have spent four years thinking and testing and working, and we do not doubt that she will be able to give us a fantastic litter of happy, healthy mastiffs! So we are at the moment very optimistic that “third time’s the charm”, as they say.