Susan showing Howie to his first point in his first show (3 dogs total) at the age of 8 months.	Best of Winners at a small show at 22 months old

This is Howie. He is the puppy we kept from Olympia's litter with Can. BISS Can/Am. Ch. Sennenhof Xander. In March of 2005 he became our first homebred Champion, finishing with 4 majors, all from the Bred by Exhibitor class.

After getting his first two legs of his CD on his first two tries, Howie, hit a few stumbling blocks. One being we were trying to get his conformation championship and his obedience title at the same time. Another is that his dad never enrolled him in any actual obedience classes. After taking about 6 months off with minimal additional training, Howie completed his third leg of his CD in the first week in June, 2006 on his first try after his vacation, at the same show where he got his first Best of Breed the year before. Now we are on to conquer that drafting thing.

Howie meets everyday with great enthusiasm and is very eager to please. He is also one of the great snugglers of all time.

Unfortunately Howie's time with us came to an end far too soon. In the summer of 2007 we noticed that Howie's gums had become a little blanched and his energy level wasn't quite as high as normal. The vets couldn't find anything until they did a bone marrow biopsy. There they found some histiocytes, and Howie was diagnosed with a often overlooked form of malignant histiocytosis in the bone marrow that destroys the red blood cells. The next few weeks were very difficult, but Howie keep up his "glad to see you" personality to the very end.

Howie was the first dog to win the Sierra West Bernese Mountain Dog Club's Clown Award in obedience at their Annual Regional Specialty. In October of 2007, after Howie's death, it was announced at the regional specialty that the name of the Clown Award would be forever changed to the "Howie Award", for dogs that show the greatest sense of fun or downright silliness while competing in obedience. We would like to thank the Sierra West BMDC for a fitting tribute to a wonderful dog, who showed a great zest for life in everything he did.

 

5 weeks	5 weeks with his ball	4 months old, with the same ball	New CD and High BMD in trial. June, 2006

11 weeks	3 Months	Best of Breed at BMDCSC supported entry June, 2005

Howie's Dad, Xander, at Christmas time 2002		Howie's half brother(same dad, different mom) Charzard