Introducting our new Berner Puppy.....

[Dr. William B. Neff]

Maine's Jultomte Alpenbjorn - His call Name is "Nick" and he is 7 1/2 weeks old and weighs about 14 pounds. He is absolutely gorgeous!!!! We picked him up in Voorhesville, NY, near Albany, from Libby Kesner this weekend. We are so thrilled to have another Berner in our home and our lives, because we miss Winston so much. Nick is from Libby Kesner's Minke (Maine's U Gotsum Splain' T'Do) and Rui Rosa's "Apollo" (Lad's Rui de la Suede) from Sweden.

Now you may wonder what this Swedish name is all about - and of course I'll be happy to explain.

His call name, "Nick" is for St. Nicholas, because he and his seven brothers and one sister were born on Christmas Day during a 24 inche snowstorm. Besides, his "granddam" is Nikki, so that is a nice tie in.

Maine's Jultomte Alpenbjorn (In English, that is Maine's Father Christmas Alpine Bear)

His sire is Swedish, my maternal grandfather was born in Stockholm, Sweden and our daughter, Gwen, spent two semesters at the University of Lund in Sweden in 1988, so I wanted to use a Swedish name.

Jultomte translates to Father Christmas because the litter was born on Christmas Day.

Alpenbjorn - we needed to have an "A" name and Alpen just seemed so appropriate. Bjorn is bear in Swedish. Our other two berners had 'bear' in their names: Bern Aare (Bern = bear in Swiss and Aare is the river that flows through the capital city, Bern) and Winston Poohbear - because we needed a "W" name and Winston sounded dignified and Poohbear - because he was a gift from our son, Jay, and his wife, Lisa.

We had a great weekend at Libby's. Our daughter Gwen and her husband, Gary, and our granddaughter, Ella, made the three hour trip from Burlington, VT to come see the puppies on Saturday. We got some terrific photos and video with Ella and the puppies. She was very gentle with them and let them climb all over her.

Everyone agreed that the puppy we picked was the perfect one for us. He is gorgeous and I want to try my hand in showing him (I'm going to need a lot of help from my friends to learn how to do this!) He has a wonderfully confident, but gentle personality and is bright! I'm going to also do obedience, drafting and therapy work with him. We are so happy with Nick.

We picked up Pat Long on Friday so she do some litter photos and individual photos of the puppies. All went well until yesterday morning, when we realized that the storm that was coming across southern Pennsylvania was much larger than we had realized. We knew that we couldn't take Pat back to Philly and then cross the mountains on the turnpike (they got over 3 feet of snow in the mountains last night) so we reluctantly left Pat at Libby's to take the train or to rent a car to drive back home. She decided to drive and got as far as Allentown last night and will hopefully complete her journey today. We drove straight across Rt. 90 West and then took Rt. 79 South to Pittsburgh. We had 7 hours of 'no snow' driving, but the final 3 hours made up for those good driving conditions as we drove through blizzard like conditions on roads that hadn't been touched by a plow. Travelling 35 miles per hour on the turnpike in long lines of cars is not fun!!!

"Nick" seems to have an association with snowstorms for the major events in his life. He was also born on the day that our Winston began to get ill. Winston died of Malignant Histiocytosis, just ten days after his first signs of illness. The day that we drove to Libby's to pick up Nick, our son had to take our nineteen year old dog, Samantha to the vets to be euthanized. We were sad to not be home when she woke up unable to stand and it was quite evident that her time to Cross the Bridge to be with Winston was here. We were just glad that our nephew, who was staying with Sam and Ben, was able to reach Jay so he could be with Samantha during her final hours. This weekend was a one of such happiness, but interspersed with such sadness, too. Nick will bring 'joy' to our lives and fill the emptiness in our home and in our hearts. Thank you Libby, for entrusting this wonderful puppy to our care. We promise to help him fulfill both your and our dreams.

Joye Neff and Nick (Ben)
Mt. Lebanon, Pittsburgh, PA