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In Loving Memory of
Gretl Legacy's mad About You November 17th 1999 to February 26th 2008 Loved and so much missed by Kathleen Mieir, family and friends 
Gretl was a fabulous dog who passed the Marin Humane Society SHARE program testing at 6 months of age and from that time on we often did 3-5 classroom visits per week to various schools to teach bite prevention and 5 senses, to special education classes, St. Vincent School for Boys (troubled youth) and other school venues. She worked for a year and a half on an autistic child intervention project meeting 1 on 1 with a severely autistic child, worked for 2 ½ years with a young child with genetic and developmental disabilities, attended MHS summer camp obedience training sessions with the kids weekly every summer and visited the ICU at Marin General Hospital monthly for 4 years. One of my bookkeeping clients who is a psychologist reminded me of the times she came to her office to work with children who were terrified of dogs and how quickly she won them over and allayed their fears. In January 2005 The Marin Humane Society began their SHARE A BOOK program and she has participated in that since the beginning – going to school for 4 hours every other Thursday during the school year – into the reading lab – and reading with many of the 60-90 children in the program each semester. She was well enough to go back on February 7th and her reunion with the children was truly heartwarming. Her loss is felt not only by our family but also by the many children she touched over the years. The truly sad part of the story is that this horrible disease has taken a huge toll in Gretl’s litter and the other two litters her mother produced. Of the six in our litter we have lost three (at ages 6, 8 and 8) to confirmed malignant histiocytosis and one (at age 4) to suspected histiocytosis that was called hemolytic anemia. The only living littermate was diagnosed in February with what was first called lymphosarcoma and has now been definitely identified as malignant histiocytosis by Dr. Peter Moore who reviewed the original slides and tissues when he failed to respond to the lymphosarcoma chemotherapy protocol. The first littermate died at age 3 of lymphosarcoma. The other two litters also have many deaths from histio and lymphoma. Gretl’s tissues and information were submitted to the Breen study and we are working to have data from the others in the litter submitted as well. But it seems what is equally important is encouraging people to enter health information in Bernergarde so that family patterns can be more easily recognized.
Gretl at work! 
Gretl with John and Holly *Histio Roll Call Main Page* *Samson's Story *My Gang *Sunny,Simmy,Barney,Pixie *Friend's Gallery *In Loving Memory *Histio Roll Call *Bernese Art *Berner Fun Stuff *Berner Articles & Info *Berner Shop *Longlease Links. *Humour. *Guestbook. *Berner Fundraisers *Recent Updates * *Longlease Bernese Mountain Dogs Home Page* |
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