This breed of large mountain dogs is apparently descended from the Tibetan Mastiff, the ancient Asian hound. The Saint Bernard as we know him today was selected by the monks of the Great Saint Bernard Hospice, from which he also gets his name.
The monks then used him for guard duty and mountain rescue. Generally trained for avalanche search, the image of the barrel of brandy hanging from the neck of the big dog often recurs in the iconography of the breed.
This practice, used towards the end of the 19th century, was intended to invigorate people lost in the mountains, or victims of cold or avalanche. Nobility, devotion and sacrifice remain the motto of the Saint Bernard to this day.
It is said that, in the middle of the 1600s, dogs were offered to the hospice by Valais and Waldensians families. The monks then created a breed devoid of the initial ferocity of his ancestor. The Saint Bernard is described in Prior Ballalu of the hospice for the first time in 1709.
It is also written that in 1700, the Chanoine Camos, local treasurer, created a wheel in which a dog was used to turn the spindle.
Several chronicles on the exploits of the Saint Bernards were subsequently published. Many travellers can consider themselves lucky to have been saved thanks to these extraordinary dogs.
Genealogical records were created in 1867 by Heinrich Schumacher, who lived in Holligen near the city of Bern. In February 1884, Léon was the first Saint Bernard to be entered in the Swiss register of origins.
On March 15 of the same year, the Swiss Saint Bernard Club was founded in the city of Basel and the Swiss origin of the Saint Bernard and his standard were recognised in June 1887 at an international congress of cynology. It was then that he became the Swiss national dog.
There are two varieties of Saint Bernards, the shorthaired and longhaired. To the stoutness of the shorthaired Saint Bernard was added the exceptional qualities of the Newfoundland.
The crossbreeding resulted in a longhaired Saint Bernard, larger and fatter than the shorthaired. The longhaired Saint Bernard became the most common of his breed.
Until 2004, the Great Saint Bernard Hospice kept the dog breeding business, and handed it over to the Barry Foundation, located on the Swiss side of the road from the Saint Bernard Pass to Martigny, in 2005.
Many Saint Bernards have been used in movies, such as Stephen King's Cujo, Richard Pottier's Barry, and La Guerre des tuques, the highly successful Quebec movie.
