How the St Bernard Became a Search and Rescue Dog

Barry of the Great St Bernard is a 1977 Disney movie that chronicles the life of a real dog considered to be the most famous St. Bernard of all time. If you love dogs, this is a great movie to watch with your kids. It's an endearing story of how this breed became known as a search and rescue dog.

Today's dog evolved from a breed of search and rescue dogs used by monks along a 49 mile route that is still used by people traveling through the Great Saint Bernard Pass in the Western Alps between Switzerland and Italy. At 8,000 feet, there's only a couple months out of the year when it's snow free. An Augustine monk, St. Bernard de Menthon established a hospice and monastery around 1050 to give shelter to travelers using the snowy pass. Today, dogs are no longer used to rescue people who become stranded.

It's believed the first dogs were brought to the monastery between 1660 and 1670 and used as guard dogs and as pets. Not as big as today's St. Bernard, they had a shorter coat and longer tail. Servants who were sent out to help guide people coming through the pass started taking dogs with them in the mid 1700's. The dogs were useful in clearing paths with their wide chests for people to follow. It was during this time they discovered the St. Bernard dog could easily find people who had been buried in feet of snow with their extraordinary sense of smell and had an ability to predict avalanches. The dogs were also found capable of going out without humans to search for and rescue those needing help. After going through a training program, groups of 2 or 3 dogs began to patrol the mountain pass alone.

What made these dogs so special was the way they worked together with no assistance from humans to perform search and rescues. Once someone who had been buried by an avalanche or collapsed from exhaustion were found, one or two dogs would lay on the person and lick their face to keep them warm. The other dog raced back to the monastery to alert the monks who followed the dog to the injured person and took them back to the hospice. If a dog was alone, he/she would lay on the victim and bark until monks arrived.

The winters of 1816 - 1818 were severe and avalanches almost wiped out the St. Bernard breed at the monastery when many of their dogs were killed while trying to save people buried in the snow. The breed was saved from extinction when nearby villages offered their dogs to the monks for use as breeding stock.

The last documented search and rescue was in 1897 when a dog found and saved a 12 year old boy who had fallen into a crevice. It's not really known exactly how many people were rescued because many of them were never recorded, but the dogs of the monastery were credited with saving over 2,000 lives in a 150 year period. Even Napoleon's army made it safely through the pass thanks to the actions of the dogs.

In 1830, the monks started breeding their dogs with Newfoundlands trying to create coats with longer hair for better protection against the weather, but it didn't work. The dogs had longer hair, but ice clung to the coat making rescues harder. Those dogs were given to people in the villages. A breeding program was finally established in 1855. Heinrich Schumacher worked with the monks to create the early St. Bernard breed and he maintained a studbook. The general consensus is the Tibetan mastiff was bred with the Great Dane, Greater Swiss Mountain Dog and Great Pyrenees. Schumacher shipped dogs to Russia, the United States and England where they were bred with different breeds and grew into the St. Bernard dog of today. With no official name, the dogs were called, Swiss Alpine Dogs, Hospice Dogs, Mountain Dogs, Alpine Mastiffs, and Saint Bernard Mastiffs. The Swiss Kennel Club finally settled on a name for the breed in 1880 and the dogs officially became known as the St. Bernard, named after the monk who established the monastery in 1050. The mountain pass is also named after him.

Barry of the Great Saint Bernard was a favorite of the monks and the Swiss people because of his heroic rescue of over 40 people. Because of this, the breed was also called Barry Dogs to honor him. Barry was born in 1800 and died in 1814. One famous story retold Barry's bravery by climbing up an icy ledge that none of the men who were present could climb to rescue a young boy who had been found covered by a heavy snow. Barry licked the boy's face to wake him, the boy threw his arms around the dog's neck and Barry slowly and carefully pulled him back down the ledge to the waiting arms of the men. After Barry's death, one puppy from every litter has been named Barry to this day to honor him. A taxidermist prepared Barry's body and he is still on display at the Natural History Museum in Berne.

The monastery still had 18 St. Bernard dogs living with them in 2004. That same year, the Barry Foundation was established and set up in a village called Martingy which is located down the mountain from the pass that had been patrolled by the dogs for all those years. A keg was never used in search and rescue missions, but the monks allowed pictures to be taken of dogs with kegs strapped to their collars to amuse visitors.

Jess Blumburg, A Brief History of the St. Bernard Rescue Dog, Smithsonian.com

The St. Bernard, Dog Owner's Guide

Barry, the Great Saint Bernard, Famous Mountain Rescue Dog, Dog Breeds and Dog Gifts