Saint Bernard

The Saint Bernard carries within it one of the most beautiful stories in the entire canine world — a story about saving human life. The breed was born centuries ago at an Alpine hospice run by monks, high on a dangerous mountain pass where in winter travelers perished, buried in snow. It was there that the Saint Bernards began to do something extraordinary: they set out into blizzards, found people lost in the drifts, warmed them with their enormous bodies, and showed them the way to shelter. The most famous of them, a dog named Barry, saved about forty people this way — and to this day remains a symbol of canine heroism. From this past comes everything that makes the Saint Bernard so exceptional: this is not a dog created for fighting or guarding. It is a dog created to rescue, to warm, and to care for a human.

And because nature equipped it with a body suited to this task, the Saint Bernard is simply enormous — it can weigh as much as a grown man and, with disarming unawareness, takes up in the home roughly as much room as the couch, on which, incidentally, it would most gladly spread out. Because contrary to its build it is a calm, indeed comfort-loving giant with a gentle disposition, one that loves lazy lounging at the family's side. There is one thing, however, that every future owner must know: the drool. The Saint Bernard is a world champion in this event — after drinking water it leaves behind a wet trail as if a wave had passed, and when it shakes its great head, long strings of drool can land even on the ceiling. Keeping a cloth within reach ceases, with this breed, to be a whim and becomes a sensible survival strategy. And one more thing: the old rescuer's instinct never fully fades in the Saint Bernard — it likes to have its people together, in view, and under care, and with the utmost seriousness watches over the whole family, as if every quiet evening in the living room were a delicate rescue operation.

Because in this mountain of fur a heart has worked for generations, taught one thing: care for the human. The Saint Bernard is patient, tender, and remarkably gentle — it is famous for an almost angelic forbearance toward children, with whom it turns into a living, warm, tirelessly patient nanny. It is a dog that does not want much from life: it longs to be close to its people, to feel that they are safe, and to surround them with that enormous, soothing calm of its. And there is something truly moving in this — that in this great, slow homebody there still slumbers the same instinct that made its ancestors go out into the frost after strangers. The Saint Bernard will love you with its whole self and — should it ever come to it — would without hesitation set off for you even into the greatest blizzard. Except that day to day it prefers to show this love in the Saint Bernard way: by nestling its enormous, warm side into you exactly the way its ancestors warmed frozen travelers in the Alps.

Such an enormous dog requires, however, exceptionally thoughtful feeding — because its impressive body is at the same time its greatest weakness.

Because the Saint Bernard is a living monument to what is most beautiful in dogs — the readiness to care for a human, even at the cost of one's own effort. Today it no longer has to go out into a blizzard; its only rescue operation is simply you and your calm, your good mood, your safe, warm evenings.

It asks for little: healthy joints, a lean silhouette, coolness in summer, daily closeness, and a bit of forbearance for all that drool. Answer this — and this gentle giant will answer with years: good, calm ones, spent at the side of the family it loves. Because in the heart of every Saint Bernard there still lives the same old rescuer, for whom there is no more beautiful task than to watch over its human. And you have the wonderful privilege that this human is precisely you.