OUR SWISS CONNECTION

(Presented here with permission from the author)

Margret Bärtschi

Herding? Driving? Drafting? Some Breed History

Copied from BMDCA Alpenhorn:

Margret Bärtschi enlightened and informed members of an e-mail list for breeders on the history and purpose of the Bernese Mountain Dog. Margret is President of the Klub fur Berner Sennen Hunde Schweiz (KBS) Breeding Commission and coauthor (with Hansjoachim Spengler) of Hunde: sehen zuchten erleben Das Buch vom Berner Sennenhund. Although this collection of posts appeared in several regional newsletters, it is so informative as to be repeated for those who missed it. An astute historian, Margret here dispels some myths about the BMD. Margret judged the national specialty sweepstakes (puppy and veteran) this 2001 in Spokane, Washington, and also spoke on BMD history and purpose.

Margret In early June 2000,

I have printed and read now all the contributions to this topic, and I see that many who contributed to the discussion feel that the main quality of the Bernese is the warm and sensitive relationship with his home and "his people."

This [relationship] is not accidental. It must have to do with a long selection [process] that favoured this dog as an all-round farm and family dog with a strong relationship to all the beings and belongings that earlier composed the centre of a farm in the northern (German) part of Switzerland and southern Germany. So those who [stated] that the BMD was in the first place an all around farm dog that was able to learn and be trained for special duties are right.

The main duty of Swiss Sennenhunde has always been to care for the farm, to recognise any kind of danger, and to protect its inhabitants. He was expected to announce strangers and to keep wild animals, such as wolves, bears, and swine, off the premises.

To understand this [purpose], it is necessary to have some knowledge of the history of Switzerland and its inhabitants. Farming on detached places (not in villages) in central Europe started about 400 BC, or even before. That was the time when people started to build their farmhouses and cultivate their fields within the woods, which up to this time covered the hills and plains.

To own big dogs that were able to protect them and their livestock against the wild animals was a necessity. So it seems that the prehistoric farmers-Celts-started to select the biggest dogs from the small "torfhunde" to fulfill their needs. The Celts are known to have been cattle breeders, so it is evident that some of their dogs served also to drive their cattle from one place to another. We do not read anywhere in the ancient descriptions that the Celts had sheep.

When the Romans occupied Switzerland (they did not invade it!), the original Celtic farmers remained, and with them their livestock and dogs. The Romans never constituted more than 2 to 5 percent of the Swiss (at that time Celtic) population.

The theory that BMDs (and other breeds) were descendants of Roman mastiffs or molossean dogs was created at the end of the last century. At this time, Roman remains (stones!) were detected and the findings published everywhere, whilst the traces of the real inhabitants of many countries had faded away because they had been made of wood. The Roman mastiff theory for BMDs was based on one single dog skull found in the neighbourhood of Vindonissa, which later proved to have been buried there in medieval times, 1,000 years after the Romans had left the country.

Science has since revealed that the Roman army, which was billeted in the fortress of Vindonissa, ate beef produced by the [local] inhabitants of this time, not "Roman" beef. They bought the small cows of the Celts, who were living in the neighbourhood. The Roman cows and oxen, which were bigger at this time, apparently had not been brought to Switzerland at all, nor any dogs to "drive" them.

Unfortunately, the false story about the Roman origin of the BMD has been copied again and again, and can still be found in older publications.... I'm sorry that not more of the later scientific findings have been published in English. The Swiss sennenhunde are not the descendants of Roman dogs. They were here long before the Romans came!!!

The farm dogs in central Europe (southern Germany, northern Switzerland), where small farms were built individually in the woods, were for centuries first of all the watchdogs and protectors of their farms. They were sometimes used to drive cattle (cows) from one place to another (very easy for a dog to learn), and in some places they were used to pull carts if necessary. Since no flocks of sheep (or just small groups of 4 to 10 animals) were in this area, we can conclude that there never was an interest in "herding" for a farm dog.

The use of big farm dogs to bring the milk to the cheesery twice a day with a small carriage did not start before 1850, when the first cheeseries (dairies) were built in the valleys. The implication is that there was never a selection toward something like special abilities for "carting." Any big dog was good enough to tow a cart if needed!

Certainly, the story about the "weavers" who used BMDs as draft dogs is very strange. Who were they? Weavers as they existed in other parts of Switzerland, where people were too poor to own a dog, did not exist in the Canton of Berne. Why the quotation of these (nonexisting) people in connection with the BMD?...

As a final point, concluded from the history of farming in Switzerland and the dogs who were helpers on these farms, we could say: BMDs were all-round farm dogs whose main duty was to protect the farm and its inhabitants (humans and animals) against all kinds of intruders, and who were able to learn other duties, such as driving [livestock] and pulling small carts. They have always been part of the family, they were able to discern who belonged to the farm or not, and they were expected to be friendly to those whom their masters welcomed, and to keep away those who were strange or had bad intentions.

THE ROLE OF THE SENNEN

The senn (plural is sennen) is a professional. He is the man who moves from the valleys to the Alps with a herd of cows and heifers, and maybe also a bull, when the snow has melted away in the higher regions. He herds the cattle in the Alpine pastures. His herd may be composed of the cows of many different owners-farmers who remained in the valleys to take care of their fields and crops.

The senn cares that his cows don't get lost in the wilderness, and he takes them into the alphutte (a barn that houses him and his cows) twice a day to milk them and then produce the cheese from the milk. Preparation and storage of the cheese is one of the secret arts in which the sennen had to be experts.

Normally, there were pastures for the herd at several levels (altitude above sea level-e. g., at 1,000, 1,200, and 1,400 meters), all with an alphutte and its equipment, to make the cheese. When the cows had eaten the grass at the first level (maiensass), the whole family, consisting of humans, cows, heifers, bull, and sometimes also some swine, moved to the next level, ending at the highest maiensass in August.

When the grass on the highest Alp was eaten, all went down the way they had come up, remaining some weeks at the different levels, where the grass in the meantime had grown again. By the end of September, the herd was driven down to the valley again, mules or carriages carrying the cheese. The cows were distributed to their owners, and the cheese (or its value in cash) was distributed to the farmers according to the heads (cows) each had contributed to the herd.

How does the dog come into this story? I think you guess that there was a lot for him to do! He had to help the senn to drive the cattle to the Alps (sometimes a distance of more than 20 miles a day); he had to care that none of the animals got lost; he had to drive the cows to the barn at milking time; and more. He also had to announce strangers coming to the Alp and keep off any wild animals that threatened the cattle. There certainly must have been a selection for dogs that were more capable than others to fulfill this duty.

Driving cattle is an easy job for dogs, since cows have a very good sense of orientation and place. Their first reaction if the dog barks at them is to go home-i.e., their barn. So the barking dog can learn quickly that he can make a cow go home (e.g., at milking time) by barking at her, and then his master praises him

Cows also have a very good memory of paths or ways that lead to places they know because they have been there before. The lead cow (often decorated with flowers) exactly remembers which way she must go to get to the Alps when the time has come. The task of the sennenhund then consists in keeping the herd together and keeping them moving until they have reached their goal, the Alp.

Sennenhunde have been useful helpers of the senn in Switzerland, southern Germany, and Austria since medieval times, when the Alpine regions were first cultivated. Normally, the dogs the sennen used were the smaller breeds of dogs now known as the Swiss sennenhunde-the Appenzeller and Entlebucher. The Berner and the Great Swiss Mountain Dog are too clumsy for the work in Alpine regions.

Keep in mind that the sennenhund (smaller type) has been widespread in the Alpine regions of central Europe since medieval times (or even before). There must have been a selection toward the wanted capacities (driving, herding cattle) of these dogs, but we do not know anything about breeding practises in the centuries that created these dogs.

The BMD story gets more complicated. The Canton of Bern had different rules for the kuher (the senn in the canton), which affected also the evolution of the farm dogs now known as Bernese Mountain Dogs.

In the Canton of Berne, the situation was somewhat special. A great part of the Alpine pastures, especially in the Emmental and the prealps (not so in the Bernese Oberland with its high mountains) were owned by local nobles, monasteries, or patrician families who lived in the city of Berne. They engaged küher (küh translates cow; küher is person in charge of cows) to care for their herds and to do the same job the sennen did elsewhere. The job was almost the same, moving their herds from Alpine pasture to Alpine pasture and making cheese and butter, but the name was different, as was also their position in society.

From 1100 to ca 1500, the küher were employees of their patrons: they received payment, but the dairy products and livestock belonged to the owners of the soil. Later, the küher started to keep their own livestock, together with the herd of their patron, and by the end of the 16th century the küher were the owners of the whole herd. The patricians, the other nobles, and the monasteries, still the owners of the ground, earned their money by taking a rent and a certain amount of dairy products for leasing their Alpine pastures to these küher. The küher were a very proud folk, very independent, and many of them among the wealthiest people in the State of Berne. There are still numerous popular folksongs praising the wonderful life of an Alpine herdsman, a kuher.

Every küher, of course, had one or several küherhundli (cowman's dog). The kuher were not only specialists for dairy products but also dealers in cattle. They sold and bought cattle in other parts of central Europe, and they organised the exportation of their cheese. Partly such trade was also practised by some of the sennen, depending on where they lived and who were the owners of their cattle.

We know by different records that the cattle trade between southern Germany and Switzerland was lively during some centuries. Cows were also regularly driven from central Switzerland to northern Italy (Milano, Torino, and other places), because the Italians were convinced that cattle could not be bred and kept in this part of Italy. Other herds were driven even as far as Lyon and Paris, in France.

All of these movements provided wonderful jobs for all kinds of dogs with a liking for cattle, such as the sennenhunde and the Rottweiler. Of course, at this time nobody cared about

treibhunde, kiiherhunde, sennenhunde, and others. Nobody cared about breeds in a sense that we define this word today. Most important: the dog was good at his work.

It was the invention of railway trains and the construction of railway lines in Switzerland (and Europe) between 1850 and 1900 that ended at once all the cattle-driving business and made most of the cattle-driving dogs workless. With the opportunity to transport cattle within hours to places where they had wandered before in days or weeks, no one cared anymore about the proven helper, the sennen-, küher-, or metzgerhund.

In a note, Professor Albert Heim stated that he met a tricolored sennenhund in northern Italy and thought that this dog certainly was a descendant of Roman dogs, and took it as a proof that the Romans had owned and bred sennenhunde almost 2,000 years before. He did not know of the cattle trade between Switzerland and northern Italy, which had gone on for several hundred years and had come to an end (and was forgotten) when the railway through the St Gotthard was completed in the 1880s, some 30 years before Heim met this dog. (Heim, in his old days, believed in the Roman origin of the sennenhunde. He certainly would not have had he had access to more recent historical findings.)

So much about the sennenhunde in general. Let me return to the dogs in the State of Berne.

The küher in the 17th, 18th, and beginning of the 19th century could own herds of more than 100 head. The farmers in the valleys, however, had only a few cows, perhaps three to six; some calves or heifers; a few horses; one to three sows, some hens, and not more. They lived mainly by cultivating their fields; selling their corn, a fat swine, or a calf now and then, or a good horse; but they had no use for the milk their cows produced. There was a belief in the valleys that the grass there did not produce good cheese, so there were no cheeseries (dairies) in the valleys before 1850.

This situation led to a unique contract between the farmers in the valleys and the kuhers. When the kühers came down from the Alps in autumn needing a home for themselves and their cattle, they were sheltered at the farms. The farmer fed and lodged everyone, human and animals, until his stores of hay for the cows and provisions of food for the humans were exhausted. The kuher moved then to the next farmer on contract, who again lodged him for a few weeks. This rotation went on for all the winter months, until it was time to mount to the Alps again.

There was a great advantage to both parties. The küher had shelter in winter, receiving food and everything he needed for his family and his animals. The farmer (who produced the hay during summer) got the dairy products and also the dung he needed urgently for his fields. There can still be seen today some small houses beside the big farmhouses in the Canton of Bern, called küherstockli, which were built to lodge the kiiher and his family every year.

What does this situation mean for the dogs? Whereas the küher preferred the smaller, quicker sennenhund, the farmers in the Canton of Berne were known to prefer more stately dogs, matching their stately houses. So it came that the two types of dogs, the small sennenhund and the stately hofhund (farm dog) very often mixed together. The distinction between what was a küherhundli (herdsman's dog) and what was a farmer's dog must have been very fluent [blurred].

To my knowledge, there was no system of dog breeding. According to the (very rare!!) records, the only policy of the authorities was to keep the number of dogs small. This goal was achieved through not raising more than a few females and only the puppies that fitted into the concept.

Puppies available and dogs (if not needed) were brought to the markets, and if not sold were very often bought by butchers who sold the meat.

To understand Bernese, we must consider that they have in their genes both packets: that of a sennenhund (a small, lively cattle driver) and that of a stately, calm, and watchful farm dog, who is the king of his estate.

I have owned quite a number of BMDs already, and shared my life with them. I must say that it never stops being thrilling. Margret BartschiLindentalstrasse 71, CH-3067 Boll, Telephone 031/839 43 10, fax 031/839 95 50 e-mail m.baertschi@pingnet.ch

(When Lynne Robinson published Margret's article in The Messenger, newsletter of the BMDC of the Rockies, she included three pages of historical photos, one of which, the earliest years, is reprinted opposite.(Editors note, not available on the web site)

In a later post, Margret also discussed the proper temperament for these farm dogs. This post also was published in the PVBMDC Newsletter. Your question about the preferred temperament in farm dogs is ... very difficult to answer. There are very few descriptions of behavior in the farm dogs. One thing is a fact: an insecure, cautious, or even anxious dog is always a better watchdog than the one that is calm and not bothered with things appearing to him. I have, indeed, seen many dogs at the farms, mostly mongrels with some resemblance to a sennenhund, that would bark furiously at strangers but draw back to the house if a person dared to go on, and continued barking out of the open door of a barn or from the kitchen, where they felt safer. Certainly, these dogs did their job as watchdogs, but no farmer would have thought they had a desirable temperament. These are dogs that are anxious and will always run away when they feel threatened. They have always been considered worthless. Some sennenhunde, especially the Appenzeller, can circle around you, come from behind, and try to snap you in the ankle. Most of them go back if you turn round and look or shout at them.

A good Bernese should be able to discern between a peaceful and a dangerous situation. The underlying bases of his reactions should always be self-confidence and inner strength, never fear or nervousness. A good Bernese should announce strangers without attacking them, accompany them to the entry of the house, and then watch his master's reactions. If his master or mistress treats the newcomer in a friendly manner, he should also be friendly to the person, letting himself be touched in the presence of his people without desiring continuous attention. He should defend his master if he is in danger, but should not be ready to go away with everybody. We have stories of such dogs, and we know that this temperament was always desired.

Self-confident dogs are not the best watchdogs. Very often they do not bark. They just watch, and as long as nothing special happens they do not interfere. But I have heard of and met quite a number of dogs who defended their master, his goods, or his children very effectively if these were in danger. There are the stories of Bari go-between, when a merchant coming to the door tired to kiss the daughter of the house; of Ringgi letting in a neighbor who wanted to borrow a machine, but no more letting him get out; and on.

But it is also a fact that there must have been dogs with very different temperaments in the beginning, because too many shy and anxious dogs appeared in the breed. The club introduced temperament tests in 1956 for all breeding stock.

The modern way of living has made it extremely difficult for our dogs to develop their natural faculties, so a great many of their original capacities are not developed and get lost more and more.