Superdogs to the Rescue! (Part 2)

Some dogs are bred to be heros, well rescue dogs to be exact,В  like St Bernards and this month’s featured breed the Australian Shepherd. Continuing on from a blog post we did last month on heroic pooches, let’s take a journey back in time to see how superdogs saved the day in the past.

St Bernards would have to be one of the first breeds of dogs that come to mind when you think of rescue dogs. They were trained by monks to rescue lost travellers in the Alps using their strong sense of smell to find people buried deep within the snow. They would then dig them out, lie on top of them to keep them warm, lick their face to wake them up, and bark to call the monks out for assistance.

Even among rescue dogs there are those who stand out as superheros; one of the world’s greatest superdogs would have to be Barry, a St Bernard who saved between 400 and 1000 lives, between 1800 and 1814. The most famous Barry adventure is the story of when he rescued a young boy stranded on an icy ledge. Barry went where no man could go and crawled inch by inch to the boy on the ledge and licked his face to wake him up. Snowfall was heavy and as no monk could venture out on the dangerous ledge the boy’s fate was uncertain. Yet, as the boy woke he wrapped his arms around Barry’s neck and the heroic pooch carefully pulled the boy to safety.

Barry is so famous there is a monument of him at the Cimetiere des Chiens, a pet cemetery in France, and his preserved body is on display in the Natural History Museum in Berne, Switzerland.