7. The Depiction of These Dogs Conducting Alpine Rescues With Kegs of Brandy Strapped to Their Necks is False
Saint Bernards were immortalized in Stephen King’s horror novel Cujo. The ginormous dogs are named after the Great Saint Bernard Hospice, an Alpine monastery atop the Great Saint Bernard Pass between Switzerland and Italy. The monks bred Saint Bernards in the Swiss Alps, and used them as rescue dogs. Long before Cujo, Saint Bernards were known in popular culture as the dogs that conducted Alpine rescues, with a small keg strapped to their necks, full of warming brandy for stranded mountaineers.
While that image is captivating, what it depicts is, unfortunately, false. While the giant Swiss dogs were actually employed in rescue operations, the monks who bred and used them never sent them out with brandy barrels tied to their necks. The first time a Saint Bernard rescued somebody with a barrel of spirits strapped to its neck did not occur in Switzerland. Instead, it took place in England in 1820, in the art studio of then-seventeen-year-old Edwin Henry Landseer (1802 – 1873). He depicted it in a painting entitled Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveler.
