I grew up on Looney Tunes cartoons, and one of my favorite tropes is the slightly tipsy Saint Bernard who rescues someone and then unclasps the barrel around his neck to make himself a martini. Here’s one example:
I saw a Saint Bernard in New York the other day, and it got me to wondering whether or not Saint Bernards really were used as rescue dogs, and whether or not they actually had barrels of brandy strapped around their necks to warm up avalanche victims. The answers, I discovered, are yes and no. They were rescue dogs, but they didn’t actually carry brandy around their necks.
Since the early eighteenth century, the monks living in a monastery near the St. Bernard Pass in the Swiss Alps used these dogs to help guide travelers who got lost in heavy snowstorms. Evidently the dogs have an amazing sense of direction and a high tolerance for cold.
The monastery was founded way back in 1050 by a monk named St. Bernard de Menthon, expressly to rescue trekkers who were trying to navigate the snowy, dangerous 49-mile passage between Italy and Switzerland. Often the dogs would dig through the snow and lie on top of an injured person to keep him warm.
