[The following history is included on this Web site by permission, granted by the author. In this article she refers to the Ently as the Entlebucher Mountain Dog, which it certainly is!]

Sennenhunde History

This history was compiled from posts written by Margret Baertschi to members of an e-mail list for Bernese Mountain Dog (BMD) breeders. Margret is chairwoman of the Breeding Committee in the Swiss Club for Bernese Mountain Dogs and coauthor (with Hansjoachim Spengler) of Hunde: sehen züchten erleben Das Buch vom Berner Sennenhund. Her description contains much information relevant to the history of all four sennenhunde, including Entlebucher Mountain Dogs.

Origins

The main duty of Swiss sennenhunde has always been to care for the farm, to recognize 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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood. 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.

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.)

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!!!

Functions

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!

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 alphütte (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 levels—e.g., at 1,000, 1,200, and 1,400 meters), all with an alphütte and its equipment, to make the cheese. When the cows had eaten the grass at the first level (maiensaess), the whole family, consisting of humans, cows, heifers, bull, and sometimes also some swine, moved to the next level, ending at the highest maiensaess 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 cash value) was distributed to the farmers according to the heads (cows) each had contributed to the herd.

The sennen’s dog 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.

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 practices in the centuries that created these dogs.

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 their appearance. They were called according to their job: treibhunde, küherhunde, 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.

Bernese Küher

The Canton of Bern had different rules for the küher (the senn in the canton). A great part of the Alpine pastures here, 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 about 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 küher.

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 kühers. 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 küher 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 küher and his family every year.

Whereas the küher preferred the smaller, quicker sennenhund (today’s Entlebucher and Appenzeller), 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 küherhündli (herdsman's dog) and what was a farmer's dog must have been very fluid.

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.