BORN LIFE-SAVERS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 96, 17 January 1933, Page 9

BORN LIFE-SAVERS

St. Bernard Dogs in England USEFUL TO FARMERS Early in the New Year a party of monks from the monastery of St. Bernard left for Tibet to found a hospice 12,(»00ft. above sea-level in the Si-La pass on the slopes of the Himalayas. They took with them a number of the St. Bernard dogs, whose life-sav-ing exploits in the snows of the Alps have been famous throughout Europe for centuries. In England the St. Bernard breed has attained a sudden popularity. It began several years ago, when Mr. Lloyd George brought back a St. Bernard puppy from a peace conference at Geneva. Now there are dozens of the dogs employed on the wide open spaces of Exmoor and the Yorkshire wolds. They are used by sheep farmers to track sheep and lambs lost in snowdrifts. The most famous English St. Bernard was Sailor of Lynmouth, who died recently. When Exmoor was covered with snow his master used to send him out with a full St. Bernard kit, brandy,, and writing materials for messages in the pockets of his collar. Every year he found and guided to safety more than one lost traveller. Once he brought news of a man who was unable to move. The rescue party who went out found the man unconscious, and saved him in the nick of time from certain death. St. Bernards as pets—and there are now hundreds of them in England—have a curious characteristic inbred by long tradition.

When a St. Bernard goes walking witli a party of people he will refuse even in the height of summer and in an English lane to allow any one to lag behind. If a child stops to pick a flower the dog will drop behind It, growling and barking, till the loiterer rejoins the main party.