THE ORIGINS

 

Everything started around the middle of 1800, when Einrich Essig wanted to create a new breed of dog that should have  the most impressive appearance and the likes of a lion, to honor and celebrate his city, LEONBERG, just a few miles from Stuttgart, in Germany.

Essig crossed several generations of dogs of different breeds already known as San Bernardo, Newfoundland, Pyrenean Mountain Dog, and in 1846 was officially announced the birth of the first dog named  LEONBERGER .

With the knowledge of genetics, today we can say that with white majority bases (Pyrenees and Saint Bernard) and Black (Newfoundland) it is almost impossible to get dogs with a brown-golden base, such as Leonberger.

But we can only make suppositions, because Einrich Essig died with his secret, because he left nothing written  about the procedure to have a brown golden lion puppy dog ​​from black or white majority dogs.

The true passages of the pairings made, the choice of the male and female to cross and the colors of the puppies obtained then to get to the Leonberger color we know, are still a mystery today.T

The Leonberger has surely taken the paws of the Newfoundland, in fact he is a tireless swimmer.

During the period of great fame for this new dog breed (1870-1880), Essig managed to produce up to 300 puppies a year and exported it even to America, but after his death in 1889 there was a drastic decline that led to these wonderful dogs at the risk of total extinction.

The situation worsened with the World Wars 2 .

At the end of the First World War, Otto Joshans and Karl Stadelmann did their best to save Leonberger's survivors who survived the war misery, spun all over Germany and managed to find 35 Leonberger's ……unfortunately Less than half turned out to be suitable for reproduction.In 1922, a Leonberger Breeders Association was founded, which in a few years managed to produce over 300 puppies.

​Curious detail: that birth register created in 1927, is  still used today, without interrumptions.

After the Second World War, the situation was a really disaster, the Third Reich had seized all birth registries and took control of all dogs born in Germany (not only of Leonberger but of all breeds), but fortunately some breeders near Stuttgart continued their work hard and at the end of the Second War, in 1945, 22 puppies were recorded.

Two years later, in 1947, 27 puppies were born and in 1948 the Deutscher Club Für Leonberger Hunde was created and still continues its breeding work, which was officially recognized in 1955 by the FCI.

In 1975 the Leonberger Club's International Union was formed, and the first president was Robert Beutelspracher.

Every year, on the last weekend in September, the Leonberger German Club (Deutscher Club für Leonberger Hunde) organizes at Leonberg the CLUBSCHAU, a cinematic show where you can easily see a hundred Leonbergers competing among themselves for the trophy field "Social Champion".

Many famous people had Leonberger, Giuseppe Garibaldi gave one to his beloved Anita, German Chancellor Otto Von Bismark, and the musicians Sergej Rachmaninov and Richard Wagner had the luck and the privilege of having Leonberger in their lives: the Empress Sissi even got 7!

He is a very special life companion, even though we will never truly "how" was born.

I would like to copy a famous phrase by Konrad Lorenz, a well-known zoologist and Austrian ethologist, who said about his beloved dogs, the Eurasier:

 "Einmal Eurasier, immer Eurasier!"

Translating this thought, sounds more or less like this: "Once you've had an Eurasier, you will always want an Eurasier!"

 

I am repeating this historical phrase to say….Einmal Leonberger, immer LEONBERGER !