Bremond v. St. Bernards

St. Bernard dogs have a record of ten centuries of heroic achievement behind them. But Dr. Jean Bremond was not thinking about records when he demanded last fortnight that all the dogs at the Great St. Bernard Hospice in Switzerland be destroyed, that the monks stop breeding them. If this were done, Dr. Bremond said he would not sue the monastery over the horrible death of his ten-year-old daughter, Marie-Anne, fatally mangled by a pack of St. Bernards as she and her father skied up to the hospice last month (TIME, May 31).

Dr. Bremond argued that the dogs of St. Bernard no longer serve a useful purpose since traveling conditions in the mountains have improved. The monks breed them only to sell and as objects of curiosity, he claimed. He found a few sympathizers in the district who said the St. Bernard breed has degenerated, that Swiss gendarmes have been forced to kill several dogs grown vicious because the monks keep them tied up for long periods, allowing them off leashes only twice a day at most.

But dog-lovers on two continents came to the defense of this noble breed's original strain. Newspapers as far removed in editorial policy as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and New York Sun published editorials urging mercy. The St. Bernard, said the Sun, "ought in fairness to be judged by his long and respectable history, not by the crimes of an occasional rogue."

Meanwhile the Swiss gendarmerie completed its investigation of the dogs who killed Marie-Anne Bremond, announced last week that they were "of general good nature and not a public danger." No dogs were ordered destroyed, but three who might prove dangerous were to be sent over the border to an Italian dog farm. Later in the week, one of the monks at the St. Bernard Hospice told United Press that the monks had voluntarily destroyed these three dogs, that eight others will be kept under observation all summer in an enclosed park. Next winter the monks plan to let their dogs "continue working normally."

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