Page 15 - ShowSight Presents - The Leonberger

The Leonberger
An Inadvertent Modern-Day Companion
By Caroline Bliss-Isberg
Nineteenth-century illustration of Heinrich Essig in his kennel with his early Leonbergers by T. Specht.
In 1846, Heinrich Essig, a dog- loving entrepreneur beamed as he observed a wriggling litter of newborn puppies. That day, after years of trying, he was witness- ing the realization of a dream—
the birth of his own dog breed. He named his breed the Leonberger, in honor of Leonberg, Germany, his hometown.
The genetic stew that produced Essig’s desired traits came from breeding and inter-breeding a Barry-type dog from the Hospice of Saint Bernard, a Land- seer Newfoundland, and a wolfhound 212 • ShowSight Magazine, February 2014
of undetermined parentage. There is evi- dence that early Leos also had more than a dash of genetic material from the butch- er dogs residing in the neighboring town of Rottweil.
Essig was a visionary who was always a bit ahead of his time. He succeeded in inten- tionally producing the first dog breed spe- cifically designed to be a luxury commodity. Furthermore, he achieved this goal a full decade before the Victorians ushered in the modern age of purposeful dog breeding.
Throughout Essig’s life, Leonberg- ers were status symbols, commanding
high prices and shipped world-wide. They graced the palaces of Empress Elizabeth of Austria, King Umberto of Italy, Garibaldi, and Richard Wagner. In the 1880s, Buffalo Bill Cody tried unsuccessfully to buy a pair from an American actress for $5,000.00.
As a self-made man, Essig felt con- strained by the rules of the Victorian dog fancy, and refused to write a breed standard or provide pedigrees. His stubbornness alienated the nineteenth-century dog world.
After his death, the Leonberger almost disappeared, but a handful of ardent admir- ers resurrected the floundering breed.