Appenzeller Sennenhund

The Appenzeller Sennenhund is a medium-sized working dog from the Appenzell region of north-eastern Switzerland. It is one of the four Sennenhund, or Swiss mountain dog, breeds, which all share a tricolor coat. It was the traditional dog of the Sennen, the Alpine cattle-herders and dairymen, who used it both to herd cattle and to guard property.

History

The earliest written description of the dog is by Friedrich von Tschudi, in a book on Alpine animal life published in 1853. In the late 19th century a forester, Max Sieber, who had seen the dogs at cattle shows in eastern Switzerland, asked the Swiss kennel club to recognize them. A commission was set up with money from the canton of St. Gallen, and the breed was recognized in either 1896 or 1898. Eight dogs were shown at the international show in Winterthur in 1898, in a new class for Sennenhunde.

A breed club was founded in 1906 at the urging of the cynologist Albert Heim, who wrote the first full breed standard in 1914. The FCI gave the breed definitive acceptance in 1954.

The Appenzeller has spread to the rest of Switzerland and to other European countries. A study published in 2004 found it was the most-registered breed in the canton of Appenzell, at about 19 percent of registrations, but only about 1.1 percent of dogs registered across Switzerland. It is the only Swiss dog breed that the conservation body ProSpecieRara considers at risk, listing it as endangered: numbers are stable, but the gene pool is narrow, and the body is working with the breed club to widen it. The Canadian Kennel Club lists the breed among its herding dogs, and it is in the Foundation Stock Service of the American Kennel Club.

Appearance

This is the third-largest of the four Swiss mountain dogs. Males stand about 52–56 cm at the withers and females about 2 cm less; weights run from 22 to 32 kg.

The coat is double, with a thick, straight, glossy top coat. It is always three-colored: the main color is black or Havana brown, with white on the chest, face and feet and reddish-brown between the white and the base color. The tail is set high and carried in a tight curl over the back when the dog moves. The ears are fairly small, triangular and set high; they hang close to the cheeks at rest and lift and turn forward when the dog is alert. A wall eye, a kinked tail, a single coat or a coat that is not tricolor all bar a dog from registration.

Temperament

The breed standard describes the Appenzeller as lively, high-spirited, athletic and suspicious of strangers. Today it is often kept as a companion.

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