23. St. Bernard
Average Price: $1,800*
Country of Origin: Italian/Swiss Alps
The St. Bernard is a really big working dog. It can weigh as much as 260 pounds, and it’s about thirty-five inches tall at the shoulders. The St. Bernard was originally bred to be a rescue dog. They were trained at the St. Bernard Pass hospice to help people stuck in the snow on the border between Italy and Switzerland.
They got their name from the person who first bred them, a monk named Bernard of Menthon, from Italy. He started breeding these rescue dogs in 1660. You can find stories about how brave and heroic these dogs are, and there are many tales of their daring rescues throughout history.
St. Bernards have been in movies for many years, as people really like these kind and big dogs. Movies like Beethoven, which you can watch on Hulu or Peacock, were favourites among kids in the 1990s. Beethoven, the movie’s star who is a St. Bernard, became so famous that there were seven more movies made about him from 1993 to 2014.
