Life With Leonbergers: Part 1

I spent a lot of my childhood with a Leonberger. It was the Leonberger I discovered one warm, summer afternoon, on the second floor of our library. As a kid in a candy shop, I would savor each page of the dog breed books, imagining what it would be like to have this or that dog. And then, I would rehearse its qualities in my mind, crafting the best way to present this amazing creature to my mother, with whom it had taken much convincing to get a gerbil. But I did not want a gerbil anymore. I wanted a LION. And right then and there on page number 163, between the Newfoundland and the Saint Bernard, I read the words, “The strength of a lion and the gentleness of a lamb”. I had found my lion.

Years past, and while the Leonberger on the second floor of the library remained the only Leonberger of my childhood, my children have and continue to grow up with them, proving over and over the truth of that long ago treasured line “…the gentleness of a lamb”. Our Leos patiently disappear in a pile of stuffed animals in the “find the Leo” game, they rise to a game of the zoomies (my children also have this time a day) and just as easily sink into the slow rhythm of night. While every stage of a Leonberger holds unique experiences, from consistent training to holding the line with the expectations of every individual household, the underlying experience that ever stands true is of gentleness and grace.