"The Old Danish Dog"'s history can be traced back to Frederik II and Christian IV. The King fell in love with King Jacob I's English Mastiff during his visit and the breed was immediately imported to Denmark in the middle of the 16th century. The breed was crossed with other large breeds during this period. However, in the 19th century the Old Danish Dog was about to die out. Master of the Royal Hunt Niels Frederik Berhard Sehested of The Broholm Estate on Fyn managed to re-establish and re-breed the Broholmer. He gave the Broholmer away to people who wished to own this breed - but with the clause that the dog was to participate in the future breed. During this period the Broholmer became a common dog. During the 20th century the Broholmer became a rare sight - due to this period's diseases and poverty. A large number of the Broholmers died because of distemper, epidemics and inbreeding problems. Thus the Broholmer almost became extinct and the last Broholmer disappeared in 1956. In 1974 a breeding-committee was founded in cooperation with Dansk Kennel Klub - and its only purpose was to reestablish and breed the Broholmer - as we know him today.

Soucre taken from The Broholmer
Photo © Gunnar Schmidt

The work and the history behind the re-construction of the Broholmer has its own story. On a late night back in the year of 1973 a group of doglovers from DKK was gathering talking about dog-breeds and the almost forgotten breeds. One of them remembered the Broholmer from his childhood – but what had happened to this breed – did it still exist? None of them had seen the dog for years, but some of them had heard that there were very few samples left in Denmark, despite the rumours that the breed had died out. These thoughts and memories of the dog of their childhood became the foundation for “the Reconstruction of the Broholmer”. The breeding was supervised by DKK.

First the group had to find a specimen of the breed and a huge search was initiated in all newspapers in Denmark. A lot of people reported that they knew of owners or owned a Broholmer-look-alike dog, but the problem was that DKK had stopped the pedigree registration of the Broholmer back in 1910. This made finding a “real” living Broholmer almost impossible, because there was no Broholmer with registration.

The group knew that there were many Broholmer-look-alike-dogs – but now they had to find good breeding-material. The many contacts with dogowners resulted in two possible candidates: an old yellow male, called Bjørn and the old black Manne, also a male. Both males had of course managed to pass on their genes naturally and thus the black Manne had had a beautiful yellow grand-grand-son – C. Bastian, who had the correct Broholmer-look. So now the group had two breeding-males, but no females and a new search in the newspapers did not result in any “clean breeding material”. Therefore they had to use mongrels, who resembled the Broholmer in temper, colour and size. The first usable female was Muffe. The mating of C. Bastian and Muffe resulted in 4 puppies who were approved for further breedings. The first x-registrated (x = re-establishment of the breed) litter was now born and the breeding-material consisted of 5 males and 1 female. Unfortunately, the owner of the mongrel-female had retired from the experiment.

Thus they started a breeding with these 5 dogs, but with 2 pedigree-lines . After a short while they had to face the fact, that they needed “new blood”. They received a female from Holland - ½ Spanish Mastiff and ½ English Mastiff. The puppies, who were born during the reconstruction-work were given to people, who aggreed to help the recontruction by placing the dogs at the group’s disposal. Unfortunately not all dog-owners were willing to keep their pormise. There were still more yellow dogs than black dogs and therefore a big loss was suffered when they lost Manne in 1980 when he died of old age. The work of the reconstruction continued and a milestone was reached, when – in 1982 – the Broholmer was acknowledged by the FCI (The International Association of Kennel Clubs ) under the reconstruction by DKK. In 1988 the Broholmer was internationally acknowledged as an “old Danish breed” and the Broholmer-Society was now able to lead the breeding itself and future Broholmer-litters could be pedigreed in a normal way.

Source taken from The Broholmer
Photo © Gunnar Schmidt