Österreichischer Club für Leonberger Hunde

Official Web site: www.leonberger-oeclh.at

Foundation date 14/10/1978

Club Contacts:
Frau Andrea STRICKNER-WILD
Schlossgasse 1a
6065 Thaur
Mobil. –
Mail. verwaltung@leonberger.at

Number of club members  106.

Number op pups born in 2023: 33.

Leonberger breeding in Austria

The tradition of Leonberger breeding in our country goes back to the k. & k. Monarchy and experienced a heyday in the “crown lands” with excellent representatives of this breed.
In Austria, only a few lovers got their “Leos” through the terrible years of the Second World War: The first known Leonberger litters after the chaos of war all occurred in Vienna in 1949 at the “von Lukatan” kennel, in 1952 at the “von Alsrücken” kennel and in 1957 in the kennel “von der Niederhaid”). The “Austrian” “Alma von der Niederhaid” (ÖHZB L 55) became an important ancestor of today’s strong French breeding in the “Chateau de Reveillon” kennel: She, together with her breeding partner “Xeres d’ Armillaire”, is in the pedigree records of many fine top animals from French breeding.
Apart from these three litters, there was no breeding activity for more than thirty years after the end of the war, and Leonbergers were rarely seen in Austria and were largely unknown as a breed.
A few Austrian “Leonberger people” finally decided to create an organization to promote this cynologically neglected dog breed. They founded the “Austrian Club for Leonberger Dogs” (ÖCLH) in the fall of 1978 in Maria Plain near Salzburg and gained recognition as The association of the Austrian Cynologists Association provides important support.

From the very beginning, the club’s breeding management and the Austrian amateur breeders sought to coordinate long-term genetic aspects in the breeding of the Austrian Leonberger dog in order to achieve a relatively small but high-quality and healthy breeding stock (breeding focuses: vitality, size, head type, body-limb proportions, movement); The typical Leonberger nature was and is still a given in our breeds today. These efforts were supported by the practical advice of the then rector of the Vet. Med. University and board of the Institute for Animal Breeding and Genetics Univ.prof. Dr. Walter Schleger (+).

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It began with the use of male dogs with proven breeding value from “Chateau de Reveillon” and related breeds on bitches imported from tried and tested German breeding establishments – some of them only at a young age.
On the initiative of our then President Elisabeth Baronin Handel (“von Schloss Almegg” breeding facility), our breeders also successfully cooperated with young breeders from Switzerland (“vom Weidstöckli” and “Villa Hebtifest” kennels) and Hungary (“Kiserdei”).
Our current breeders also work together in this spirit and we are on the right path, taking these old “breeding roots” into account and avoiding the general “mainstream” use of “popular sires” to create independent healthy (“vitality”) gene pools cultivate.
The Austrian Leonberger population currently numbers an estimated four hundred Leos.
Even before the club was founded, representatives of the Austrian “Leonberger People” were involved in the founding of the “European Union for Leonberger Dogs” in Leonberg in 1975 on the initiative of the German Club for Leonberger Dogs (DCLH).
From this more or less loose community, the “International Union for Leonberger Dogs” (IULH) was formed in 2004, which currently includes twenty one Leonberger clubs – from North America to Europe and New Zealand – with around ten thousand members with the aim of… To harmonize the breeding of the Leonberger dog through cross-border activities.

“Two faces of Picasso“
painted by the austrian artist Rene Marcel Riviere, 2009,
www.rene-marcel-riviere.com