The Collector: Brocklebank family’s long line of St. Bernard’s memorialized in collection
A scary incident prompted the start of Ruth Brocklebank’s sweet collection.
“Forty-eight years ago our young son was bitten by a big dog and we were worried he’d be afraid of dogs,” she said.
So they got Mac, the first of six Saint Bernards owned by the family.
The breed is known for its friendly disposition and patience with children. Mac became a beloved addition to the family.
That’s when Brocklebank began noticing the breed’s visage on everything from knickknacks to artwork.
Her sister Judy gave her a small wooden cabinet with an antique print of a Saint Bernard on the front.
“She said the artwork made it expensive, not the cabinet,” Brocklebank said.
That same sister bought her a decoupage plaque featuring a trusty Saint Bernard grabbing an adventurous boy by the britches, while the kid hangs over a lake from a rickety pier. It’s stamped “Wonderland, Billings, Montana.”
Brocklebank grew up in Billings with her seven sisters.
“We all went to Wonderland.”
A photo of her and her husband, Kent, with their last Saint Bernard, Watson, rests behind a big plush version of the pup.
“A friend gave it to me when I taught at Ferris,” she said.
Brocklebank found a Bernard-shaped cookie jar at an antique show. The barrel around his neck reads “Cookies.”
She even came across a little wooden cask similar to those worn by the rescue dogs in the Swiss Alps.
The breed is named for Bernard de Menthon, who founded the Great St. Bernard hospice in a treacherous pass in the Swiss Alps. The hospice acquired its first dogs in 1660-70, and they demonstrated remarkable abilities: rescuing travelers lost in the mountains and finding people buried under snow.
“We would love to visit the hospice,” Brocklebank said. “It’s on our bucket list.”
One of her sisters visited the country and brought her a souvenir patch depicting the iconic ambassador of Switzerland.
A set of Saint Bernard bookends supports several books about the dogs, and a couple of Pottery Barn plates also bear the pooch’s soulful face.
“I didn’t know anything about them before we got our first,” Brocklebank said.
But her inkling that the breed would be good with kids is evident in the artwork she’s collected. Most of the prints include a version of the oversized pups with children.
Advertisers certainly seemed to agree. A framed Grape-Nuts cereal ad shows the big dog walking a little girl to school and toting her book bag. An outdoor thermometer from J.C. Fulton & Son Coal features a boy adrift on a raft, clutching his trusty pet.
While in Bellevue, she purchased a porcelain Lladro figurine of a girl giving her pup a smooch while she waits for him to blow out the candle on his birthday cake. She later found a smaller Lladro of a girl sitting atop her Saint Bernard and brushing him.
One of her husband’s favorites is a framed poster of a dog, sitting in a truck, with one paw hanging out of the window. Beneath is a Margaret Thatcher quote, “I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”
Brocklebank’s favorite item is much smaller – a tiny lapel pin hand-painted by artist Carolyn Thayer. It features a Saint Bernard and a Great Pyrenees.
“Twice we’ve owned a St. Bernard and a Great Pyrenees at the same time,” Brocklebank said. “I saw the artist at a craft fair in Billings and asked her to paint it.”
As she looked at her collection, she spoke of dogs now gone. There was Samson, who marched in the homecoming parade in Billings and starred in a local theater’s presentation of “Steel Magnolias.”
Samson had been a bit rambunctious during rehearsal, but not so on opening night.
“He went out, sat down, and stared at the audience,” Brocklebank said.
“He could have been a little livelier.”
She spoke of Lorenzo, who loved Dairy Queen ice cream treats, and of Guthrie, who was the surprise Door No. 2 at a kissing booth at a high school carnival.
And that’s what she most enjoys about her collection.
“It brings back memories of the dogs and how much fun they were,” she said.