Hoping a subtitled foreign TV show would lull us to sleep didn’t pan out when a dog joined the cast, especially a dog of an uncommon breed. We sat bolt upright the moment Argo, a lion-maned Leonberger, padded into the scene.

The show is “One Step from Heaven,” known in Italy as “Un passo dal cielo,” a long-running drama about a forest ranger in the Dolomites that now streams in the U.S. on PBS and Prime Video. Argo goes everywhere with ranger Francesco Neri. Tracking down details about a rare breed in a show made for Italian audiences was a challenge, since most of what exists is scattered through Italian press from years ago. Here’s what we’ve found.

When Daniele Liotti took over the lead role in 2017, his character arrived as a former special forces soldier with a painful past, with his faithful Leonberger at his side. On premiere night, Francesco even chose to bed down in a cell at the barracks with Argo beside him. American viewers may be confused by the numbering: the season PBS calls Season 1 aired in Italy as Season 4.

It didn’t take long for the dog to steal the spotlight from his famous co-star. Two days after the premiere, a newspaper in Como, La Provincia di Como, ran a story with the headline “the star is the dog Zaraki.” Six weeks later, Rai 1’s “Dopo Fiction” brought him and his owner on air by live link to talk about life on set. Years after that, the Italian magazine TV Sorrisi e Canzoni included him in its roundup of the most famous dogs on Italian television, and Sky TG24 gave him a spot in its list of TV series dogs.

Argo’s real name is Zaraki. Even so, the “Dopo Fiction” recap called the dog’s real name “at the very least unpronounceable.” The segment also covered his on-set diet and a few funny stories that sadly were never written down. One possible explanation is that “Zaraki” is his call name and the tongue-twister is his registered name.

Zaraki was trained by Maurizio Carpani, who runs the La Cippottera dog center near Alessandria with his wife, Brunella Stanganelli. The Carpanis are longtime Leonberger breeders under the kennel name Daunbailoo. Their first Leo arrived from Germany in 1989, when Italy had no Leonberger kennels at all. Whether they bred Zaraki is unconfirmed, and so is his age.

In the story, Argo is more than background fluff.  In the story, Argo has a damaged ear from a landmine explosion, a detail that mirrors Neri’s own military past. The writers gave Argo far more than a walk-on part. He’s at the heart of some of the most emotional moments in Francesco’s story, and we won’t spoil them here.

Why a Leonberger? The producers have never said, but a Leonberger is a natural fit.  The breed was created around 1840 in Leonberg, Germany, from St. Bernard and Newfoundland crosses, to resemble the lions on the town crest. It has a history of draft and water rescue work, and the AKC describes it as gentle and patient. That makes it a believable partner for a mountain ranger, and it looks perfectly at home beside an Alpine lake.

Sleep didn’t come easily once we saw the Leo. Blame the dog with the lion’s mane.

Photo of Leonberger (not the tv dog) by FotoJagodka/Depositphotos