In the photo are Switzerland’s four ancient mountain breeds. From left to right, can you name them?

The Appenzeller Mountain Dog’s tail curls! Photo from the AKC website with permission

We can help. The Greater Swiss Mountain Dog is the largest, the Entlebucher is the shortest, the Bernese Mountain Dog has the longest hair, and the Appenzeller Sennenhunde has a tail that curls. Needless to say, there are differences between these four fabulous breeds beyond the simplistic thumbnail sketch we’ve just given you, but when we were asked for quick way to make distinctions between the four, this is part of our answer. There are assorted mnemonic devices that people use to remember which dog is which breed, and as goofy as the ones below are, they work for a few of us:

• The most common one for the Swissy is simply to remember that the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog has the “greatest” size of the four breeds;
• The word, “little” ends in the letters, “tle” as does Entlebucher;
• Think of “Bernice” as a lady with long hair;
• What’s left is the Appenzeller whose tail is curled like the two “p’s” in the name.  

Like we said, goofy, and if you have tricks that work for you, share them!

Image by Leuchtender Hund under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License on Wikicommons