Rottpeake

The Rottpeake is an intentional hybrid between two enduring and hard-working canines, the Rottweiler, a German cattle dog turned security animal, and the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, a tireless retriever of waterfowl that hails from the United States. Rottweiler dogs were first developed during the Middle Ages in a German town known and named for its red-roofed Roman villas, Rottweil. It is believed that these dogs are a combination of large Drover dogs, which the Roman butchers and cattlemen employed to protect and drive cattle as early as 700 A.D. and several breeds local to southern Germany, including breeds such as Appenzeller Sennenhund, Entlebucher Mountain Dogs, Bernese Mountain Dogs, and Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs. Rottweilers were also used to drive cattle, and they continued to be utilized as cattle dogs until the need to drive cattle to market declined after the development of the locomotive in the mid-1800s, and the Rottweiler breed showed a steep decline in their popularity. In the 1900s, they were rebranded as high-quality police, security, and military canines, as well as becoming highly regarded as personal and property protection animals. The Chesapeake Bay Retriever is one of the few breeds that was developed here in the United States of America, and can be traced back to two specific St. John’s Newfoundland dogs. These two dogs, a black female by the name of Canton and a red male by the name of Sailor, were rescued from the remains of a shipwreck that occurred in the 1800s off the coast of Maryland. Both of the dogs proved to be exceptional retrievers, even in the frigid waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Although each canine was extensively bred, often mixed with Flat-Coated and Curly-Coated retrievers, they were never bred to one another. The offspring of both began to breed true to type however, and the well-built and enduring dog that we know today emerged as great assets to the hunters who worked along the Chesapeake Bay, often employed to retrieve as many as one hundred ducks and geese a day from the freezing ocean.