|
I grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, with a beardie cross named Missy, a miniature schnauzer, Twinkle, and an Irish setter called Red Dog, RD for short. My interest in competition with animals, however, did not begin until my high school years when I signed up for an agriculture class, and joined the Future Farmers of America. We were required to choose a class project, and mine was Raising Sheep for Show. These courses teach you to pick out healthy and sturdy animals with correct confirmation, and are also taught to judge. My first Wether, a Suffolk male, took third place at the County Fair, and as he got a placement, was to be sold for slaughter. As you can imagine, I didn’t think that was a very good prize for his placement, and begged my Ag. teacher to let me keep him at the school farm and not send him to his death.
My next year’s project, a Hampshire male, took two Grand Champion placements and I also won two Showmanship awards with him. Unfortunately it was obligatory that he be sold at the auction after the County Fair.
My last project was a Suffolk Ewe which was better as females were sold for breeding, not eating. She placed third at the Fair and was sold to a breeder during my last year in school. My first year’s project was then sold as a lawnmower in an apple orchard!
In the late 80s I had my first experience with show dogs. My boyfriend at that time wanted a chow. We followed up an advertisement in the newspaper and went to see the puppies. The breeders were Marilyn and Dennis Swart (Den-Mar Chows). They were good friends of Luis’s and had bred one of their bitches to his Ch. GoodTymes Pacman. There was one male available, and we took him. Conan was sold to us as a pet, but knowing what I know now, he could have easily become a champion.
We became friends with Marilyn and Dennis, wanting to learn all we could about chows. Later that year they had another litter out of two dogs Luis obtained for them, Cedar Creek’s Cinnabar and Cedar Creek’s Amos Moses (a Jewel’s Supermanchu son). They called me to see if I would be interested in a black bitch they had available as a possible show potential. Of course, I ran straight over to see her, and fell in love with her. She cost $350 and I was just out of high school, working, but making very little money. I hocked the ring my boyfriend gave me for Christmas to get the money to buy my first show dog, Ch. Den-Mar’s Diamond Scheton, ‘Tonnie’. I put two points on her at her first show and got all her points, except her majors, myself.
I decided to breed her and called Luis to see if I could use his Pacman. Unable to pay a stud fee I did the breeding for ‘pick puppy’. When the puppies were about three months old I took the litter to Dallas for Luis to take his pick. Of course he liked the one I liked most and wanted to keep, even though his bite was off. Luis took him and told me to keep another red male I really did not think would ever amount to anything. I chose the kennel name ‘Jewelcrest’ and out of that litter was born my first homebred champion and All Breed Best in Show Winner, Ch. Jewelcrest’s Jamaican Sunset OFA Exel. Sunny, as he was called, was shown by me to all his points except for majors, but I soon realized that I was going to have to get a handler to get the big wins over other well-established chow people. I decided to ask Luis to show both Sunny and Tonnie at the Houston Cluster Shows, and he picked up both majors on each of them, to finish.
It was shortly after this that Luis and I realized there was more between us than just the love of the dogs.
Luis began showing Sunny as a special very sparingly the following year, and he won plenty of BOB, group placements, and a Best in Show. The first for both Luis and me.
Sunny was only bred once, to GoodTymes Black Magic II, and in that one litter he produced a big surprise, a cream bitch. GoodTymes Cookies-N-Cream went to Ruth Rohrbach of Eldorado Chows and became a ROM producing bitch.
|
