GOOD DOG

/ janpriddyoregon

Our first dog was Oranje Anisette, Ann Ann, who was a year and a half old when she came to us in 1973. She had been owned by a Saluki breeder who found her character too gentle to be a fit for him. I had flown to Arizona to look at a bloodline I first met through magazine photos. I wanted to show Afghan Hounds. I was flexible aboust age and color, though I had been to enough dog shows by then to know that black dogs disappear in the ring. Ann Ann was black.

Ann Ann had hunted jack rabbits in the desert. She chased a squirrel twenty feet straight up a tree on the University of Washington campus. “Squirrels can climb trees?” Another time she actually caught one but spit it right out unharmed when I shrieked. Rain completely mystified her. “What is that stuff?” I walked her all over a wealthy Seattle district during breaks from my long studio hours, and she napped on my workbench in the Fire Arts Building on campus. The first time she saw a lure she was thrilled. It took her a couple of minutes to figure out she was chasing a shredded white plastic garbage bag. She stopped mid-course and trotted back to me. “That was kind of silly.” She finished her Canadian Championship. A sweet girl.

Our second Afghan Hound was Onika and I had driven with Canadian friends from Seattle to Colorado to see her as a puppy. There were five puppies in the pen when we arrived outside Fort Collins and the breeder was not yet home from work. The one girl who caught my eye over and over turned out to be Onika. Her mother was BOB at the first Colorado Grand National Field Trial—seeing that trial was the reason my Canadian friends made the trip. Onika later won both her majors owner-handled, but she died when she was chased onto the highway by a well-meaning neighbor in 1980. I sat in the garden and cried and cried.

Manny was Gary’s dog and one of only three puppies Ann Ann produced in her two litters. He was born on the couch while we still lived in Seattle. So were Onika’s puppies. We kept Bowzer and Snowbird. These dogs were all BOB Field Champions in two countries.

Volant O Solitary Man, Manny, was Gary’s heart dog born in 1976. They had many adventures together: traveling in a snowstorm to a Colorado field trial, almost confronting a bull sea lion on the beach. The photo is from the 1980s. Manny is clipped except for head and feet in this photo to spare us both from too much grooming. Manny’s ears were the darkest red I’ve ever seen. I used to spin their combings and you could always spot the bits from Manny’s ear.

The second dog who died was Ann Ann. She was seventeen when her bad days began to outnumber her good ones. I took her to be put down. And again, I cried and cried. She was a dear sweet girl.

Canadian Champion Volant Sequoyah, American and Canadian Field Champion, “Bowzer,” as a youngster. He was a believer—listened to every word I said. His tail is wagging furiously in these photos. My dogs were kind of infamous for wagging their tails. Happy dogs.

I held Bowzer when he was put down a few years later, because he was dying of lymphoma. Manny and Snowbird were thirteen. Our first Saluki Aagah was a few months younger when she died at home after being at the vet earlier in the day. Spot, Bosco, Taidi, and by the last Afghan, I asked Gary go alone with them to the vet. From the late 70s until the 2000s these dogs usually numbered six in the house.

Our first cat in Oregon, Zora, died at nineteen and the second, a foundling Leakey, was not that old, though we were only guessing at her age. They all stayed with us until they died. We tried to be good to our animals, we loved them and fed them well. I was forever bathing and grooming. We took responsibility for their entire lives and eventually took responsibility for their deaths.

I was several months pregnant when Canadian Champion Volant Snowbird, American and Canadian Field Champion won Best of Breed at the first National Afghan Hound of America Specialty Field Trial. Snowbird was the great granddaughter of Wita Rosie vdOM from Holland, granddaughter of show and field Champion Vail, the daughter of show and field Champion Onika, the mother of BIF show and field Champion Henna, and the grandmother of show Champion “Spot” (Volant Guanahani Watermark), who won Best Puppy in Show and was declared “Good enough to eat.” At a specialty show in Arizona, Snowbird saw a flock of white geese and went berserker, certain there was a field trial going on somewhere. All the dogs loved to run!

When Yeti died on our couch in 2017, Gary was holding her. Like Aagah, the vet had sent her home. Yeti is our last.

This is Yeti as a young girl. We should have shown and run her but we never did because during those years we were too busy caring for family. We would have added another Saluki to the family, but Yeti would not stand for it. She was a spoiled baby.

In our fifty-year relationship, Gary and I have had five cats and eleven dogs. We were instrumental in establishing lure field coursing in the PNW and also active in the Canadian Sighthound Field Association (I drew their logo). I judged field trials all over the country and across Canada for a while. In the months before Alan was born, I was away at shows and field trials as much as I was at home. That activity slowed to a crawl after our boys were born, but they enjoyed adventures in Alberta and California for the sake of dog events. We sacrificed for the dogs. We always had to get home to take care of them, to let them out into the yard or to feed them. Their presence shaped our day, our lives. While we were young and childless, the dogs always ate better than we did. We used to console ourselves that horses would have been worse.

I recognize that our sons, while their needs always came first, surely missed some advantages because of the costs of keeping all those dogs and attending all those events. There is the cost in money to feed and care for animals, the cost in time and attention, and the cost in emotion. It is the last Gary believes we can no longer afford. We loved them. We miss them still.

Me and Leakey on my 62nd birthday in 2014. Leakey was a devoted ratter. She didn’t always eat them, but liked a worthy opponent and mice were so easy. She never killed a bird.

Some of our best friends are people we met through our involvement with dogs (even now after all these years), and some of our best friends have been our dogs and cats. After Yeti’s death and until the pandemic, we eagerly petted and praised the dogs we met on the beach. Now we avoid that as well. I still tell Hank he’s a good dog, and I greet Roxxie and Carl and others. Once I am vaccinated, I tell myself, I can pet dogs again.

Ann Ann here in the Evergreen Afghan Hound Club in the Veteran class on the campus of the private high school Bill Gates attended. I am in my twenties and Alan toddled around in a red t-shirt that day I’d embroidered with “Bred By Exhibitor” on the front—the name of a dog show class. Ann Ann’s coat was silky soft, but often rusted a little from exposure to sunlight.

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5 thoughts on “GOOD DOG”

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    • Holy cow—that’s us in the Afghan Hound photo! Me with Ann Ann [Canadian Champion Oranje Anisette—our first], shown as a veteran at the Evergreen Afghan Hound Club. Our older son Alan toddled around that show in a red t-shirt that I’d embroidered with “Bred By Exhibitor” on the front.

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