Alice Swiderski of Rexpointe fame, considered to be a classic scientific breeder, once noted, "In order to get somewhere, you first have to know where you're going."

A template or pattern is a very necessary thing to have when beginning or continuing as a breeder. In a recent article Mrs. James Edward Clark observed when asked, "Which is the dog that you felt came closest to perfection in regards to all aspects of the breed standard, including temperament?" She stated, "This is the animal to which I compare all others of the breed - it is the template. In Afghans it is Shirkhan."

Just as a template is needed to fix in one's mind as to what you compare the ideal dog, so it is with what is a breed and what is an ideal breeder. Remember you'll never get anywhere unless you know where you are going. My dictionary delineates a breed as "A relatively homogenous group of animals within a species, developed and maintained by man." It describes a breeder as "A person who breeds animals or plants and defines breeding as the improvement of livestock by selective mating and hybridization."

I was thrilled in reading Mrs. Clark's article that she considered Shirkhan to be the standard to which she holds all other Afghans.

Sunny Shay, who bred, owned and handled him, was one of the first people I ever became close friends with in dogs. She was, to put it mildly, a very colorful lady and a one-of-a-kind mentor to many of us now "of an age" in dogs. Such a diverse group as Dennis Sprung, Lee Canalizo and others still hanging around doing the dog thing and too numerous to mention, all partook of Sunny's knowledge and enthusiasm for the sport. Her Grandeur lines are still at the top of the dog world even though she and her beloved Shirkhan are long gone. Roger Rechler and Michael Canalizo have carried on Sunny's classic dogs and brought them to the top of the show heap. In 1991, Roger and Michael celebrated the 50th year of the Grandeur breeding program. Here is a synopsis of what they had to say about Sunny and her dogs:

"In 1941 the first Grandeur litter was registered. This was a period in time when the breed was in its infancy and the Afghan Hound was still considered an interesting curiosity. Sunny Shay was an innovator, an individualist and perhaps someone as unique as the breed itself. She founded and formed Grandeur Kennels utilizing the best breeding stock available, which resulted in a distinctive Afghan type, still recognizable today. Over the years, the Grandeur influence became a force within the breed. She steadfastly adhered to the standard, never following fashion or fad. The kindly attitude and even temperament of the Grandeur dogs became their trademark."

I met Sunny at Westminster, my second dog show ever, my first being the Spaniel Club in January. I was nearly 10 years old and hooked already on the dog world. Sunny's black Afghan, Ch. Turkuman's Nissems Laurel, mesmerized me in the breed classes. He was handled by Jerry Rigden. Without having a clue, except perhaps an instinct, I carried on quite vocally about what a gorgeous dog he was. Sunny was standing nearby and in her typical fashion she said to me, "You like my dog?" From this came an invitation from her to my parents and me to visit her kennel, then in Carmel, New York. (Oh yes, the excitement for Laurel grew as he won the Hound Group that night.) My first visit to Grandeur led to a long time friendship and many subsequent visits.

Luck was with me, as Sunny moved to Long Island where I lived, and the visits were easier to accomplish. As a side note or small world story, Sunny bought her Long Island kennel from an old time cocker breeder Lodema Zix of the Storybook Kennels. It was from Lodema that a young couple bought a replacement for their late Wire Fox Terrier. The cocker puppy led to an interest in the breed by none other than Norma and Jack Ward, who were to influence Lloyd's and my later life as profoundly as my early friendship with Sunny influenced my younger days.

Sunny was an inveterate dog collector and at the time I first began visiting Grandeur in Hicksville, she had roughly (counting puppies) between 80 and 100 Afghans, including some of the old greats such as Ch. Barbary Hill Dolly and Faraway Loo. I got to know intimately Ch. Blue Boy of Grandeur, who sired Shirkhan. Sunny taught all us kids in a very hands-on way. She'd have us go out into the yard and into the kennel and pick out the dogs that we thought were the best and we had to explain to her why we thought so. An explanation such as "I like this" or "I like that" was totally unacceptable to "Mrs. Afghan." She would scold "Don't say I like this type or I like that type, that should be stricken out of your vocabulary. You should say and you should look only for what the standard calls for" and she would grill us on what the standard delineated. Until this day this is how I try to learn about any breed.

Shirkhan as a young puppy was sold to a young couple as a show prospect, as Sunny had and was very high on his sire. This was an era in Afghans when the prevailing winners were mostly black-masked silvers and golds and large dogs mainly influenced by Sunny's greatest rival the western Crown Crest Kennels of the late Kay Finch. Shirkhan was a relatively smaller more refined dog and his coloring was a changeable blue brindle dilute, which was in no way fashionable at that time. The couple was told by other Afghan "experts" that the puppy was no good and with that awful strange color he would never amount to anything. They brought him back to Sunny. She took one look and realized he was the dog for which she was waiting and replaced him with a lovely black-masked cream puppy and as they say, the rest was Afghan history. Sunny and her favorite dog went BIS at Westminster in 1957. She was, as far as I know, the first woman breeder/owner handler to ever accomplish this at that time. The fact that so many decades later Mrs. Clark holds this dog as a template for the breed speaks volumes for the breeder's art from which Shirkhan sprang.

The breeders and dogs that influenced me in the post Shirkhan years all came from a template based on the breed standard but with an individualist's understanding of what the standard conveyed, rather than a bowing to mere convention or what the prevailing look was at the time.

...

What are your templates? You really kneed to find them in order to know where you are going as a breeder and cocker person. By keeping the lines of communication open between yourself and other breeders and all breeds of dogs you will develop the proper templates that will help you along the way to achieving at least a portion of the dreams you dream when you dream them.

Ads, Articles & Interviews page