My
passion and love for animals were definitely born with me, I think… I was
just a child but I clearly remember the canary kennel my father
owned in a very very little space in a small apartment located in
the historical centre of Turin: he used to study the best matings to
obtain the most colourful feathering or the best singers.
In such
little space, my sister (11 years older than me) and I were dreaming about
having a dog as playmate. This seemed to be impossible for everyone!
We didn’t have a garden and the public park was ugly with a single,
small tree, not even interesting to the birds who brightened the clear spring skies of Turin. We lived on the second floor and we
didn’t have a lift, no wide balconies where we could even think of
keeping a small dogbed… But one day, my father (from whom we probably
inherited this great passion) came back with a sweet, lovely
Dalmatian puppy, even if my mother was not so happy and was totally
unprepared about this new thing! I was so little and I can’t clearly
remember this, but I surely remember the second dog who came to live
in our
house… his name was Dick
and he was a Boxer with a great head and
expression put in a not very typical body. (I’m talking about 35
years ago and they didn’t have the cynological culture we have
today). My father bought him from the petshop in front of where he used to
walk everyday before going to work.
He came
into our house on tippytoes, very shy and afraid, stealing all our
hearts, even my mother's who
didn’t appreciate too much the pshiness of his predecessor. But when
his fearlessness came out he totally seized our lives, sometimes
almost forcing us to justify ourselves everytime we had to go out
without him, if we wanted him to avoid messes. He wasn’t a great
representative of the breed but he had a great temperament that allowed us to
always bring him with us, teaching
us how to appreciate that silent presence that just a dog can give.
The day
of his death the sufferance was just so hard to face that we
couldn’t even think about bringing a new dog at home (Dick was just
Dick and he was impossible to replace!), but sometimes one of
those books about dogs came out of the shelf and me and my sister
started to
read it from page to page, looking at standards dreaming about a new
puppy. Six months later we bought a Welsh terrier bitch,
with pedigree, from a successful kennel who keeps on obtaining
great results today. With her we slowly began attending the first dog
shows: it wasn’t easy at all! You had to know how to show her, how to
groom her properly (stripping a dog is not that easy), so results
were just few but we learnt another way to behave with a dog.
Dogs
weren't just a companion in life anymore, but someone with whom you can
work and do activities, more or less agonistic.
She lived with us for 12 years
and in the meantime I became an adult woman looking for a companion
with whom sharing my everyday life as a single girl: I first chose
an Irish Setter but when, at the 1998 Int. Show in Milan
I walked towards the Golden Retrievers ring, I just got bewitched by this
breed, with that elegance and sweetness their eyes can express… a
new breed for me. I went home and I did what I suggest to
everyone who is looking for a new dog: I read a lot of books about this
breed. About one year later, a sweet golden retriever bitch puppy came into my life and she
made me fall in love with this breed so
much that, just 12 months later, I decided to give her a friend.
Tara
and Tiffy, my foundation bitches, taught me how much a
golden can be gentle, nice, beautiful and how much their company is
satisfying, so that day by day you’ll have a symbiotic relationship,
understanding each other with just a look. My kennel was then born and is
now
developing respecting this philosophy: my dogs live in close
contact with me, every single moment during the day, not in kennels. I
devote all
the necessary time for their coat care, physical care, taking them every day
for walks in the wood or, if
possible to have a swim; I try to pass this passion on to everyone
that comes here and ask me for a new puppy, because my opinion is that
if you
are truly understood, you are loved.
