often wonder “Who are these people, where do they live, and what do they look like?” I
certainly do… So here's our family, and a little bit about us and how we came to breed
Havanese.
Pictured first are Bill and I, all dressed up for a formal photography session with Tina after she
earned her AKC Championship.
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Next is a shot of our daughter Stephanie and her husband, John Hemenway, with their dogs Arriba (Tina's dam) and Mongo (under the lamp table!) They live in Arlington, where Stephanie, who formerly worked for Commerce, is now a full-time mom to Andrew, and John is an attorney in DC.
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Andrew, Steph and John's baby,
a.k.a. the Egg Baby
getting bigger by the minute…
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Here's our son Michael, babysitting his newborn nephew Andrew. Michael, who is single, lives in Alexandria and works in the Intelligence industry in DC since leaving the 66th MIG (after tours in Germany, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq) and returning to civilian life, to his mother's relief. |
Kelly Bryant, our house-sitter extraordinaire,
computer guru, puppy-spoiler, and extra daughter when we need one.
(If you call and someone tells you we're not in, you're probably talking to Kelly….)
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The next shot is of our house on the banks of Whistle Creek, which occasionally flows perilously close to our door…. We are lucky enough to live in a lovely little corner of Virginia, at the southernmost tip of the Shenadoah Valley. To the east are the Blue Ridge, and to the west the Alleghenies, visible from our living room windows. We retired here ten years ago, after selling a shooting preserve and gundog training kennel in Northern Wisconsin that we'd run for many years, and decided to devote ourselves full-time (sort of!) to doing what we really wanted to do- raising bees, creating dog art and lost-wax casting jewelry. We added a studio to the back of an antebellum Virginia four-over-four with no discernable insulation, and here we are… |
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In addition to being a more-or-less full- time dog artist, I also present seminars on the Art of Canine Anatomy to judges' groups and kennel clubs, and write a monthly column for Showsight magazine. Bill and I are both involved with the Havanese Club of America, where we serve on several committees.As befitting our advancing age and that of our resident Gordon Setters, we decided to look for a Toy dog that we could fool around with, and happened upon the Havanese, a big dog in a small package. |
Seven years after first discovering this delightful little breed, we are thoroughly hooked, and
have spent the last five putting together a compact breeding program designed to produce a line
of quality dogs without owning a kennel. (Been there, done that.)
Our dogs are all housedogs, sleep in crates or expens at night, and spend their evenings with us, taking up all the available furniture. (A series of baby gates separate the family room and kitchen from the heart-pine floors and oriental rugs, where, with the exception of Panda and Charly, supervision is required.)On nice days, they entertain themselves for hours in a large fenced and tree-shaded yard, and on rainy, cold, or exceptionally hot ones they join us in the studio, where they have three 6 x 6 playpens full of beds, toys, cement blocks for climbing and a litter box in the corner of each one. (This keeps them from “helping” too much while still filling their strong need to be with people, which is the downside of Havanese…) With the recent loss of our last old Gordon at age 14, our household currently consists of two humans, 11 Havanese, and 12-year-old Punkin, our resident Pug, who pretty much does whatever she wants. |
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 Panda and Punkin |
