Page 7 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW SPECIAL ISSUE 6

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 0 7

No, she wasn’t mated to him, but in 1976, when I had stopped teaching, we chose a famous

Katwiga male (based on the Dutch ‘van de Oranje Manege’ lines). Five puppies – and we
kept four. East Frisia wasn’t interested in sighthounds, let alone Afghan Hounds! It was a
busy time, looking after that lively lot, taking them to races and coursing. Our Dutch
‘neighbours’ were a bit put off after a while when the two males kept winning the
coursings in the Netherlands.

But I will never forget how lovely it was to see these dogs ‘working’, doing their job, even

if it was on flat ground and not in the mountains of Afghanistan. One of them, the biggest,
took his job seriously – a roe deer had got into the big, well fenced (1.8 m high) area where
we took our dogs every day! We had forgotten to close the big gate!! And when the dogs
jumped out of the car the big boy saw the deer, dashed after it, followed it over the fence
(!!!) on the other side of the green and grabbed and killed it just before they reached the

highway – what a mixture of feelings you experience in such a moment! Even today I am
still proud of him, although I also felt sorry for the deer…

When Pasha and the oldest lady had
passed away, we thought of getting
another sighthound – shorthaired, please!
We now had children, and I was beginning
to feel Arthrosis in my fingers. We found

an Ibizan Hound in Austria, then still very
rare here, and he turned out to be very
kind with the children. He, too, loved
coursing.