by Mick Morry

I got my first whippet in 1984 when I was 15. My mother had just gotten herself an Irish Setter pup and I was determined to have my own dog of a breed I chose myself. While taking the Irish Setter, Shelagh, to puppy obedience classes I saw my first whippet -- a lovely fawn bitch by the name of Willow who was owned by my obedience instructor. Willow was everything I ever wanted in a dog: sleek and elegant and clever too, with her Canadian show, field and obedience titles she was in fact a complete all-round package in one compact and beautiful young dog. My mother, on the other hand, thought Willow was ugly the first time she saw her. But on second meeting she too came to see what I loved about the whippet. So when the obedience instructor convinced my mother that a whippet companion would make sure the Irish Setter got enough exercise to keep her lean and fit, we went looking for one.

No one had puppies, no matter where we looked. And then one day we got a phone call from a breeder in Montreal who told us about a bitch she had taken back -- rescued in effect -- from a home she had placed it in. Tiffany was 5 months old and in desperate need of a home. The breeder brought her to Ottawa and what can I say? It was NOT love at first sight because Tiffany didn't look anything like Willow or what I imagined other whippets would look like. She was a solid brindle and she was emaciated -- weighing just over 11 pounds at 5 months of age. After a huddle with my mother we decided Tiffany needed us so badly that we should take her and so the deal was done.

After a long and healthy life, Tiffany left us quite unexpectedly in April 2000, passing peacefully in her sleep at the venerable age of 16 years, 10 months.

After Tiffany came a few rescue and pet whippets -- enough, in fact, that we went over the limit of dogs we were allowed to own in the city where we lived. So in 1990 we moved to the country south of Ottawa, Canada's capital, to an 8-acre property where we could have all the dogs we wanted, and provide them with all the facilities they needed to enjoy life fully.

Along the way, our interest in whippets expanded beyond the desire to just rescue or acquire them as pure house pets. My mother was particularly interested in having a whippet which she could show, and perhaps eventually breed from as well.

She even came up with a kennel name for her dogs: Glastonbury, after the mystical site in Somerset, England, where King Arthur and his Queen Guinevere were reputed to be buried.

But we were in no hurry: choosing to take the view that good things come about best when you plan well in advance for them and know what you are doing and why you are doing it. So we didn't begin showing until we had lived with whippets for 5 years, and the first Glastonbury litter was not bred until 1991.

In 1989 Wood Chip was bred and we were offered our choice of the bitch puppies, as a present.

Only a couple of litters were produced by Glastonbury, after which I took over ownership of all the dogs and began a breeding program under my own affix -- Avalonia.

Like Glastonbury, Avalon is also linked to the legend of King Arthur, and Avalon is also the peninsula in Newfoundland where my family has lived for the past 200 years since they left Dartmouth, in Devon, England, to live in North America. So Avalon became Avalonia and thus a strong link for me to several important pasts!

Since Tiffany came into my life 16 years ago, whippets have been a central focus of my life. In recent years I have owned more than 20 Canadian and American champions which I have bred or imported to Canada from England, Denmark, Finland and the United States, and I have exported more than a dozen young dogs to Europe where many have done exceedingly well in the show rings there, with a number now finally old enough to have gained titles in their new countries. I am particularly proud of the fact I bred Cdn.Fin.Nor. and World Ch. Avalonia Wheatfield Waving, who won his World title in Helsinki in 1998.

In Canada I operate my own boarding kennel in partnership with my mother Lanny and I continue to maintain a sizeable population of my carefully line bred whippets, maintaining the commitment to Nevedith bloodlines that began with the acquisition of Wood Chip and his daughter Lily, and continuing to this day with Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Local Lancer, Cdn.Ch. Nevedith Wotta Wispa and Nevedith Evening Dusk.

My program is based on using primarily English bloodlines and breeding to the English and FCI standards, although I live in North America. This means I am aiming for a moderate sized dog with excellent shoulder set, good bone and structure, and with superb movement. I like all colours but prefer mahogany brindle and black particolours, and I love blues, though they are a difficult sell to many here in North America, despite the fact that good blues are, in my view, essential to any decent breeding program. So I have a good stock of blues who, bred appropriately, provide me with the black-eyed particolours so many today find pleasing.

Because I run a busy boarding kennel I do not have a lot of time to take my dogs out to show, so the whippets I retain are usually shown just to their titles and are then retired to the comforts of the living room couch and my bedroom or the stud dogs kennel.

For this reason, when I have particularly promising young show dogs, I prefer to place them in good homes with caring owners who will show them widely. And I bask in the reflected glory of their successes, worldwide.

Unlike most whippet kennels which base their programs on the bitches in their kennel, I have based my entire breeding program on the strength of my male bloodlines. I prefer males, and own more than 20 of them. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I believe I have the widest selection of English and European bloodlines in my stud dogs of anyone in North America.

My goal -- the goal of Avalonia Whippets -- is to continue to build on the quality bloodlines I have been entrusted with.

The best piece of advice we got as we undertook our breeding programs was to consolidate our foundation through multi-generational line breeding of our most important bloodline.

This advice came to us from the two parties whose opinions we have learned to most respect in the whippet world -- Edith and Nev Newton in England, whose Nevedith bloodstock has been the bedrock of the Glastonbury, and now the Avalonia breeding programs, and of Stuart and Aileen Harvey, Canadians whose decades of experience with English, Canadian and American whippets proved to be an equally invaluable and essential source of enlightenment and inspiration for us.