Lorene

It always seems to amaze me that it is the end of another year, that being 2021, and I am still here. Bob is dead almost eleven years, and my brave forays into finding another relationship have only lead me to sad, sorry dead ends. Fortunately, the love for my borzoi, and the borzoi of my friends around the world, and now, my Silken Windhound, Kensie, from the kennel, WindNSatin, of Mary Childs, has given me the peace I crave. I will never get over the loss of my borzoi, and not just Opal, but all of them. I am too old and frail to live with this breed anymore, and living with a Silken is the best second choice I could have. It has been a difficult compromise, but then, my entire life has been spent living a difficult compromise. I have had to compromise so much I can scarcely remember where my starting point was and how I got here. But I know I have been authentic all of the time, true to myself and my beliefs. I do not compromise well so I can give myself credit for my successes and give myself blame for my mistakes. This is the only life I intend to have, so I must stop and take pause, and take care, for it is precious, for I know I am needed.

I recently met a person who wanted to redesign my website and refresh my Blog. I was pleased by her enthusiasm and interest in my project, and the life of my kennel. It has evolved for about twenty years from being a small hobby kennel where several borzoi lived and were greatly loved to a simple home with an elderly woman and one Silken Windhound. But borzoi are never far from my heart and thoughts. I am still active in the local area dog clubs and borzoi breed clubs, and can frequently be seen sitting ringside at a how in my special Blyss Kennels chair. Being widowed a very long time, I have had to make many adjustments to cope, the saddest of which I cannot handle borzoi alone. My body may be weak but my heart is strong with love for these unique and special breed of dog, hardly dogs at all, but creatures of pure love and joy. I saw my first borzoi when I was a young woman, at a performance of the American Ballet Theater’s production of Giselle, when two appeared on the stage. I saw them later, after the performance, on the plaza outside of the theater. I asked the gentleman with them, “Are they as good as they are beautiful?”, for I never saw anything so beautiful as they looked. He told me, “Yes, they are.” That was all he had to say. The memory of that brief encounter never left me. It would be many years before I saw one again, and miraculously, it was with a man offering me a one year old borzoi he wanted to sell. My husband at the time was agreeable to the plan, and we said yes, and the beautiful white borzoi was our first, of many.

Many years have past. I am alone now. They have all died, even my husband, leaving me alone, a widow. I had seven borzoi over the years, and I know I will never feel happiness again without one. I try to be grateful for all I have, especially for my beautiful new dog, Kensie, a Silken Windhound, who is lovely and very borzoi-like. Life is about change and bending with the changes that happen. I wish I did not have to lose the best and end up this way, but that was my destiny and there was no way to change it, although I fought hard to change it. Like the day we learned our less than two year old borzoi puppy bitch, who was most beloved to us, had end stage renal failure and was dying, or that my husband had stage 4 pancreatic cancer and only had a few weeks to live. I don’t really know how to go on from those challenges. I was able to get another borzoi, a lovely retired bitch, “Jelly”, and after she sadly died, I was able to acquire a lovely Silken Windhound named Kensie.