Blyss Kennels

Home to Beautiful Borzois in the Watchung Mountains in Mountainside, New Jersey

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After a long pause

It is almost frightening to sit down at my computer after all I have been through since this new calendar year, now almost half over. However, I force myself to type the URL and begin entering text tonight. Let me start by saying that I know a lot of people do not like me. They find me disturbing, to the point of feeling compelled to elaborate and act out their thoughts and feelings of hatred. These people include in particular my closest family members and those whom I had held closest to my heart. It is nothing new, but it has become a pattern that has followed me through the decades. Today, I have lost my last human best friend forever. He said words implemented with actions that cannot be taken back. So here I have died, alone and friendless during the coldest, darkest days of the year, ripping me apart and rendering me mute. I have only just found my voice, thanks again to my one salvation, borzoi, the breed of dog, and the breeders who make them possible whom I regard as friends.

It was wise of me to have signed up for a hotel room for the host hotel and register to attend the Borzoi Club of America’s (BCOA) National Specialty Show in Mesquite TX from April 25 -May 1, 2022. I even found two different room-mates, for different nights, to help with the expense of the room. It was well attended by beautiful borzoi of all ages. The Futurity judge was my friend, and former Specialty judge, Barbara Bender, and it was great spending time with her again. The Sweepstakes judge was Barbara Lord. I, in the name of Blyss Kennels, support the Sweepstakes trophies in Opal’s name (Raynbo Opalesque at Blyss) for the Puppy Bitch classes. The judge for the Best in Specialty Show was someone I greatly admire and respect, and she did a wonderful job, Prudence Hlatky. Prudence and her husband Greg own the borzoi who won the BCOA Specialty Show last year in Ohio with her lovely bitch, Delilah, and who happens to be the number 1 borzoi in the country.

I was pleased by the borzoi I saw. Certain dogs of a certain style have their appeal to some judges, or some judges will put borzoi up for a win with a different style than I am accustomed to seeing. I try hard to see the quality in these borzoi, and not be a “fault” judge, overlooking the borzoi’s quality. Surely, it is there. I try to broaden my parameters. Still, I cannot overlook two things: Short legs with no tuck up, and tails held up and wagging when the borzoi moves. A new fault is developing at a disturbing rate, including Russia from pictures of litters I have seen from my Facebook friends. It is folded down ears, like a Labrador Retriever or a Golden Retriever. They ruin the head. Each breed has a silhouette that is a component of breed type. It is hard to get past these faults because they are so destructive to the borzoi silhouette, requisite for the borzoi to perform the tasks the breed was created to do.

I will soon be reserving my hotel room for the BCOA National Specialty Show next year, in Virginia Beach, VA. It means so much for me to have it to look forward to. It allowed my dark mood to lift. And why not? I was immersed in perfect bliss!

The Lost Souls

Kelly Jo Wright

 · I shall Gather up

All the lost souls

That wander this earth.

All the ones that are alone.

All the ones that are broken.

All the ones that never really fitted in.

I shall gather them all up.

And together we shall find our home.

“Gather up” A Poem written by Athey Thompson.

Taken from A Little Book Of Poetry

By Athey Thompson

Classic Russian Poetry

We are currently living during the days of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war to conquer the Ukraine in order to bring it back into the borders of Russia. This war is being very vividly played out 24/7 because of the excellent communication available through social media and the non-stop news cycle available to anyone who cares to watch it. Over one million women, children and elderly men have tried to flee into bordering countries. The younger men have stayed behind to try to defend their country.

It should be no surprise to anyone who knows me that I have a deep and long lasting passion for Russian culture and history, for its language, art, architecture, history, music and spectacular beauty spread wide over eleven time zones! It has many cruel paradoxes, and the country came late to the table when it came to liberating its peasant. Still it did not deserve its ruling family to be assasinated in cold blood, in secret, without a trial in the basement of a nondescript building in Ekatarina but it happened. It did not deserve life to become worse for the peasants under Lenin and Stalin but it did.

One interesting result of Putin’s war on the Ukraine is the speaking out by the Russian Borzoi breeders speaking of their pride in their country. I chose to have Russians as Facebook Friends because they bred borzoi, and I wanted to know more about them and to see good pictures of their borzoi. And it has gone along that way. I never would have expected Russia to go to war with a neighboring country giving me a very clear look as if through a key hole or a seat at the table of a tea given by a borzoi breed club where the breeders were gathered and the topic of discussion was not the borzoi, but the war. I have had the opportunity to read first hand and unedited the emotions expressed by the breeders I know. They are proud and loyal to their homeland, and I do not condemn them for it. It was not their idea to go to war, but they are loyal to their country. It would make no sense for an established person to suddenly turn against their country. I have seen on the news there are younger Russian people protesting, and they are running the risk of ten to twenty years in prison for so doing, Their point of view is important, too, So, not only are two different countries at war but two different generations.

In the eighteenth century, there lived a poet Nikolai Nekrasov, who wrote poetry about the lives and hardships of the peasantry class, and he was greatly loved. A Russian borzoi breeders shared one of his poems. It tells how nuanced the differences of loyalties there are among Russians themselves, some are for the war, and others are against. I am sharing the poem:

Minding the horrors of war,

With each new battle casualty

I feel sorry for not a friend, not a wife,

I feel sorry for not the hero himself…

Alas! the wife will be comforted,

And a friend best friend will forget;

But somewhere there is only one soul –

She will remember it until her coffin!

In the midst of our hypocritical affairs

And all sorts of vulgarity and prose

I peeped alone in the world

Holy, sincere tears –

Those are the tears of poor mothers!

They should not forget their children,

Dead by the bloody field,

How not to raise a weeping willow

Of its fallen branches..