Thorsby Toy Fox Terriers

 

 

Dr. Ralph and Daryleen Rascati were our first mentors.  When they saw our puppies, they immediately commented on one male.  This puppy turned out to be Vance.  The Rascatis showed Vance for me as most shows conflicted with my work schedule but one show in Perry, Georgia was close enough to home to go to see.  Vance is shown here with Daryleen.

 

My Vance was the most gorgeous dog of all but at this show I saw one dog that just "took my breath" away. He glided around the ring with such grace that you barely saw his feet touch the floor. And he oozed self assurance and confidence. I was bold enough to go over and remark to his owner how much I liked him.

 

It occurred to me right then that I needed to learn more about this breed. I had developed a passion in dogs but it was a passion to breed the FINEST dogs that I could. Since Social Security was stalking me, I had a few years to develop a platform for a great  breeding program. So the first step was to learn more about the long term toy fox terrier breeders around me and the qualities that they had developed in their lines. By looking into the backgrounds and seeing the shows dogs that came from breeders like Shirley Stroud, Dorothy Jacobs, Dianna James, and BJ Andrews, I could accumulate over 100 years of breeding experience right here on the East Coast.  I knew what I liked to see now but I needed to find out how to get there. Thus I embarked on reading, watching and listening. I joined a great kennel club (Sawnee Mountain Kennel Club of Georgia, Inc.) that had classes for handling just so I could train my puppies at their earliest stages. (it really isn't the puppies that need the training.. it's the handler first.)

 

I read lots of articles including some of the breeding judges articles  in the AKC gazette. I watched judges at ring side to see what caught their eye and held it during those precious seconds of showing. (Did you know when judges like a dog, they keep their eyes on that dog a smidgen longer than other dogs. Like a boxer, they telegraph their punches and it is fun sometimes to see if you see what they see and predict their picks.)

 

Most of all, I practiced showing myself so I could have some physical knowledge of what it took to train a good show dog. So for at least four years,  I hurdled my own stage fright and tried showing myself. Short of loosing my pantaloons, I have had more than my share of embarrassing moments. I have given more points to other dogs than I care to recall but I have learned that it still can be fun.

 

When you loose, you just go shopping.

 

The traveling brought many "fun" moments with my TFTs. They loved the hotel rooms and danced around wrestling and playing with their toys. When I started to load the car, they would line up to say "me, me" let's go. Let's go play show dog, but forget doing my nails.

 

It took me a while to figure out that the judges can be your best friends too.  I finally became comfortable enough to talk to the judge!!!. Other competitors used to accuse me of "smoozing" the judges.  Really, It was just establishing that "they are human" feeling that made me more comfortable and made it a whole lot easier when I lost. In doing this, I learned that a judge can give you more helpful hints and directives in a few seconds than reading a book for a week!  And, often they give you that shred  of encouragement that you need to keep showing after you did not win a thing.:)

 

Breeding the perfect puppy is nearly impossible and made even more impossible by the overwhelming knowledge that EVERY one of your puppies is perfect. Just ASK any one of my guys. But, I wandered forward in my showing and my training.

 

Tikket (shown at right as a puppy) was my fortunate female who produced my first three champions.  When I realized we would only breed her once more, I turned to my kennel help... and my best friend, my husband and said, "I want to breed one more time for that perfect dog but what did you see that you thought were the best qualities?"   My husband had seen Hugely Handsome at the Kennesaw show right after I had seen him at the Perry show. He suggested, "What about that dog at the Kennesaw show that moved like a locomotive?"  He suggested we search out the breeder and see if a breeding was possible.

 

It took many hours of searching but I found Ch. Hugely Handsome and his owner, BJ Andrews. Amazing in that I had not seen her or her dog for over four years. And, it took several calls and hours of talking to get her to agree to let me breed to him. To this day, I think that she said "yes" just to get me off of the phone. She was very supportive, even though my knowledge was still limited.

 

She tried hard to show me how the shoulders, fronts and chests should look to get that gliding, reaching motion that I had fallen in love with in Hugely.  Alas, I know what I like to see but don't ask me to explain it to you in dog terms. My memory is not that good anyway.

 

Now I have Hugely offspring along with other beautiful offspring from all of the foundation breeders that I had mentioned.  I am still trying to breed the perfect dog but every litter produces at least one:) That is what makes it fun....

 

And we are having fun with Finest Fella!  He and his handler Carol Pyrkosz are having just as much fun.  He quickly became an AKC Grand Champion and won his first Group at Birmingham! 

 

 

Marilee & Milan R Thorsby Jr.

404.310.8581 Georgia

marilee@thorsbytoyfoxterriers.com