the Afghans of Grandeur - Roger Rechler interviews Sunny Shay

Sniggy Wigg of Grandeur, Sunny's first Westminster winner, c. 1920.

Sunny: I was raised in a small town, in Nyack, New York. There is where I got my love for the dogs; my mother’s estate was manned by a guy by the name of Mulford Cooper, who wasn’t a rich man, who lived with his mother and old maiden aunt. He was a great sportsman; he used to have trotting horses and various breed of dogs that he used to breed and show. He used to have Great Danes, Kerry Blue terriers, Wire Fox terriers, and Airedales, and various other terriers at the time. He was very interested in my sister, which was my identical twin sister, named Dana, and myself because I guess he thought it was very cute for two little girls to be interested in dogs. He was teaching us how to trim, how to groom, how to put down terriers, and how to raise dogs and raise puppies. And we thought it was all so great. It was just absolutely fascinating. And I became very interested in dogs and in dog breeding and in dog showing. He used to take us to the various shows that were around the locality and he would introduce us to very famous old dog people, many of whom are dead today.

But Louis Murr, who is alive today and is a great judge, was one of our friends; and Alva Rosenberg, who has passed on and who was a fine judge as well, taught us a great deal of adhering to the

Sunny also had a fondness for horses. c. 1930

standards of our breeds and made an impression upon us that we should always adhere to the standard because that, in the eventuality we were going to last, there would be many fads that people would come in with, of coloring, different coat patterns, but they were only just fads, that they wouldn’t last very long. But the standard would, and if you adhered to it, you would always come up with the proper kind of dog. So that was instilled in me so strongly that I just kept loyal to it all through these years and I always tried to adhere as close as possible to the standard. And when I became enamored with the breed, the Afghan Hound, I tried to stay as close as possible to the standard, to make sure that the breed would stay as pure as possible, as what is called for. Well, as I was growing, I became interested in learning more about dogs; I had many, many breeds of dogs. I used to like a great many dogs, but I found that the Afghan gave me the greatest amount of pleasure and the least amount of aggravation and I decided that I would stick to the Afghan Hound, and make that my primary breed. I made my concentration on breeding very fine Afghans. I used to read all the information I could possibly gather on it from many magazines I would read, or I would go to different parts of the country where they had the big dogs shows, or the specialty shows and I would meet various people who had the breed at that time. There weren’t very many, but I became friendly with the few people who knew about the breed.

I imported various dogs myself. I was looking in an English dog magazine where I saw a magnificent black Afghan sitting on a rock, overlooking some young Afghan puppies and this was so intriguing because they were very exciting looking to me, and I thought, "Oh my, I must have that bloodline for myself." And I found out in the advertisement that it was a Turkuman Kennel owned by Juliette de Bairacli Levy. I had written her letters and never got a reply from her and I was very disappointed because I wanted to hear so desperately from this woman to get something of her stock. It was about wartime and this friend of mine Sol Malkin, who was a captain in the army, was going over to England; when I heard he was going over there, I said please look up Juliette de Bairacli Levy. I gave him her address and I said to please see if he could get her to sell me one of her beautiful dogs. He went over there and made her acquaintance; and she was a writer and he was a writer and they had a great deal in common. They became very fast friends and he had told her about that I had lived on a 35-acre farm and I had a three-acre lake and my dogs were living as close to nature as possible. I fed them tripe and I would go to the slaughterhouse and they would get pure spring fed lake water and they did live very, very close to nature.

She was very thrilled with that because that is the way she raised her dogs and that is the way she wanted people to take care of her dogs. So we started correspondence and became very fast friends and she was going to give up most of her stock because she was going to do a lot of traveling and writing. She used to be very good friends with the gypsies and used to go to Spain and live in the gypsy camps. She was a very fascinating person herself, with a great deal of experience with these various peoples, which was very thrilling. She would write to me in these letters; she thought that she would sell me one of her very finest dogs and the accumulation of her breeding programs and I was very thrilled to get one of those fine dogs. However, when he arrived, and I saw this puppy come out of the crate, he was so foreign to me in looks. He was gangly and all legs and had a big long tail. He was just very ill put together at that time and I couldn’t conceive how this puppy in any way could grow up and be this great dog that she thought he was going to become.

I wrote her back a very bad letter saying how disappointed I was and that if they didn’t have the six months quarantine in England, that I would have sent him back. She wrote me back another letter and told me to be patient; I would be very rewarded, and just wait until he grew into his great angulation and all his great things that he had to offer. And she proved to be right because, in 1950, he took the hound group at the Westminster Kennel Club and almost went best in show.

Sunny with Ch. Haji Baba of Grandeur, c. 1956

However, the judge who was doing the best in show said to me after the best in show was awarded to a Scottish Terrier. He a breeder of Scottish Terriers, and knew a great deal about his own breed and said to me, "your dog was a fine dog and a lovely dog but I didn’t know enough about your breed to know if he was the right specimen to give you the best in show." However, several years later I think he did give me a best in show with a dog of my own breeding. However, I did make this dog to be a very fine champion and he took lots of groups and best in shows throughout the country and he was also a great producer of many fine dogs and bitches.

Ch. Turkuman Tar of Grandeur with handler Jerry Rigden, 1950

Among them were champion Turkuman Tar of Grandeur, whom I sold to Mr. Poole who lived outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. and he was the grandfather of many of the Dureigh dogs. He also sired Champion Haji Baba, who was also a great champion.

Unfortunately, he was at the time of Shirkhan, and Shirkhan had recently won the Westminister, so I could only ride one horse and one ass. So, I had to concentrate more on Shirkhan and poor old Haji Baba was left home in the kennel. But he was a great dog himself and he was a great sire. He sired many excellent puppies which are in peoples’ pedigrees today. Then he had the very famous champion, Turkafa of Grandeur, which was a lovely bitch; and Champion D’Jinn of Grandeur which was a very exciting bitch that was sold to Cora Nunally Miller. She was the foundation of her Hound Hill kennels. So, he was a great stud and did a great deal for me in my combination of breeding the Turkuman line with the Shirkhan background which consisted of the American and imported Indian/Afghanistan line. That was just a beautiful combination that I based a good deal of my kennel on.

Sunny with two unidentified dogs, possibly one of her early "experimental" acquisitions.

I had experimented with a great many of the other bloodlines. At the time, I read many different magazine articles and about different people who were bringing dogs in from various places in England. I bought a Canadian dog from El Myia Kennel and I found it not to be very good temperamentally and I didn’t concentrate on that breeding because I am a great believer in good temperament. I feel that you should not breed a dog that is spooky or shy or snappy in any way, because that is only going to be an eventuality in your stock. So, if you don’t breed to it, you lessen your chances of having bad temperament. And I do pride myself in having one of the finest temperaments of any kennel in the country of any breed.

Roger: How about the development of your dogs?

Sunny: From Turkuman Nissim’s Laurel?

Roger: Yes. Does that have something to do with their slow development?

Sunny: Yes, that is, many people are a little impatient, when they get one of my dogs, they can’t hurry them up because they don’t mature until they’re almost three years old; just the same way as Turkuman Nissim’s Laurel did mature. He didn’t start his winning till he was about three, and he did last until he was about ten years old. So you see, when they do develop later, they are going to last a lot longer, because they have a lot of angulation to grow into and they don’t breakdown, as dogs with a lack of angulation do. So, it is necessary to wait a bit before you start winning or doing anything with my stock, as a rule, because they are much later to develop.

Roger: How about everyone who said that Turkuman was behind Shirkhan?

Sunny: Well, it seems like some people have written that in some of the other Afghan books. They make an assumption that Turkuman might be in Shirkhan, but they are wrong. Contrary to their assumptions, the fact is that Turkuman was a completely different bloodline and it was kept as a different bloodline than Shirkhan’s. It was my combination that I was putting together that was sort of an out-cross. I out-crossed to create my own line, which is a combination of the Turkuman line, which was imported from England with most of the English dogs behind it, with the combination of the American line that was the Rudiki background, coupled with the Venita Oakie dogs that she brought into the country from India by champion Umberto.

So, contrary to what anybody might think or say, they were of two distinctive, different lines and Shirkhan had nothing in his written pedigree of Turkuman. And, as a matter of fact, they weren’t even the same kind of dog. They were both excellent Afghans and both had the same fine points that the Afghan should have, according to the standard, but they were different in their bloodlines. But they did make a good combination with their children and with each other.