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Roger: When was the first time you met Kay Finch?

Sunny: I corresponded with Kay Finch because she was another fellow Afghanite and stayed down the west coast and I wrote to her, she wrote to me. We had quite a nice correspondence and there was this Afghan Hound specialty coming up in California and I wanted to go to it and I wrote Kay and Kay invited me to stay at her house. And I took Turkuman Nissim’s Laurel, and I guess it was 1950/1951 because it was right after the Westminister when he did win the hound group. It was to be at Beverly Hills, which I was very interested in going out to California for, and Kay invited me to stay at her home with my dog, which I accepted and we enjoyed it very much.

She had a marvelous dog called Felt’s Ali Baba, and I helped bathe that dog the night before the show and a remember saying to her, "Well, Kay, if anyone was to beat me, this would be the dog that I wouldn’t mind to beat me." And, sure enough, the next day, he beat me from the classes and I really felt in my heart that this dog was every bit as good as the dog that I had and I never resented or was upset that I didn’t win the Afghan specialty show in Beverly Hills, because this dog was such a great dog in my estimation and deserved to win.

But we were very fast friends for many, many years. And every time I would come to California, I would visit Kay. When she would come to the East Coast, she would come and visit with me. We were great friends all through these years.

Roger: Did she add a lot of color to the shows?

Sunny with Mary Nelson Stephenson and Kay Finch, still "popularizing the breed." c. 1967

Sunny: She added a great deal of color. She was a very dramatic person herself, very artistic, she always used to dress in the California-type flamboyant peasant dresses which they used to wear in those days. She used to show her dogs magnificently and all in all made a beautiful picture for people to see her. She was very friendly to people and had a great personality and made a great many friends through the years.

Roger: Who were the other personalities in Afghans during the earlier days?

Sunny: Well, of course, Kay Finch was very outstanding on the West Coast. There were other younger people coming out like Gini Withington, who had bought some dogs from her at the time. And Lois Boardman, who had gotten some of her stock. They were the younger people coming in. Then there was Dewey and Reigh Abrams of the Dureigh Kennels in the Midwest. There was Mr. and Mrs. Caruthers. There were the Kauffmans who had the Holly Hill Kennels. Then, on the East Coast, there was Marjorie Lathrop of the Marjara Kennels. There was Leah McConaugha of the Khanhasset Kennels.

Roger: Khanhasset was where?

Sunny: In Great Neck. Did you know that? That was Leah McConaugha. Florsheim lived in Greenwich, Connecticut and she called her kennel, Five Mile. Because I think she lived on Five Mile Road. It was Mrs. Marion Florsheim who was also a very beautiful and colorful woman. She did a lot to add to the Afghans.

Roger: She was on the cover of Look Magazine or something?

Sunny: Yes. She got a lot of publicity because she was a very attractive woman, and Rudiki was winning at the time. She bought the dog from Mrs. Sherman Hoyt, who was a very famous poodle breeder at that time. She had bought Rudiki and she started showing Rudiki and did a great deal of winning with him, this was Mrs. Florsheim. She had a handler showing the dog for her by the name of Sayres. I used to call him "Pop" Sayres, I don’t remember his first name, but we used to always call him "Pop" Sayres. She, of course, was very colorful.

There was Marjorie and Jean Walker. They were the sisters that were very famous girls, breeders of Bedlington Terriers and Afghans and other various breeds of dogs. They were very good breeders of dogs. They had the Far Away Kennels in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Then there was Louise French Snyder, who had Wyntryst Kennels. They lived outside of Philadelphia - Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, that’s where they lived.

Roger: During those earlier days, did you ever get to England to see the dogs there?

Sunny: No, I never did until much later. Three years ago I went across for the first time in my life, that I saw the English dogs. I just corresponded with many of the English people and the English breeders, but I never did get over there until three years ago.

Roger: When you got there, did you see any similarity between your Turkuman dog and the English dogs?

Sunny with Ch. Diablo of Grandeur as a puppy. Diablo later went to Europe as foundation stock of Cynthia Madigan's Branwen Kennels. c. 1959.

Sunny: No, there wasn’t very much similarity at all; they seemed to have lost a great deal of the original part of the breed and they seemed to be so completely different than our dogs in America. Altogether, they are a bigger dog, a heavier dog - they didn’t have quite the refinement and the elegance that our Afghans had in the United States. They didn’t have the great style and the beauty that we people have. They didn’t have the great spring in their gait, for the most part, as we have here. They were a very different type of dog than our American Afghans. That’s why a great many of the English dogs that came over from England in later days, didn’t do as well here as they did of course in England. Because that type was so different and most people were attuned to placing the more refined and elegant dogs, that our standard calls for. I believe our standard as compare to the English standard is a little bit different - it’s not quite the same.

Roger: What about the European dogs?

Sunny: Well, they are a lot different than ours. They were heavier structured, they were shorter legged for the most part, and they were a lot different type. They were very sound dogs, but they didn’t have the great elegance that our hounds have, or refinement that our dogs have and a great deal of them just didn’t seem to go over as big as I thought they would go over in the shows. They just didn’t do it as well. A lot of people did use them for breeding purposes, and I think that a lot of the changes of our present day Afghans came from these various crosses and some of them weren’t very good. We did lose type.

Roger: Does that account for the extreme difference in type, they all had to come from Afghanistan at one time or another?

Sunny: Well, yes, but certain breeders do certain things. And as breeders get dogs, and they concentrated on maybe more heavy, heavy coats and a black mask, or certain type of coloring, and if the dog had a fault of bad shoulders, or a bad top line, or lack of hip structure, or bad tail set, or whatever faults that they did have, they would inbreed these dogs to get the heavier coats. But along with the heavier coats, they also intensified the faults that these dogs also carried, of the bad shoulders and the bad top line. Consequently, I think we are coming up with more pretty and glamorous dogs, but with these very bad faults which they shouldn’t have. That’s what would account for so many of these dogs today being in that position. Due to the inbreeding and the line breeding of the faults that were there, they just perpetuated and made them very strong.

Roger: Were there any great dogs that came from Norway or Sweden or the Scandinavian countries where other people brought dogs in from?

Sunny: There weren’t that many dogs that were brought into the country.

Roger: Did Kay Finch bring in any?

Sunny: She brought in a dog called Champion Ophaal. And that was a very fine dog in my estimation. I thought he was greatly angulated dog and a model specimen. However, temperament wise, he wasn’t as happy in going to the dog shows. So, Kay never showed him as frequently as she showed her other dogs, that had much more outgoing temperaments. So, he didn’t make such a big mark at the shows as some of her other dogs did, but he was a great influence on some of the stock in the country.

Roger: You’re being kind.

Sunny: I’m being kind.

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