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KISMET'S WHITNEY

"Whitney"

We shouldn't even have Whitney; we got Bailey from Guy Mauldin. We had wanted Bailey since before she was born, on account of her tight pedigree. Guy always warned us about that litter, "I'm concerned about size". Sure enough, Bailey went over at 6 months of age.

Taking Whitney as a replacement was not as cut and dry as it could have been. We saw and photographed Whitney's litter when they were around 6-7 weeks old. We loved Whitney's sister, Rita (now named Sita). She had so much more bone and muzzle. She looked flashy. Whitney was kind of pointy and wimpy looking. Guy, as experienced as he is, saw that Whitney had beautiful head detail and was overall a very nice package. We'd even venture to say that he liked her more than Rita (though he'd never admit it). In our hasty evaluation of the litter, we decided that Whitney was the worse one...And then I photographed Whitney straight on... and I saw how clean her head was and how sweet her expression was despite her larger than ideal eye.

We visited Guy's a few weeks later. As we photographed the puppies I noticed how beautiful Whitney's structure was. Her expression had gotten even sweeter. Comparing Whitney to her sister we saw that she had a distinguished femininity to her. Her presence was inspiring, especially when she self-stacked and posed for her portraits... At that point I really liked her. Guy told us that she was going to a show home in Canada... fate had other plans for her.

The week Whitney was supposed to fly off to Canada, she decided to play extra hard with her litter mates. During their rough-housing she somehow managed to tangle her front left leg in a fence and fracture both bones in her forearm. Guy was forced to change his arrangements with the Canadian folks, Sita ended up going to Canada instead.

We brought Whitney home soon after she had her cast removed. We were to try her out. She gaited peg-legged and when she stood she put little weight, if any, on her bad leg. Valerie and I differed greatly in opinion on how to go about fixing the gimp leg... Valerie thought babying her, and taking her on short walks would be best. I figured we should toss her to the wolves and see how she fared.

We tried Valerie's approach the first week Whitney was with us. I didn't see a difference the following weekend when I got home. I was working from home the next week and had all the opportunity in the world to try my approach while Valerie was at work. I gave Whitney full run of our yard all morning with Sugar, Maya and Cody. She could barely move when Valerie got home. I did the same thing for the rest of the week. I did catch some grief over Whitney's lack of mobility in the evenings but I had seen that everyday she was playing harder and for longer than she did the previous day.

By that weekend Whitney was running around, had developed nice muscle tone in her whole body. Her gimp leg was thickening up, and she was starting to put more weight on it. At this point we figured she would be staying with us. A couple of weeks later we took her, Maya and Cody on an 8-mile hike at Pedernales Falls. We suspect that before long, no one will be able to tell she ever had a broken leg.

Whitney's Pedigree