Rosie O'Grady, Hungarian Sweetheart

Guest author, Sheila Black's story of Rosie.  We have known Sheila and Rose for five years now since our first Vizsla Walk. Chloe was just a very young pup and we knew nothing of what we had in store.  Enjoy.

A more recent Vizsla Walk

"My first husband (short-lived) was Hungarian, and-- oh boy--it's too bad he didn't have some of this pup's loving characteristics. 

I waited 5 years after my previous dog died to even think about trying to find another canine companion because her loss was so painful. In retrospect, I waited too long.

When I picked up this tiny red Vizsla babe in Napa, 7 years ago, and drove home with her in my lap, she crying pitifully all the way, my life began a-new, mostly in an upward spiral.

We spend nearly all of each day together. She loves a run-and-seek game to get breakfast in the morning (I throw a 3/4 cup-full of doggy protein "pellets" around the floor (it's a big room), and she hunts them down. Good nose work? Yes, but these guys have famous nose ability, anyway. Then, she usually gets a leash-free run very near the Golden Gate Bridge (who could ask for more?). In the afternoon, she waits patiently on her pillow under a drop leaf table---her favorite hiding place, when I have clients in my home office. They know she will be quiet, and she knows to spend the time in silence. Win-win.

Each early evening at a Rosie-determined time, she sits at attention, eyes riveted (as only a V. can do) on me for a specific invitation ("jumpy-jump") to get under the comforter, where she waits for me, much later, to snuggle in next to her for the night."

Vizsla Devotion

A comment to Fiona Apple's Sweet Farewell deserved it's own post. 

 So sweet.  Thank you Kitty.

two 13-year-old female Vizslas

Kitty Tsui said...

"Your words touched my heart.

I lost my 13-year-old Vizsla, Kia/Meggie Too2, to cancer two weeks ago. For the past four months, she had had several health issues. At the beginning of October, I noticed a slight bump on her throat, this just days before she was scheduled for surgery to remove a tumor. In three days the bump grew hard and was the size of an orange. Vet pronounced it to be inoperable cancer.

I spent the next thirty days taking care of her: making meatballs w/ rice, ground meat, grated veggies bound w/ an egg; hash browns; poached mahi mahi and chicken, and hand feeding her. When she could no longer climb the stairs to our second story home, I made a safe coral in the livingroom & tended to her 24/7, doing alot of laundry and picking up her poop. Cleaning blood, pee and poop. Slept in the livingroom with her, waking when she stirred to feed her or clean her or give her medications. Inconvenient? NO.

 She was a beloved family member and I practiced DEVOTION. My Red Dog loved me unconditionally. She was a Rescue and I vowed I would NEVER abandon her and I didn't.

 We went to the end when I had to let her go. I knew when it was time. I would never let her suffer.

Run free, my love, fly high. Until we meet again."

Big Life - Small Town Ode to Noah the Vizsla

Another Vizsla owner's last devotion link above.  Click to open.  

Fiona Apple's Sweet Farewell

Fiona Apple

Seen in the L.A. Times  (letter was posted on Fiona's Facebook page);

"It's 6pm on Friday,and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet.
I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.
Here's the thing.
I have a dog Janet, and she's been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then, an adult officially - and she was my child.

She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.
She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.
She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight ,or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist.
Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact.
We've lived in numerous houses, and jumped a few make shift families, but it's always really been the two of us.
She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.
She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me all the time we recorded the last album.
The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks every 6 or 7 years.
She has Addison's Disease, which makes it dangerous for her to travel since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and to excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.
Despite all of this, she’s effortlessly joyful and playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago.
She's my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is.
I can't come to South America. Not now.
When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.
She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore.
I know that she's not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.
But I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.
I just can't leave her now, please understand.
If I go away again, I’m afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.
Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed.
But this decision is instant.
These are the choices we make, which define us.
I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship.
I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend.
And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important.
Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone.
I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time.
I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.
I need to do my damnedest to be there for that.
Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I've ever known.
When she dies.
So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel.
And I am asking for your blessing.

I'll be seeing you. "
Love, Fiona

European Puppy Mill?

Liter of  pups bred by hobby breeder (Bailey was sire)

From a member of Hungarian Vizsla Forum:  This information should be shared.

Shining light into the shadows wherever they are only makes for a stronger breed.

"We got our pup from the company "Europuppy".

In all honesty, I'd never do it again, I now know how shady they are and I'm upset I was never able to contact the breeder myself. It's basically a third party that sets breeders up with buyers. A lot of people on base recommended it to us, but I'm pretty miffed at them. I'm actually trying to find a way to get it out that nobody should ever do business with these people. My puppy is beautiful and I love him, but he was not very healthy when I picked him up, which makes me believe that these people care more about the money than the dogs.

They met me at the border between Slovenia and Hungary, because I was vacationing in Slovenia. They were four hours late, and when they arrived, my puppy had been sitting in his own poo and pee for WHO knows how long. He was the only dog in the car, so I can't imagine why he wasn't clean. It was only an hour's drive from Budapest, where the breeder was. He's had an intestinal parasite from day one and was quite thin when I picked him up. We're going on two weeks with him here, and he's been sick every single day. The vet has high hopes that he should be fine by next week, though. 

All in all, I feel very stupid for doing business with these people and I hope that at least one person will read this and NEVER use that company.
 Go directly to a breeder yourself!!!!!!! I didn't, because I was having a tough time finding one and it was so easy to go through the third party company. BAD IDEA."