Nina, Nina ljubavi

It was a crispy night in early April when the amniotic sac with the apple of our eye, Nina (Katnu Karenina) glided into my hands. The living portrait of her great-grandfather Votka the Terrible, who was about to leave us for the longest rest, she revealed herself his worthy successor from the start: A hunter in heart and soul, a jester and a tough wild little thing at the same time, she was the only one to counter the mad attacks by Fennec the Looney Lurcher, to retort to her mum’s authoritarian and dictatorial ruling, to challenge her toughest, biggest brother Kidai, and especially, to enchant us with a never ending curiosity, an innate wilderness, a free spirit that was destined to conquer if not the world, at least the mountain of Knockarea… Unfavourable logistics and human fallacy have caused us to part, on 3 July 2008, something we will always regret. We will never forget her incredulous, puzzled look when she was not allowed to join her uncle Fen, mum Gitana and three litter brothers back into the station wagon that had just landed on Welsh soil. It was therefore with the greatest joy that we received from our pen-pal and borzoi friend Masha Zarnova some lovely photographs of Nina as a young lady of 15 months! Congratulations to our dear friends Maddy Donnelly and Margaret Manning for the great job in rearing and taming this wild little beauty!

Below our Nina at three months, a picture we will never tire of looking at: