"Newfoundland Dogs -- Better Than The Best"

(By "Knewf")

"I have a plaque in my kitchen with those words on it 'In This Kitchen, Newf Hair is a Condiment' just above the entry doorway. It was a Christmas gift from a good friend. It was not an expensive gift certainly...it is home-made but very special.... (Funny how the little things mean a lot, sometimes.) I have several boxes in the store room of framed Championship certificates and ribbons and framed show pictures. I plan on putting the photos back up after I paint my living room. I have three large boxes of snapshots that date from the time when people took regular pictures and not digital photos. Most of them are either my grand kids or my dogs. I have two bags of Newfy hair from my first Newfy in the same storage room. And 7 boxes of ashes of my deceased Newfs, some day I want to buy matching urns. I have books and books and more books, all about Newfoundland dogs. For a time there I collected the books. I am pleased to say that I have books now that are no longer in print. (Or maybe that just means now I am really getting old!)

"My shed has a grooming table and a dog dryer, and two boxes of scent items for my search dogs. My back yard is fenced and has several stuffed animals in various states of disrepair that are frequently moved about when I get home from work (the dogs parade with their "stuffies" when people come to visit), I have an outside faucet with both hot and cold water so I can give my dogs a comfortable bath, I have no flower beds because the Newfs would just get into them and dig them up.... I used to have several boards of my siding gone but that is now fixed. I have no screen on the back storm door, just the glass. Hopefully Phoenix won't break it, she still can't resist jumping on the door when she sees me coming.

"My living room couch is covered in a blanket that I hastily remove when people arrive. Most of the time when people come we sit around the dining room table anyhow. My floor is littered, the same as the yard, with stuffies. My Newfs run and grab a stuffy and carry it around proudly when people arrive, around and around and around. They do the same thing in the back yard when the neighbor kids come up to the fence to pet them. They have not as yet learned to put the stuffies back into the toy box so they remain scattered around the house, alolong with plastic bottles (Phoenix loves the noise they make when she chews on them) and left over toilet paper cardboard tubes. (Jenna likes to carry them around.)


"My kitchen sink has dog bowls in it. My kitchen window ledge has Jenna's eye solution and her ear drops and Phoenix's vitamins. My laundry room houses the clippers and the nail grinder on the same shelf with my mis-matched socks. My library table has a copper wastebasket with a big Newfy head embossed on it, inside of that basket are all the brushes and combs and scissors. My coffee table in the living room is actually a cedar chest, all you have to do to brush a dog is pull the coffee table out in the middle of the floor and put a scatter rug on top and it turns into a grooming table. My floors are bare wood floors, easy to sweep and piddle proof if and when I have puppies. The other coffee table in my living room is a large crate, 48 inches long and 36 inches tall. It has a wooden board on top and a lamp and a basket with two stuffed newfoundland (toy) puppies that I bought years ago at a National Specialty. The basket is only a tiny bit frayed where Bella chewed on it about 8 years ago.

"My 'china closet' no longer houses china. It has just about everything you can imagine that has to do with Newfoundland dogs, from the antique cast iron nut crackers to the modern resin plasticast Newfoundlands (I get one or two of those every Christmas). I have a genuine playschool toy from the sixtires that is a Newfoundland dog pulling a carnival wagon that is a tiny music box, and two Newfoundlands pulling a cart, that was a gift of love from my daughter, who scultped them herself.


"In my dining room window I have a large suncatcher that is a leaded stained glass; design of, you guessed it, a Newf. Above the dining room door is a photo taken by a professional photographer of my first litter of Newfy puppies, all lined up in a row, at the age of seven weeks. It took four hours to get that picture! On the wall is a velvet painting that my daughter did of a Newf, and another one of a lighthouse with two newfs on a beach, also from my daughter, and then there is one that I did, of a Newfoundland puppy. Also on the dining room wall are the Specialty wins and various other trophies.


"I guess it would be true to say I am an admirer of dogs and in particular of the Newfoundland breed. I know for a fact that there is no way I can live without a 'Newfy fix' for very long! There have been years in my life, when I lived in a bigger house, that I have had as many as eight Newfies in the house with me at the same time. Now, this evening, as I type this, Jenna is in her crate, snoring (she goes in and out whenever she wants) and Phoenix is on her couch with her Elmo stuffy laying between her front legs, also snoring. I know that every owner of every dog, most of them anyway, are sure that their breed is the best. However I know my breed is!"