Changing
your life is easy. All you have to do is write a novel. Of course,
you have to live a while before you've got anything interesting to
say. Which means, you might end up with a house full of heartache
and lots of gray hair by the time you've got enough to fill a story.
In my case, it took 443 pages and every one of them felt like a year.
"The
Blue Ribbon" isn't a novel that happened overnight. In fact, you might
say it didn't even start with an idea because of everything that had
to be lived before that idea even hatched. If I remember right, the
idea of an imaginative dress designer and the richest girl in town
getting to know each other wasn't the start of the story at all. If
you want to know the story behind the making of the paperback novel
making such a buzz right now, you have to go way back to a hot afternoon
on July 8, 1945. That's when a plump, dark-haired young bookkeeper
named Jackie Kauffman got off a bus and walked up a dirt road to a
farm house in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She was there to get
herself a Collie puppy. Me? I wasn't even born yet. Jackie and I wouldn't
meet until twenty years later. But, that's getting ahead of our story.
Jacqueline
M. Kauffman grew up in a big Victorian house on the edge of a town
called Manheim, Pennsylvania. There were two Kauffman girls: A glamorous
one who looked like a movie star and a plain one who would spend her
life working at a dull job in a big company and never marry. That
was Jackie, the plain one, later to become the wealthy Esmeralda in
"The Blue Ribbon."
She was
quite a romantic. Her rambling house was filled with paperback novels
and there were lists of sensual names for the many puppies she registered
over the years. The name "Lochranza" was selected from such a novel.
She said it was the name of a retreat for the Scottish monarchy.
The Kauffman
girls didn't have a father at home and I know Jackie missed her Dad.
But, Mother, a bitter, scowling woman, had chased him off and never
liked men much after that. She ruined a love affair for Jackie by
sending the police after the man she wanted to marry. If I tell you
Jackie was in her Thirties at the time, it might give you an idea
of the power exerted by Mother Kauffman. Maybe that's why Jackie's
heart went out to Collies. They're always cheerful. Maybe that's why
she took off for dog shows almost every weekend. To get away. Lochranza
Kennels was a perfectly maintained enterprise advertising in all the
right magazines and winning top honors when I showed up for a puppy.
I remember the clean, beautiful dogs; the flowers everywhere; the
carefully mowed lawn and the freshly painted house. I remember Mother
Kauffman, much like the character Dorothy Jacobus in the story none
of us knew I would one day write, busying herself as she swept the
porch - listening to every word. I did not know, as I bought my first
purebred puppy that day, that I was meeting the one who would take
me into the world of purebred animals where I would "make my name."
I didn't know I would handle the Lochranza Collies in the show ring,
help to develop the bloodline and, one day, Lochranza Collies would
be known throughout the world. I just knew I had found a friend. Jackie
liked to read to me. She read every one of the Albert Payson Terhune
books to me. And she liked to cook good, old-fashioned Pennsylvania
Dutch pot pie. Oh, I miss that! Mmmm! As the years went by, she would
call me to the kennel every time a new Collie magazine arrived. These
were my lessons. And she was tough! We would sit at her kitchen table
and go through these magazines page by page, studying the pictures
and reading all the articles. "What do you think about this dog?"
she'd ask me. "I like him," I'd say. "What! Can't you see how long
he is in the hock? You'd better take another look!" she'd say, real
stern. And then she'd laugh. I think she liked me.
As the
years went by, I married and moved away. I had daughters of my own
and lost touch with Jackie. One day, I thought I must go to a dog
show again. It was Mother's Day and I remember seeing a familiar woman
walking across the field. Beside her was a Sable Collie with a huge
coat; obviously her treasure. "Jackie! Jackie!" She stopped, turned
around, and smiled so big I could feel it all the way through me.
I showed her my young daughter and we talked about Collies. She told
me she hadn't bred any litters for several years and I asked why.
She had no answer for me, but I knew: Jackie was losing her interest
in life.
Well, that wasn't going to happen. Not if I had anything to do with
it. If there's one thing I believe, it's that dreams can keep us alive.
It didn't matter to me that the Victorian house I had known was now
crumbling; that the flowers shared their beds with weeds, that the
classy sign in front of the property had long since fallen down. Over
the next ten or fifteen years, Jackie and I planned a new life for
Lochranza Kennels. These things could be fixed up. And that's what
we did.
We studied pedigrees and selected the dogs we liked best in the Breed.
Collies were losing type, we believed. They couldn't move like they
used to. Their muzzles were becoming too pointed; necks were short.
By this time, Jackie was retired and could spend all her time on the
Kennel. She loved it. And then she surprised me. How? She bought one
of most valuable show dogs in the Breed (Ch. Amberlyn's Bright Tribute,
known as "Kane") at the height of his career and made him the cornerstone
for the Lochranza bloodline.
Not only did she buy Kane, but she searched the whole country and
bought mates for him as well. These were the dogs she selected for
me, on which to build the Lochranza breeding program.
One afternoon, I received a call from the "Glamorous sister." Could
I hurry to Jackie's house and see if she was all right? She had been
taken ill the day before and refused to let the hospital admit her.
"The dogs need me." The ambulance crew drove her home, sat her in
her favorite chair, and left. I found Jackie in that same chair the
next afternoon, still alive, and begged her to let me call the ambulance
again. Only when I promised I would take care of the Collies did she
allow me to make that call. She never returned home again. Before
she died, Jackie left the kennel to me and told me how to manage the
breeding program. It isn't often that a kennel lives on into a second
generation, but the American Kennel Club worked with me to transfer
ownership and continue Jackie's labor of love. I took Kane to her
funeral and his image is carved on her gravestone. The marker says
"Famed Collie Breeder."
Today,
all the Lochranza Collies are line bred on Kane. Some trace to him
as many as ten and twelve times within a six or seven generation pedigree.
What are we finding? First of all, you must realize that all of our
original breeding stock was tested for health before we started the
line breeding program. So, health has been maintained. Yet, I can
say that our pups today are better in some respects than the original
stock. This past weekend, we showed two littermates that are ten times
Kane. They are among the heaviest boned Collies you will ever see.
And huge coats! They move free and easy. The judge, a woman in her
sixties, said she hasn't seen Collies like this in many years. "Did
you hear that, Jackie?" I want to ask. Something tells me she did.
