City Girls!


When one acquires older Borzoi, one also acquires a multitude of hints and warnings on the adjustment of said "older" Borzoi to a new environment and new owners. Having had previous experience along these lines, I really had no misgivings when I purchased Obskaya's Sandra and Maya of Obskaya from the estate of Genevieve Pitcock (Van Strom Borzoi). Sandra was three, Maya was six.

One thing did give me pause for thought: the ladies were "city" girls, used to an elegant (but small) Sacramento back yard. How would they adjust to living in the middle of 50 acres on the Western Slope of the Sierra Nevada's. We have fenced five acre pastures for our Borzoi. The long driveway in used to be the road connecting the county road to BLM land and El Dorado National Forest, gets pretty rough just past our property. We are used to riding this area with a couple/three or so Borzoi and we wondered if our "city" girls would ever be able to do this.


After a few weeks of "getting to know you", Sue (my daughter) and I started hiking the area with the girls on lead - a few more weeks of this and we were ready to give it a try with the horses. Disaster! or so we thought...we started down the draw, on horseback, Sandra and Maya on long leads, Nuri off lead (we hoped he would keep the girls with us!).

We slipped their leads and with one or two unbelieving looks (you mean I'M FREE????) off they went, so fast that Nuri, being preoccupied with a ground squirrel hole, didn't even see them go. The draw, almost a canyon, takes several sharp turns and they were out of sight in less that 20 seconds. We took off after them as fast as we dared on that broken ground, but no use. We decided to eliminate exits from the draw by looking for prints, red hair on brushing...in a few minutes we heard them!! Sound direction is confusing in that draw so we decided to go back up top (near the house)...the barking became clearer and closer - as we neared the driveway into our house, we spied the girls as pictured above! They acknowledged our presence but were quite busy holding that buck - and kept him there while we took pictures!
One MIGHT say...the "city" girls brought a friend home for dinner!