In honor of
OUR DOGS
At the beginning of 2025, SVKC began honoring our dogs who have passed on to the Rainbow Bridge in the past year by making a donation to the Canine Health Foundation. We hope you'll enjoy reading the tributes to these beautiful souls.
Denim
We bought Denim from a woman in NY who had imported him from Wales and decided she didn’t want him because he was “too wild." It didn’t take us long to confirm that he was just a normal mischievous whippet puppy. Denim loved FastCat. He wasn’t very fast for a whippet. In fact he might have been the slowest whippet in the country! But he loved it, so we went! We lost him too young at the age of 10, but he lives on in some beautiful puppies he sired while we were fortunate enough to call him ours.
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Sharyn Hutchens
Lexington, VA
Handsome
Handsome came to us in 2020 with Toby as a bonded pair. We adopted him in Ohio and brought him (and Toby, who's still with us) home to retirement. He loved all things food! He came to us severely overweight, and during his four years of life with us he dieted and walked, trying to improve his health. He loved sleeping and eating, he was also quite the barker in typical dachshund style. He spent four years with us and passed in 2024 at the age of 17.
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Corrie Wagoner
Franklin, WV
Holly
She was wonderful. She didn’t like to do anything wrong and always consistent. She did agility, rally and obedience. A friend of mine taught obedience classes and she always used Holly as her demo dog. She didn’t like scuffles or bad behavior. When my other Shelties barked and rough housed she would go over and put her paws on their back until they quieted down. I could put her in a sit and stay and walk around the house and she would still be in a sit when I got back. She was a one in a million.
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Dorothy Blackwell
Lexington, VA
Kara
Kara was born here, the second of ten puppies, but was so small we didn’t think she would live. She had a cleft palate, so we tube fed her until she was old enough for surgery to correct it. Before she was a year old, she had taken over the household and amazingly, the other whippets put up with her. "She can’t help it, it's just the way she is." She got away with just about anything. In spite of her rough beginnings, Kara was healthy till the age of 14. Kidney failure took her down quickly and she left this world in the arms of people who loved her. The house is far too quiet without her.
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Sharyn Hutchens
Lexington, VA
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Layde
Layde passed at the age of 19 and was with us from age two when we adopted her from a shelter in NC. She was hopelessly devoted to Keith and was an avid mole and mouse hunter. She spent days on end in the fields undermining stumps, coming to the house at days end with her toes and teeth caked in mud. Those were her favorite days. She also loved hiking with the pack and family and snuggling up under the covers or in front of the wood stove at the end of a long day outside. She will be forever loved and remembered as the big girl of our pack.
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Corrie Wagoner
Franklin, WV
Ms. Penny
Penny was the runt of a 12 puppy litter, but the first to escape the whelping box! Everything she did throughout her life she gave her whole heart to it. She loved all dogs, all people, most cats, and all animals (except geese and coyotes!). A dream day in her life would have been eating (just about anything), visiting grandkids, swimming at Sherando or the river, running an agility trial, and then having a sleepover with TC, Anne Fisher's Flat Coat. I was most proud that she would run with anyone at an agility trial, whether she knew them or not. For the last 5 years she has been the top Flat Coat across all height classes in the Bad Dog Agility rankings. I guess a bottom line with Ms. Penny is that she just brought so much joy into not only my life but into the lives of many other people and dogs.
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Jim Saxon
Waynesboro, VA
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Rowan
Rowan was a Cirneco dell’Etna. I fell in love with them at a Meet the Breeds event and brought Rowan home four months later. She was The most mischievous puppy we've ever had, and that’s saying a lot when the others were whippets! You really couldn’t leave her alone for a trip to the bathroom! She matured, but not until age four, into a lovely pet who always kept us entertained. In old age she developed a spinal problem that eventually prevented being able to walk, so we let her go at 11. We miss her constant happiness and energy but Walt says he is too old for another Cirneco!
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Sharyn Hutchens
Lexington, VA