Great Danes

Kitten adventures - click to go to our kitten web site

Links page

Cat accessories - favourite things!
Facts page - details of our breeding
FRIENDS page

Amy - my first Birman
Katy and Lucy's page

Great Danes NEW

Video Clips - See the trio playing with 'Panic Mouse'

Comparisons - how we have changed over the years

Now you might well wonder what a page entitled Great Danes is doing on what is basically a cat site?

The truth is that I have always been very much a 'dog person' - I loved dogs passionately as a child and the one dog I always wanted to own was a Great Dane. It wasn't until I got married that I was able to realise that dream. My husband took a little persuading at first because although he liked dogs I don't think a Great Dane was his first choice but he went along with it.

Our first Great Dane was bought from the Rev and Mrs Davies of Oldmanor fame and was called 'My Hallmark of Oldmanor' we called him Gold as his pet name and we registered our own prefix of 'Sallust'. Mrs Davies was very reluctant to let us have a Dane at first as we both worked but, because I could take him to work with me occasionally and we agreed to get another dog to keep him company, she relented. When we got Gold we also bought a little Sheltie, Eggleswood Diamond, Dai for short.

So it was that we embarked first into showing Great Danes and then later into breeding them. Gold became our first stud dog and with his first 'wife' he produced a lovely litter of puppies out of which we bought two, Sovereign and Sable (pictured below)

Sadly when they were just a few months old Sovereign became ill and the vet thought she was brain damaged so he put her to sleep. Within days Sable became ill as well, we took her to the veterinary college at Cambridge where they did extensive testing and although they never did discover what the problem was she recovered and we went on to show her.

Sable and Sovereign

We had some success in the showring both with Gold and with Sable. In fact Sable became a Champion. We were so very proud of her, Ch Stranahan Golden Sable of Sallust.

Over time we added to our canine family and moved into the country where we had more space. I gave up working outside the home and started to work freelance from home so that I could devote more time to the dogs.

We also kept goats and chickens in order that we could supplement the puppies with a mixture of egg yolk and goats milk as that was said to be the closest to bitches milk.

At one point I ran a Poodle Parlour, I had learned to clip poodles and trim terriers and spaniels when I was younger and it was a useful source of additional income for us. We also had a couple of poodles and a couple more shelties to add to the growing brood.

We had some wonderful Danes, both fawns and brindles, and we had modest success in the showring. Our second stud dog H (short for Hercules) fathered a lovely litter by a small bitch we had acquired which included Sallust Cabochon, a very pale faced Dane but a real gentle giant. We often used to loan him out to children for the Children's Handling Class as he was so reliable in the ring even though he wasn't a big winner on his own account.

Sallust Cabochon - Oris

Unfortunately our marriage came to an end in the 1980s, I moved out of the family home and the two oldest Great Danes, Sable and Gold came to live with me in a modest bungalow. By then they were very much 'pensioners' and had long since ceased being shown and bred from.

My ex-husband, Tony Rewston, continued to breed the Great Danes and lived on in the family home with his new partner. He no longer breeds dogs but he still judges and is well known throughout the dog fraternity.

Gold died when he was about 10½ years old which is a good age for a Great Dane as they are not known for their longevity. Sable lived to be 11½ and when she died the house seemed terribly empty without her.

I was not in a position to have another dog when she died as I was working full time and in a job that entailed a lot of travelling. About two weeks after she died I spotted the Canine Defence League advertising a Birman cat in need of a good home. Having decided that I couldn't bear a house without a pet any longer it wasn't very long before I rang them up for more details and Amy came to live with me.

The only problem (as regular readers will already know) is that once you have a Birman they have a way of stealing their way into your heart and after Amy I needed another Birman in my home so that is how my love affair with Birmans began ........

Joan