"For those of us who love the Whippet, there is no more beautiful creature on earth. The graceful arch of neck, elegant body and dark, liquid eye make living with these exquisite canines a non-stop art exhibit. You just can't look away.

"In her column, Knapp was fond of inventing expressions like 'swizzle-eared ones,' 'frizzle ears' and 'priceless original.' When she perceived the breed to be in true peril, phrases like 'desert skeletons,' 'My Ch. Rib-stick Hipbone XYZ,' 'scrapheap dogs,' 'cheap champions,' 'so-called experts,' 'fly-by-night new owners,' 'third rate dealers,' 'ruthless breeders' and the 'notorious Japanese syndicate' regularly appeared in her columns. Knapp was not timid about speaking her mind and never backed down from a battle when she believed she was right.

"Irish Wolfhounds of old fought in battles, hunted wolves and giant elk, and ran for miles across tough terrain. In Northern California, some of their modern counterparts also are matching their giant size to their stamina, trekking many miles for fun."

"In the dog world, pedigree counts. Most of us can trace our dogs' forebears back to - well, maybe not the Ark, but at least far back enough to make an Ancestors.com fan jealous. But we lack similar credentials when it comes to our human dog-show pedigrees.

"Today the main problem for anyone who's interested in any particular subject is sorting through an embarrassment of riches, an avalanche of images available almost everywhere, so easily and to such a degree that it's easy to become jaded. Our problem in those days was the opposite: The scarcity of information made you treasure every little black-and-white photograph you could find. You didn't get news from the shows the hour they occurred, or even the next day or week. Usually you had to wait for a month or two until the printed show report appeared in whatever publication you could get. (There were telephones, but no cell phones or answering machines, so even that mode of communication was pretty random.)"

"One fault that seems to drive breeders crazy is a curly tail. I cannot work out how this is inherited. I've seen curly tails come from parents with good tails, with all four grandparents also having good tails - and then the curly tails can continue to haunt the family for generations, no matter how many times you breed to a dog with a good tail. The last straw is when somebody breeds a ring-tailed bitch to a ring-tailed dog and gets good tails!"

"Red sand dunes, a suffocating heat, a sun that glows and suffuses the landscape, and then, suddenly, a mirage - a marvelous creature, vital, proud, a feral beauty without parallel, and movement that is at times feline, at times seemingly suspended. Extreme lines, long limbs, mascaraed eyes, a look that embodies all the mysteries of the desert, wild and sweet, that charms and captivates you forever. A red color that blends in with the color of the sand, white stockings like those of a horse, but, no, this isn't a regular dog. It is the noble Azawakh!"

"The Pharaoh Hound is a medium-size breed ... period. Dogs that appear coarse in nature are to be faulted, as they lack elegance and grace. An equally serious fault is a lack of substance, what the breed's illustrated guide describes as 'a racy build.'"

"As today's television viewers are all too aware, Afghanistan is an expanse of arid mountain peaks and fertile plateaus peopled by warring tribes whose most marked characteristic is a very long memory. Strategically positioned along the ancient Silk Road linking East and West, this land-locked nation of herders and hunters gave birth to perhaps the most unlikely dog breed of all. The impossibly glamorous Afghan Hound owes its haughty allure to the very harshness that preserves the ancient antagonisms of its countrymen. Its aristocratic bearing and luxurious outerwear are byproducts of a life lived high and dry, patiently waiting, as they have for millennia, for the next caravan to arrive."

"'At the first conference, people said that if you put the British and the Americans in a room together to discuss the topline, there would be blood on the walls!' remembers Jean Clare of Ryazan Borzoi in England, who has attended all of the International Borzoi Conferences. 'In fact, it was all quite amicable. In my group, we passed around various photos, and finally found a bitch with a topline we all liked. This was Eng. Ch. Shelbor Red Velvet. Karen Staudt-Cartabona was in the group, and she drew some sketches of acceptable toplines. Later, all of the delegates met together, and it was agreed to change the word 'arch' to the softer 'curve' with reference to the topline.'"

"Two of the world's largest and most prestigious Sighthound events are held in Europe each summer. The Swedish Sighthound Club's show in late July is still called 'Skokloster' after the beautiful castle grounds where the show originated in the 1970s, and the German Sighthound Club's big event is held the following month at Donaueschingen in the Black Forest."

"Three spacious fields with their own courses and technical support were used each day, allowing courses of around 1,000 meters (about 1,100 yards) for large breeds and 700 meters (765 yards) for Whippets and Italian Greyhounds. The open-line, drag-lure system was used (as is the norm in Europe), which took time for the line to be re-strung. But the advantage is that the lure is more visible and exciting to the hounds, and a greater variation can be designed into the course layout. The Netherlands may be a level country in more ways than one, with few hills, but the length of these courses and the lure action was certainly worthy of a European championship."

"Kent Delaney has judged his fair share of Sighthound national specialties of late, including Basenjis last September and Ridgebacks a year later. But there's arguably no greater honor than adjudicating one's own breed at that national gathering, which brings us to this year's Afghan Hound national."

"Just as we went to press, the Trick-or-Treat storm struck. Unseasonably early snow blanketed parts of Connecticut in two feet of the white stuff, and cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes. Many municipalities effectively cancelled Halloween, as dangling power lines and broken branches made streets impassable. Amid all this, the Irish Wolfhound Association of the Garden State (IWAGS) had their specialty show. The breeder-judge was Tim Finney, who flew all the way from Ireland to be met with a mini-Ice Age

'We put on the Specialty against all odds - only club on the East Coast that did not cancel,' wrote Eileen Flanagan to me in an email several days later. She would have shared more, but she still hadn't gotten her power back - and her husband was only giving her five minutes on the computer before he yanked the generator."