Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.12.2016, Page 18

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2016
18
Whippet: Good
“As you see, against my husband’s wishes,
our house is full of whippets.”

By SVETLANA GRAUDT Photo by FIZKES/ISTOCK
When the whippet, a type of
sighthound, breaks into a double
suspension gallop, it’s breathtak-
ing to behold. It seems to defy
gravity. One moment the dog
has four legs on the ground—the
next, its lean, light body is paral-
lel to the racetrack.
The origins of whippets go back
to British greyhounds that were
thought to be too small for stag
hunting. Since the Middle Ages,
the larger greyhounds have always
been owned by the nobility. The
smaller whippets, because of their
size and modest appetite, became
the poor man’s racing dog. They
kept the children of Welsh farm-
ers warm at night, and were used
for poaching and rag racing.
While the Icelandic sheepdog
first came to Iceland when Norwe-
gian Vikings colonised the island
in the late 9th century, the first
whippet is thought to have arrived
to Iceland in the mid-1970s, with a
British-Icelandic couple.
Perhaps a more familiar sight
in the hipper districts of conti-
nental cities, the whippet was
thought to be an oddity in Reykja-
vík. Gunnur Sif Sigurgeirsdóttir,
the founder of Leifturs Whippet,
the first whippet club in Iceland,
says that when the Icelandic vet-
erinarian saw the skinny dog, pre-
sumably unfit to survive in harsh
Icelandic conditions, he thought
the owners should put him out of
his misery.
A “leiftur” is a “flash,” or a
“gleam”—a fitting word for the
dog well known for its long limbs,
light body, keen eyes and speed.
Gunnur got her first whippet
when she was living in Norway.
“Sighthounds always fascinated
me. I thought they were very beau-
tiful and interesting dogs. But I
thought greyhounds were too big.
We had small children at the time
and there was not much room in
the car, and then someone said,
‘What about the whippets?’ They
were more family size.“
She recalled seeing her first
whippet puppy: “My husband
[Gunnar] and I saw all these whip-
pets running into the house for
feeding. They had big eyes, they
were skinny. On the way back to
the hotel, my husband said to me,
‘Gunnur, you are not going to fill
the house with those creatures,
are you?’”
Gunnur bursts out laughing
at the memory and points at her
dogs: “As you see, against my hus-
band’s wishes, our house is full
of whippets.” Right now, includ-
ing the puppies that will start to
move out at eight weeks old, she
has six dogs living at home. The
most puppies she’s ever had in her
house at one time was thirteen.
Breeding is a hobby for Gun-
nar, who grew up in Sweden sur-
rounded by dogs. “In twelve years,
I’ve had eleven litters. I have had
puppies from ten puppies to one.“
She enjoyed it so much that
he decided to keep going. The de-
mand for whippets in Iceland,
Gunnur explained, is not very big.
But people who get one puppy of-
ten come back for the second one.
Being the only breeder in Ice-
land in the early days had its chal-
lenges. “When I started,” Gunnur
recalls, “I had two bitches and
one male dog. I could just not call
another breeder and say, 'Can I
please borrow your stud?'” At one
point, she imported frozen whip-
pet sperm from Sweden.
Another issue was Iceland’s
antiquated dog laws. In 1924, the
city of Reykjavík banned keep-
ing dogs as pets, to prevent dogs
from passing a type of tapeworm
to humans. For a long time, dogs
were banned from main streets of
Reykjavík. Even today, dogs must
be kept on a lead and are banned
from public transport. Anyone
living in multi-apartment build-
ings who wishes to get a dog must
receive consent from their neigh-
bours. It’s time for these laws and
attitudes to change, says Gunnur.
“Before, a dog was something you
saw on a farm. But things have
changed very much since I was
a teenager. The kennel club has
done an incredible job. And more
and more people are now raised up
with dogs.”
There are over 100 whippets
in Iceland today. Gunnur’s dream
is that their number will slowly
grow. “After ten years of breed-
ing, I can see my efforts are now
getting somewhere. I would like to
carry on,” she says.
Leifturs Whippet is planning a
club show in April next year, Gun-
nur says, when the sighthound
club will celebrate its seventh an-
niversary. The plan is to showcase
the whippets, the Afghan Hounds,
the saluki and Italian whippets be-
fore a well-known Swedish judge.
“We have invited a Chihuahua club
to join us.”
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gpv.is/whip18
OPINION