Galina Levina with her dogs

Galina Levina with her dogs

This is a photo of me, Galina Levina, walking my dogs. It was taken in June of 1984 in Leningrad, not far from my house.

I was studying all the time. I finished sewing courses, knitting courses, but my main hobbies always were the dogs. I was involved in the dog business very seriously; I finished the courses, organized exhibitions, participated in them, too. All that took a lot of time, money and strength. Twice per week I went to the club. My husband liked my dog activities, too, he ran around on my dog businesses as well.

Our fox terrier lived for thirteen years, we went to an exhibition twice, but they needed a field diploma there, he had to catch a fox and so on, but he demonstrated his hunting skills only if he found chocolate, not a fox… Since we didn’t get any diplomas, we stopped exhibiting him. After he died, after a long pause we went on vacations together.

Being on holidays we understood that we needed a dog, we couldn’t live without a dog, so we took a miniature schnauzer, which someone offered to us. Schnauzers were rare dogs; in the USSR it was the second generation only. I didn’t know what this dog looked like. When they showed me a schnauzer for the first time, I recalled that I’d seen such dogs in Czechoslovakia. So we took Duck.

I’m a calm person, but I’m able to get upset and so on. If one told me something bad about my dogs, then I’d lose control and may say awful things.

When our dog Duck turned 13, I realized that I needed ‘new blood,’ because I had nobody to ‘marry’ my doggy children and grandchildren. I ordered a dog in Finland, and finally I bought some dog from Lapland.

All my friends were thinking I behaved crazy buying an unknown dog from an unknown owner. That’s how my Mika appeared in this apartment, my first Schnauzer with tail and ears [in Russia they usually cut them off].

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