A little bit about the quality of borzois imported from Russia. (Andrus Kozlov)

 

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A little bit about the quality of borzois imported from Russia. In my opinion, imports can be divided into two groups, based on when the borzois were imported. Indeed, when borzois became popular in the west in the 1890s, in Russia some dealers who haven’t not large hunts, or who were not famous breeders bought borzois from different Russian breeders and resold them to the West. Of course, they tried to buy dogs at a cheaper price (sometimes at a price of only 10 rubles). But, not all of these dogs were bad – they were simply unnecessary for the owner of the hunt for various reasons. Unnecessary could be dogs whose hunting qualities did not meet the requirements of the owner. Usually this criterion was in Russia for culling dogs, but not coat length or other external criteria that are so important to Western owners. In addition to them, there were also imports of better borzois, which had awards at exhibitions in Russia (for example, Krilutt was sold for 400 rubles).
At the beginning of the 20th century, the picture changed – they began to buy directly, without middlemans, of the high quality, prize-winners of exhibitions. By this time there were already high quality dogs in Pershino and borzois in other hunts, with the Pershino blood. Pershino borzois were imported to different countries, the prices were completely different – for example, Bistry was sold to J.Thomas for 1000 rubles.
Ultimately, thanks to imports from Pershino, the quality of the borzois improved, but breeding in the west was based solely on Pershino dogs, which eventually narrowed the breeding work.
Added – a page from Pershino’s advertising booklet, published in 1910 for foreign buyers 
Millionaire Joseph Thomas was able to pay 1000 rubles for Bistry in Pershino, but Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich did not agree to sell him Kura and Aragonka, which Thomas would like to buy. Aragonka received a gold medal at the 1903 exhibition in Moscow.
Excerpt from an American newspaper in 1904./ Andrus Kozlov

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View over Perchino Estate

 

Year of Event:

1900

Country:

Russia

Personal Collections:

Source:

 

Author:

Dan Persson

Dogs:

 

Persons: