I think the characteristic that best defined Jacky Hungerland was her dedication to getting the job done, whatever job it was, and accomplishing each task to meet her exacting expectations. It’s true, as Scott and Mary Olund, some of her long-time Poodle friends, said: she did things her way. Over the many years that she dealt with cancer she did so privately, never mentioning the hardships even to those closest to her. She survived breast cancer initially and many of us hoped and believed that was the last she would experience of the devastating disease. Over the past few months, although we had heard that Dr. Jacky wasn’t well, to those of us here at the magazine she never gave any indication that she was slowing down or even considering not writing her column — they arrived on time as they always had and were as well thought-out as usual. Just days before she passed away, in fact, we spoke to her son, Tom, who told us that she had had her next column all planned, but she just wouldn’t be able to get it to us... and before we turned around she was gone.
Dr. Hungerland was a well-educated, strong, smart woman who was a trailblazer both in the sport of dogs and in other aspects of her life. Born in San Francisco in 1930, Jacky lived with her family in Indiana and Illinois before returning to California in the 1940s, where she graduated from Oakland High School at the age of 16. Although she was offered a full music scholarship at Radcliffe, she chose to attend the University of California at Berkeley, where she became a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority and the president of the Sophomore Honor Society. After graduating with an AA degree she married Thomas Boyd in 1950 and in 1952 began the DeRussy Standard Poodle line. Following her marriage Jacky finished her BA degree while involved not only as a mother and with Poodles, but also in theatre at the Tantamount Theater in Carmel Valley and as a scouting den mother and a Brownie troop leader with her son and daughter. She worked hard to get her Ph.D. degree and then joined the U.S. Army to do her internship in psychology. After leaving the Army she received her license to practice clinical psychology in 1984, all the while continuing with her dog activities and the many other interests in her life.
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