Patricia Turner and Anna Quigley of Lajosmegyi Komondorok received the 2004 AKC Breeder of the Year Award for the Working Group. They have owned Komondorok since 1973, but both women began their foray into the purebred dog world with Collies.
Patricia received her first Rough Collie as a Christmas gift in 1965, and Anna purchased her first Collie in 1971. They met when Anna bred her female to one of Patricias males. While attending a dog show, Patricia saw a Komondor and immediately fell in love with the breed. They purchased their first Komondor from Keith and Sandy Wisot in California in 1973. She finished but did not have puppies.
During their early years in the breed, Dorothy Collier, later a multi-Group and Westminster BIS judge, served as a friend and mentor. She was Dorothy Stevens then, lived in New York and owned the Summithill Kennel. Patricia and Anna purchased their foundation male, Ch. Summithill Save the Tiger, CD, from her. Summithill Komondorok can still he found several generations back in most of todays pedigrees. Bob and Pat Hastings were also helpful in guiding Anna and Patricia to great success in the breed; they were professional handlers then and Bob competed with Anna in the huge old Working group, before the Herding breeds had their own group competition.
The Lajosmegyi foundation bitch came from Utah. Her name was Ansons Little Feather. She was an older puppy when we got her and hated to leave home, so we never finished her. However, she was very sound and very much a Komondor. Our foundation male was Ch. Summithill Save the Tiger, CD. Tiger won the first three national specialties, and was number one Komondor for three years as well. He was a heavy-coated male with a beautiful headpiece. Both of these animals lived to be 13 and 14 years of age, respectively.
Patricias husband, Budd, has a cousin from Hungary. He told them that most of the Komondorok in the pedigrees had registered names that included the area from which they came, similar to our counties. Since they lived in Lewis County, they chose Lajosmegyi (Lay-osh-med-gee), which means Lewis County, as their prefix.
The first litter was born at Lajosmegyi Kennel in 1976. Since that time Patricia and Anna have bred 32 litters. Most years they have kept eight or nine adult Komondorok. They presently own five adult Komondorok, five adult Pulik, and two Chinese Cresteds.
When they started in the breed they ran a boarding kennel. At that time our kennel dogs had a separate building with 50-foot runs attached to the indoor run. We normally keep any dog we are specialing in the house. We now have five acres and a total of eight indoor/outdoor runs for the Komondorok. We keep them on 60-foot gravel runs because of the staining and also the amount of rain we have in the Northwest. Attached to our house is a 50-by-50-foot run that the house dogs use.Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5