Slate

DM Snow's Legacy on the Wind  

Wayne & Slate - Best Buds

Slate was owned by and lived with Kathy & Wayne Johnson in Michigan.  Kathy is also known by her business, Feathered Gems Jewelry.

When Kathy found out that I was breeding Feather, she really wanted one of the puppies.  You see, Kathy owned his granddam, Snow (Ch El-Aur Fair Deal FCh) and his cousin, Allegra (El-Aur Dragon Magic JC). You can definitely see the family resemblance.

Slate's registered name was DM Snow's Legacy On The Wind, which was a compromise between Kathy & I.  In sticking with the sailing theme, I wanted to call him "On the Wind".  Kathy wanted to call him, "Snow's Legacy".  As it is, combining the two worked out quite nicely giving him a beautiful and melodic registered name, which also gave credit to his granny, Snow.   And (we later figured this out), if the letters of his call name are rearranged, they spell "Tesla", which was the name of the Johnson's very first greyhound, Greys Gold Rush.

Feather's Litter - Slate on top in the middle

The pups were whelped at the home of Laurel Drew, they lived there for the first 5 weeks of their lives.  I am ever so thankful that they were whelped at Laurel's home because she helped me through the experience of the difficult birth and the c-section and then, when it was discovered that Feather had very little milk, bottle feeding the entire litter of pups!

Slate was a strapping 16 oz puppy when he was born, but he had a very poor suckle. We don't know why as he was a lovely & well developed baby.  There were a couple of times I thought we were going to lose him because he lost weight & became dehydrated. That was when we started bottle feeding.  Even on the bottle, the boy had a poor suckle. We wound up tube feeding him.  Eventually, he got stronger and a couple of weeks later, the entire litter was eating a slurry of meat, baby rice cereal, and goats milk, which was supplemented by the bottle.  He ate quite well and was fine after transitioning to the food. Who knows...

When Slate was a puppy, I convinced a reluctant Kathy to try dog shows.  "Just try it..." I'd cajole her.  Kathy is probably a lot smarter than me as she really doesn't care for the dog show routine. She's definitely saving herself some money that way!  Anyway, She did attend two specialty shows with the boy, one in TX and one in Upstate NY.  In Texas, the boy won his class and somewhere there is a picture of this lovely blue dog with a medallion & blue ribbon. He & Kathy stopped showing when he developed an overbite. In the words of Marty Bradford, "He should finish, but I wouldn't breed him."  We don't know from where the bite problem came.

Slate was very smart.  He had favored toys and he learned to ring bells to go outside. He would wait at the door until given permission to come inside.  One of his favorite things was a gumball treat dispenser that Kathy filled with Cheerios.  She had to take it away because he was getting fat!

According to Kathy, Slate was never really friendly with other dogs.  He wasn't nasty, just didn't want to associate with them. But, at home, he was never anything but sweet. When she brought home the 13 weeks old puppy, Jack (UKC Ch DM Union Jack FCh) he was very good with the rambunctious puppy.  She said he was much the way with Jack, teaching him the rules of the house, they way cousin Allegra taught him.

Slate has his own webpage, with many of the photos that Kathy took during his life with her.  Sadly, Slate was diagnosed in Nov 2009 with chronic renal failure.  That disease combined with a bad back injury cost him and in late July 2010, he joined his Grandma Snow, Momma Feather, and cousins Allegra & BJ at the Rainbow Bridge.

Slate was one of the Sailing Litter born by emergency c-section on May 26, 2002. Kathy has a larger website with lots of pictures of his entire litter from birth to 10 weeks of age.  You can view it at Feather and 'Cuda's Puppies and you can see the litter's pedigree at Greyhound-Data.