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Hilary was the first really top quality lure coursing Borzoi that I bred. I
gave her to Sheila D'Ammassa, a good friend of mine who had helped me to raise
the litter. Hilary spent many years as Sheila's companion and family pet in
addition to her coursing career. The little red pup was quite a climber which
is why Sheila named her after the famous mountaineer. Hilary was the only good lure coursing dog to come from her litter. All of the others tended to interfer except for Sassy Bitch (Silkenswift Koroleva Sascha) who would not complete courses. We did a lot of things wrong in training those pups. The first thing was that we over practiced them at too early an age and then we entered them into competition too soon and ignored signs that they were in the midst of their adolescent hormone storms and did not know how to deal with other dogs. Hilary stood out among them, she wanted one thing, to chase plastic bags - and she was very good at it. She was the youngest hound of any breed to earn the FCh at the time (September 1977) and remained the youngest Borzoi Field Champion until her half-brother Ochtai succeeded her more than 6 years later. To the best of my knowledge she is still the only Borzoi to have won a FCh in a single three-day coursing weekend! She went to only 7 field trials that year taking firsts in all 7 and BOB in 6, she also won a BIF. She was #2 ASFA Borzoi that year. Had I known more about coursing rankings she would have gone to 8 trials and probably would have been #1. She was a very good producer for us.
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