About Us

How We Learned About the Importance of Great Health and Temperament in Westies

My husband, Henry, gave me our first Westie, as a third wedding anniversary present. We had just returned from a European trip where we'd seen Westies for the first time and fell in love with them. Henry spent the last money in our trip account to buy that dog. Harvey was purchased from a West Highland White Terrier Club of America (WHWTCA) member who lived down the street from where my husband grew up in Wichita, KS. Little did we know. . .
People used to say that the Westies they saw around the country looked nothing like Harvey. They were right. He was a great looking and acting exemplar of the breed. When we walked him down the street, people stopped us to find out about him. From champion British lines, Harvey developed bad skin allergies in his mid years and required lots of extra care. His temperament became more curmudgeonly as he aged. He grew jealous of my husband's attention to me. When Harvey died his breeder helped me locate our next breeder, another WHWTCA member. Wayne Kompare, was a retired IBM exec who founded the Westie Foundation of America (WFA) to raise money for research into the common Westie illnesses. He spent time educating me about what could be done to ensure better health in Westies. I started reading and studying up on genetics, environmental health risks, raw diets - you name it. I also attended several AKC breeder's seminars to learn everything I could.
Our next Westie, Jasper, was healthy all his life until he died at 17 in 2007 after a short interlude of congestive heart failure. Jasper was the dog that made me laugh every day, made me take time out from 80-hour work weeks to throw a tennis ball over and over for him to chase and the dog that cuddled us to sleep every night. He also adored my husband.
We had always wanted a litter of Westie puppies. We acquired a female from a well known Kentucky breeder to mate with Jasper. Maille (the Gaelic form of the name Molly) developed a bleeding disorder when she was 4-years-old and was never able to conceive. When she was 11, she was diagnosed with sick sinus rhythm and required the installation of a pacemaker. At 15, she started coughing at night, like something was stuck in her throat. That summer we learned she had pulmonary fibrosis (PF), from which people and horses also suffer. I told Wayne Kompare I was thinking of switching to a different breed, one that was healthier and that lived longer. He offered to have the foundation pay for stem cell treatments for Maille. We declined. We wanted The Princess, as she was known in her younger years (and The Empress Dowager in her later ones) to live her life out as peacefully as possible. Her medications were running $900 a month. She told us when it was time to go. She is buried with our other dogs in the back yard. She died at 16-½-years old.
Before her death I'd sent Maille's saliva swabs and blood samples to the WFA for inclusion in a pulmonary fibrosis study. The lead researcher called me after Maille had died to say that she was the first Westie in which they'd found the genetic marker for PF that they'd been looking for for some time. He said they expected it to lead to cures for all terriers, other dogs, horses and humans with PF, cystic fibrosis and COPD. All that from an otherwise fairly ordinary little female Westie. I wasn't able to attend, but in April 2014 Wayne and the WFA gathered researchers from around the world for a workshop across species on PF at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Who knows what may come from that?
By now, you've probably figured out that our Westies are our family. They travel with us between our home in Kansas where my husband runs a 82-year-old family business and our second home in northern California where I grew up.
We got Rufus in 2007 and Lulu in 2010 from longtime Florida breeders with a reputation for producing calm, happy, affectionate and smart Westies. They often bred with the famous Mac-Ken-Char dogs of Joanne Glodek, who died of PF in 2003. Her daughter, Jaimi, has continued her mother's work. I bred Lulu (CH White Oaks Margie Munro in the Snow CGC ROM ROMX) to Edward (MBIS MBISS GCH CH Mac-Ken-Char's Superhero) in 2012. We had six puppies - three 3 males and three females. Five of that litter are finished champions. More importantly they fit in well with the families who love and share their homes with them. I aim to produce Westies that are healthy, can be taken anywhere, and are competitive in AKC conformation shows. Our mentors over the years entrusted their precious Westie puppies to us to raise. They tirelessly answered hundreds of my questions. I can call them at any time day or night. And you will be able to do that with us.
Lulu was the first of our dogs to carry the Margie Munro Westies name. It's my Scottish grandmother's name. Her family came from Ross shire in the Highlands north of Inverness. All men who married a Munro woman took her last name and all property passed matrilineally. The practice continued when part of the family moved to Ontario, Canada in the 1700s. My grandma Margie was the first Munro woman to take the name of her husband's family: Flynn. When we needed a name for our line of Westies, her name - Margie Munro - seemed perfect to carry on her deep love for all things Highlander.
We just celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary. When we got that first puppy we had no idea how the people and the families we'd meet through our Westies would enrich our lives and give us joy that cannot be counted. We are the richer for them.