Ringside Thoughts – A Discovery At The Dakota

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276 – May, 2024

By Kerrin Winter-Churchill

Time has a way of rendering all of us to dust. Ringside, as I watch the beautiful dogs and their people trotting around, I think of the dedicated breeders of days gone by who devoted their time and money to carry their breeds forward for the next generation. Most of those names are forgotten now except for the gilded few, but they dedicated their lives to the future of dogdom, passing the torch to the next generation. The dogs we cherish today are the unextinguished flames of an earlier era.

Fifteen years ago, I received a telephone call from a stranger in New York City. He was a building demolition expert hired to remove the walls and floors of a twenty-room apartment at the famous Dakota Building on 72nd Street and Central Park. He said he’d taken down a wall at The Dakota and discovered three huge, framed photographs of what must be champion dogs from another era. The signature read “Tauskey.” He was filled with wonder and couldn’t bear to trash the handsomely framed pictures. At closing, he picked up the old pictures, walked past the dumpster, and carried them by subway to his home. He began googling, found my name associated with an article I’d written on Tauskey, and called me. He said they must have been “fancy dogs you see at the big dog show in February. You should buy them and bring their stories to light.”

Three 20×24 framed Tauskey photographs were delivered C.O.D. to my door a week later. Inside the big package were three wall-sized, framed in-glass Tauskey photographs. Two were of Old English Sheepdogs. One was an Airedale. These were very early Tauskeys. I was intrigued, but my life was in turmoil. I was my dying mother’s caregiver. Years went by. Finally, I had the time for research. The dogs and owners were of lasting importance. Grab a coffee, and I’ll tell you a story about William A. Jamison.

Dumbo, New York, and the King of Coffee

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276 – May, 2024

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Posted by AnthonyA on May 26 2024. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.