Rose was our first Scottish deerhound. We adopted Rose from a lady who had gone through a divorce and was downsizing from a horse property to a condo and needed to find a new home for her three year-old deerhound. She already had several offers to rehome Rose, but Joyce convinced her on the phone to not make a decision until Joyce could drive over and meet Rose. It was love at first sight. Rose, who evidently had a tendency to not be very welcoming to new people, immediately was all over Joyce. I received a texted photo of Rose rolled over on her back, grinning up at the camera, legs up in the air and I knew we were going to have a third hound in the household.
Rose had a great pedigree. She was the niece of Hickory, who had recently become the first deerhound to win best in show at Westminster. We were never able to show Rose, since she had already been spayed when we got her, but she was a gorgeous deerhound, and a character. She was a trickster, a prankster, and a snitch. She loved telling on any of the wolfhounds whenever she saw them doing something that she knew they weren’t supposed to be doing. Rose would immediately start barking to let us know.
Rose fit in wonderfully with the Irish wolfhounds in our pack. She wasn’t immediately welcomed by all. Gwennie was not very enthused about having a different breed, a bitch at that, join her household, and so there were initially some discussions from time to time, but they became great friends throughout the rest of both of their lives. Rose lived to over 13 years old. She was healthy up until the end and we knew when we finally had to say goodbye to Rose that we would always want deerhounds in our pack.