When I was young, I was wild about horses.  I was fortunate that my parents indulged this obsession, first with riding lessons, then with the ownership of a horse.  It wasn’t long before I was competing in 4H and local shows and eventually purchased a half-Arabian weanling filly that I raised and trained to both ride and drive.  Then grown-up life intervened, and I went to college. 

First at RPI in Troy, NY to study chemistry and then graduate school at MIT for biochemistry.  I earned a PhD in 1978 and moved to New York City to pursue post-graduate studies at Cornell University Medical College.  I went to work for Merck Research Laboratories in 1981 where I stayed until 2004 working in a number of areas of drug discovery.  Not long after moving to NJ, my husband and I purchased our first home and I decided I wanted to get back to having a companion animal.  Keeping a horse was not a possibility where we lived, so it had to be a dog. 

I did my research and decided to look at a number of breeds as possibilities.  I went to Westminster in February of 1982 and visited the benching area…where a Beardie jumped on me to say hello and I knew my research was over…this was the breed for me.  A few months later, Sir Dworkin Of Arrochar, joined our family.   Dworkin stayed with us for 15 wonderful years and over time, I have shared my life with 15 more incredible Beardies; we currently have 4 in residence. 

I have always been more interested in training and competition than breeding but with my scientific background I am naturally interested in health issues.   I joined the Bearded Collie Club Of America in 1985 and have served the club in a number of capacities.  I am honored to serve as a member of the Beacon Board.  I feel strongly that we need promote the understanding of discoveries in canine molecular genetics and their application to breeding programs.  We need to support ongoing research so that more screening tests can be developed to improve the health of future generations of beardies.  Beacon has blazed the trail in this area with its open database of health information.  It needs to be supported by continuing to encourage breeders to share health information and enlarging coverage as new kinds of information becomes available.