Showsight September 2021

CH Askin I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ (Anna Banana) going Best of Winners at the 2018 HCA Regional Specialty.

DR. ADAM KING ASKIN HAVANESE

BREEDER INTERVIEW BY ALLAN REZNIK

Where did you grow up? I grew up in Boonville, Indiana, which is a small town in the southwest corner of the state. After bouncing around the country for vet school (Raleigh, North Carolina), my rotating internship (Seattle, Washington), and my ophthalmology residency (Fort Collins, Colorado), I settled in Elburn, Illinois, in the far western Chicago suburbs. Do you come from a doggy family? If not, how did the interest in breeding and showing purebred dogs begin? While I didn’t come from a doggy family, my parents instilled a love for animals in me from the start. Like many who didn’t grow up in the fancy, my first exposure to the purebred dog world was watching the Westminster Kennel Club dog show on TV. I was immediately fascinated by all of the different breeds and knew I wanted to become a part of that world. At the time, I would regularly stay the weekend with my Grandma King, a retired English teacher. We would always start with a visit to the local library on Saturday morning and then I would spend the rest of the weekend reading the stack of books (always centered around animals) I had procured. It was at the Boonville-Warrick County Public Library that I stumbled upon The Nicholas Guide to Dog Judging by Anna Katherine Nicholas (the 1970 edition!). I checked it out nearly every time we visited the library (I’m fairly confident I was the only person who ever checked it out), and while it wasn’t the most obvious reading choice for a 12-year-old, that book absolutely changed my life. I was fortunate enough to meet Ms. Nicholas in 2003 when she was accompanying Marcia Foy on a judging assign- ment in Indiana, and I was able to tell her what an impact she had on my life.

114 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 2021

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