We have had Irish Wolfhounds since the mid-nineties, and currently share our lives with Myrtle and Florrie. We got our first Irish Wolfhound in the spring of 1996 and we fell in love with our new pup, Spooky, and the breed as a whole. It took a while to realise there were other people around with these special dogs, and we joined the Irish Wolfhound Club of Scotland when we were looking for our second hound in 2005. Daisy joined us in July 2005 and we sadly lost Spooky in January 2006, aged 10 years and 1 month. Our third hound Myrtle joined us in April 2011 and with much support I decided to have a go at showing her. Well, that’s been a huge learning curve, but a great hobby and lots of fun. We’ve made lots of new friends along the way and picked up some pretty rosettes to boot. Around this time I decided to register my own kennel affix, and I eventually chose Malinkey. It seemed to work well with Irish Wolfhounds – “Skinny Malinkey long legs, big banana feet!” I later found out it also means ‘little’ in the Czech language, which appeals to my sense of the ridiculous. Our 4th hound, Florrie, came from a wonderful breeder in Denmark, Pernille Monberg, of Wolfhouse Irish Wolfhounds. I did a lot of research and really liked the fact that Pernille has a real plan with her breeding and works tirelessly towards that aim; increasing the average longevity of the wolfhounds that she breeds, whilst still retaining the typical characteristics required by the breed standard.