By Lisa Peterson

Bardi McLennan is the perfect blend of writer, consummate dog person and Welsh Terrier fancier.

Her passions define her life.

McLennan is the author of more than half a dozen books about dogs, puppies, children and various terrier breeds and she enjoys those passions at her Newtown home. She relocated to Newtown a few years ago from Weston, where she worked with a diverse group of literary figures.

A winner of the 1991 Pedigree Award for outstanding Pet Journalist, McLennan currently pens the advice column “Ask Dog Fancy” for Dog Fancy magazine. In an earlier incarnation the column was called “On Good Behavior.” Based on these columns, she wrote a book of the same name.

It appears the column hinted at her previous writing career.

For 18 years McLennan, while raising a family in Weston, was the editorial assistant to etiquette queen Amy Vanderbilt. While working for Miss Vanderbilt, McLennan not only wrote many of the columns, but continued writing them for many years after Ms Vanderbilt’s death. She also wrote several pamphlets on such topics as weddings, letter writing and teenagers.

“Amy didn’t like what I wrote about the teenagers,” McLennan said. “She thought I was too lenient with them.”

McLennan landed the job with Vanderbilt after answering an ad in the local paper. Eventually she was writing a daily column seven days a week for 232 major newspapers across the country.

“I thought this job might be fun,” McLennan recalled. “Amy and I got on like a house on fire. She had a funny way of phrasing things and I caught on to it and that’s all I needed.”

After a while though, McLennan said she had had enough.

“How much can you write about etiquette?” she said. “And the world was changing so much. The old worlds did not fly with the new worlds who said hey, come on, get with it.”

So what did McLennan do? Answer another ad in the local paper, this time for popular novelist Erica Jong.

“I had no idea who Erica Jong was and my friend at the library gave me a copy of one of her books and I thought, wow, this is going to be different. My son said I went from etiquette to erotica.”

After her stint as researcher for Jong, McLennan said she was able to focus on her fist love – writing about dogs.

A longtime breeder and exhibitor of Welsh Terriers since the mid-1960’s, McLennan built up her kennel “Bardwyn” to include several top producing dogs. Her dogs have earned American Kennel Club titles in conformation, obedience and at earthdog trials.

She was prompted by a question from her Dog Fancy column to write one of her favorite books “Dogs & Kids” in 1993.

“It was a real tear-jerker of a question from a 12-year-old boy who asked, ‘What can I do with my father and my dog? My parents are divorced and my Mom got me, but Dad got the dog.’ It got me thinking about how nobody ever considers the dog during a divorce.”

Some of the problems she sees with dogs and children involve purchasing puppies for kids that are too young, since most dogs are bought for kids.

“There are two phases that are problems,” she said. “First, when kids are too young and people expect puppies to just run around and play and be nice, and, as I say in the book, puppies have teeth not hands and they are going to grab.”

McLennan further explains that all that screaming and yelling young children do around puppies brings out the prey drive of dogs. Their animal behavior comes forward. Many times toddlers are on the ground level and too close to the dogs and their food bowls. Some dogs don’t appreciate small hands splashing about in their water bowls either. Baby toys can also be problematic for puppies as they would rather swallow them instead of dropping them when commanded to do so. Also, falling on the dogs is a problem with young kids. Toddlers are unsteady on their feet and when they fall they may fall on the dog by accident.

“People ask me which is the right dog?” McLennan said. “And I tell them a dog is good with good children. If a family is calm and collected and the children well disciplined, then it will work just fine.”

McLennan said she can observe a family for as little as five minutes and politely be able to tell them to get either an older dog from a shelter or another breed.

Puppies can read canine body language. If they aren’t allowed to read other canine body language they get into trouble. This happens when new owners put the pups on a leash and pull, pull pull them away and don’t allow for normal interaction with other dogs from an early age.

“If you sell a pet (as a breeder) then you have to sell all the advice with it,” McLennan said. “It is a breeder’s responsibility for early socialization of the puppies with children and other dogs and it’s a responsibility that must be carried over to the new puppy buyer.”

She advocates a new pup between 10-to-12 weeks old is the best time to go to their new homes. However, today both breeders and pet stores seem to send them away earlier and earlier. This is not always the best for the pup. Soon McLennan hopes to write a revised edition of Dogs & Kids.

Another project she wants to begin is writing a family memoir.

“I’d love to put together something about my family. We have all lived such wacko lives,” she said. “It would be fun to do even if just the family reads it. Maybe only the family will read it.”

McLennan, born in Woodbury in 1926, remembers her father as a Bohemian born in 1850 who traveled extensively, lived in Russia, rode in the cavalry with the Cossacks and spoke seven languages. When he came to America he had a kennel of French bulldogs. McLennan also can write several chapters about her own adventures working for the U.S. Army during World War II after marrying “a RAF fellow” at the tender age of 16. She also fondly remembers helping to rescue a cat from a bombed out pub.

“My father used to tell me stories about animals and adventures in the forest and draw these wonderful pictures,” McLennan recalls. “I wish we had kept the pictures. But I do still remember the stories.”