Our second king, Tami II, joined our family when Alvari was 8,5 years old. Tami had three sisters: Demjana, Dersina and Dunjaschka, and three brothers: Dimitroff, Domovoj and Danjez. His dam was my all time favourite Kaznan Walenka and his sire was Vladimier v. Troybhiko from Holland.

When Tami was a youngster we lived in Turku, but soon after that we moved to Espoo which is in capital area of Finland.

All my other dogs except Alvari have done some destruction at home, they usually start at the age of 6 months and stop at the age of 2-2,5 years. Tami was specialised mainly to the furniture but he also changed my expensive leather boots into sandals! He killed my TV chair and striped the upholstery off my couch by tearing the covering fabric out of it as long strips. Well, I was kind of prepared to this and had bought the couch from a second hand shop; it cost only 30 FIM and the price was actually a fee from carrying it to the fourth floor! One day he cut the TV wire into a small pieces and when repairing it my dad adviced Tami that wise dogs always leave the remaining piece a bit longer, in order to help the repairing. Well, my opinion is, that wise dogs do not eat neither TV nor other wires.

The destructive actions were due to a fact that my dogs had to stay alone at home during the day while I was at work; they never even tried to do any harm while I was there with them. They didn't break the things because of getting bored, I remember one day when my alarm clock was thrown to the floor and stopped only 10 minutes after I had left to work, even a borzoi can't get bored in such a short time! There was a period of time when I woke up at 4 am, in order to had a long walk at the forest with dogs before going to work. Luckily I didn't have to do it very long; those days my dogs were sure to destroy something, maybe they woke up properly and were still a bit energetic when I left.

Also Tami got used to travel by different vehicles while he was still quite young. I didn't have a car in those days, so we took a train to go to visit my parents. At his early days Tami had Alvari as a guidance and support, so he got used to travelling very easily.

Tami was about 2 years old when he got a new pal, Jori. Jori was a half brother to him as they had the same mom. Jori became a King almost right when he arrived, and that meant an end to Tami's days of freedom, Jori ordered what they did during the day. Boys did never become a real good friends, they were more like a king and his subject; Tami did what Jori ordered him to, or he was crying and doing it. Surprisingly it didn't seem to bother Tami too much, actually he seemed to be quite satisfied to his place.

Tami's show career was very variable: some judges liked him a lot while there were some who didn't like him at all. He became Finnish and Estonian Show Champion and won title European Junior Winner 1991. He was awarded also two CACIBs, one from Finland and the other one from Estonia. Like other Ilanja's dogs, Tami matured quite slowly but was still looking good even in elderly days. Judge Monica Wall wrote about him at veteran class: 'Still going strong! A classical borzoi who has all the specialities which this breed should have, i.e. expression, neck, correct topline and cross, lean feet, hare paws, wonderful movement'. Quite nice, isn't it!

Tami passed away at the age of 7,5 years. After that I had first time in my life, a period when I had no dogs. It was terrible! Daily routines didn't exist any more, I had nobody to take for a walk and nobody to feed. I had too much time to grieve. The house was really quiet and all the leashes, collars, brushes, bowls and beds were there reminding me that somebody is missing...