Royal Williwaws Aden
The Black Blizzard

And probably the dog who taught me more than any other just how little you actually know when you get your first Thai Ridgeback – while being completely convinced that you already understand quite a lot.

He had to put up with some of my beginner mistakes. A little like with your first child: you read everything, desperately want to get everything right, and years later realise that experience is unfortunately not something you can order in advance.

Aden stayed by my side anyway. Through some of the hardest times in my life and some of the best. He was simply there – and with him began much of what Undercover Records is today.

He was not perfect. Neither was I.

And perhaps that is exactly why he taught me so much: about Thai Ridgebacks, about expectations, about responsibility, and about not judging a dog solely by how well he fits the picture you once had in your head.

In the end, our time together was far too short. Fluid had accumulated in his lungs, and examinations revealed advanced and widespread metastases. We had already made an appointment to let him go.

He did not need that appointment anymore.

Aden was at home with me beneath the raspberry bush. The other dogs were around us.

And there, he peacefully fell asleep for the last time.

No breeding result and no generation after him could ever replace what this one dog meant to me. He was my first Thai Ridgeback. And without Aden, much of what you see here today probably would not exist.