Taking a leave of absence from AT&T gave me the opportunity to be a dog owner again, and I began to attend some dog shows in The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium trying to decide where I could find my special new Doberman. Soon the show catalogs that I marked while watching Dobermann judging revealed a pattern. There was mainly one bloodline that I consistently liked. Realizing this, I decided to pick up the phone and call a lady named Sonja von Franquemont Freudenberg who lived in Dordrecht, Holland. Much to my amazement, Sonja and her husband Hugo, originally from Singapore, had strong ties to the American Doberman breeder Mary Rogers. Sonja and I gravitated; for me it was the chance to meet a real European Dobermann breeder of reknown. For Sonja, it was an opportunity to talk to an American who was interested in and could appreciate her contribution to Dobermanns around the world.
It was some time later that I realized I had stumbled upon one of the most significant European Dobermann breeders of all time! Sonja just shrugged off her fame as if it were her nature by birth to breed Dobermann Pinschers. It was like breathing for her.