Donna McDermott does not recall what first drew her to the Icelandic Sheepdog, but she does remember that as a young girl living in Iceland, she set her sights on the rare and expensive breed.

“My parents knew it was impossible, but they told me to pray about it to shut me up,” she said. “They said, ‘If God wants you to have an Icelandic Sheepdog, then he’ll bring you one.’”

Just days later, the young girl’s prayers were answered when a neighbor informed her family that he knew of an Icelandic Sheepdog that needed a home.

From then on, she and the red-haired dog named Perla were inseparable.

“I attribute anything that’s good about me to her,” McDermott said.

Today, McDermott and her partner Terry Warnock, Vashon residents, are champions for Iceland’s only native breed, which nearly went extinct during the 1950s. They will soon take their own dogs to New York to compete at the Westminister Dog Show — the first time the breed has taken part in the country’s most prestigious dog show.

“I attribute it to something much larger than myself, that all of this fell together the way it is,” McDermott said, “It’s been a wonderful journey.”

McDermott has a very different story than most dog owners at Westminster, which will be take place next Monday and Tuesday. While most competitors have been breeding and showing dogs for decades to make it to the big event, McDermott is a relative newcomer on the dog scene.

During the years following Perla’s death in 1983, McDermott said she searched from time to time for Icelandic Sheepdogs in the United States, but had no success.

Then in 2006, when she and Warnock attended a dog show in California, McDermott was reminded of her intelligent and loyal pet Perla. She became determined to own another Icelandic Sheepdog, this time e-mailing the Icelandic author of a book on the breed. The reply she received shocked her.

“He wrote back and asked me if I was related to the person who owned Perla fra Olafscollum, one of the first Icelandics in North America,” McDermott said. “He said, ‘We’ve been looking for you.’”

McDermott laughed, to this day still surprised. “I said, “How do you know that? How do you know me?’”

Utilizing her new-found connections in Iceland, McDermott found and adopted a seventh-generation granddaughter of her old pet Perla, naming the largely black puppy Kol Perla. “It means dark pearl in Icelandic,” she said. “I thought it was appropriate.”

Warnock, who also grew up with dogs, remembers feeling that Kol’s adoption was just the beginning of something big. “I said, ‘You’re going to get an Icelandic Sheepdog, and somehow you’re going to burst onto the scene,’” Warnock said. She didn’t know how right she was.

Kol, who will head to Westminster next week, began her life not in the show ring, but as a therapy dog.

McDermott, who worked at a juvenile corrections center in California at the time, developed a program in which girls at the facility who stayed on their best behavior could spending time training Kol.

“It worked out to be a really great carrot for us,” McDermott said, describing how thrilled the girls were to work with the young, energetic dog and how they seemed to open up around the puppy.

In one particularly touching moment, McDermott said a girl who had never opened up to staff at the center about her troubled past sat down in the grass and told Kol her entire story.

“She knew that I could hear her, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell a human,” McDermott said. “She told me through the dog, and Kol sat there the whole time.”

With counseling, McDermott said, the girl eventually turned her life around, got a job and enrolled in college.

“This dog did that,” McDermott said. “To me, that’s typical of the breed.”

Kol learned quickly. After she mastered basic obedience and tricks, the girls needed a new challenge, so they taught the young dog the skills needed to compete in a show.

McDermott, pleased to see the girls succeeding, entered Kol in the American Rare Breed Association dog show when it came to town. Kol earned 13 ribbons at the show, and was named best puppy in the breed.

“I didn’t tell them she was the only puppy there,” McDermott said, laughing, “But they were so thrilled. It was great for them.”

Though McDermott and Warnock eventually moved from California to Vashon to live a more rural life, they continued to enter Kol in shows, where she continued winning ribbons and eventually earned enough points to be considered a grand champion in the dog world.

“The juvenile hall girls started this in every way,” she said.

Today the two own four Icelandic Sheepdogs they have either adopted or bred themselves, and their 5-acre Dragonfly Farm provides the perfect place for the energetic dogs to run and play. All four have been shown and have achieved grand champion status.

The couple is also deeply involved with Icelandic Sheepdog Association of America, an organization that works to preserve the breed as it was for centuries in Iceland, as puppy mills and “backyard breeding” could easily produce dogs with different temperaments and physical features than true Icelandic.

When McDermott began to breed dogs herself, she felt confused by misinformation on breed standards that was rampant in the United States at the time, prompting her to visit Iceland, seeking the truth from experts there who knew exactly how the standard Icelandic Sheepdog should look and behave.

“It was important for me to go back and get correct information from the source,” she said. “Those interviews gave me a foundation for the work that needed to be done.”

McDermott brought what she learned back to U.S., where she helped the American club develop clear breed standards for the Icelandic Sheepdog.

“The breed could still go genetically extinct. … Our big goal is to educate, educate, educate, and not have people change the breed,” McDermott said.

Most recently, their work helped the Icelandic Sheepdog become officially recognized by the American Kennel Club. In addition, the studbook for the breed was closed, meaning only Icelandic Sheepdogs with certain pedigrees can breed as registered dogs.

“That was a huge accomplishment,” Warnock said.

Just weeks ago, the couple’s youngest dog Thorri made history for the breed and sent waves through the dog world when he won best in show at Portland’s Rose City Classic, one of the largest dog shows in the nation.

As a puppy of a newly recognized breed, McDermott said, they would have been thrilled if Thorri had simply won best of breed. She said they hoped to one day see him win best in the herding group as well, but never considered a best in show win as something within reach.

“It’s huge; it’s total history. … Everybody was shocked,” McDermott said. “This exceeded any expectation or goal we ever had.”

Warnock said she and McDermott didn’t fully understand the significance of Thorri’s win until they were mobbed by other dog owners at the show.

“He was like a rock star down there,” she said, laughing.

Though McDermott and Warnock clearly don’t mind bringing home awards, even as they prepare to compete at Westminster, they say it has never been about the ribbons for them, but always about the breed they have grown to love.

“The ribbons are icing on the cake,” McDermott said. “The real cake was getting the breed standard fixed and getting it into the AKC.”

Last month, Warnock was paid a special visit by Icelandic Sheepdog expert Gudrun Gudjohnsen. A native Icelander, Gudjohnsen came to the Northwest to give seminars with breeders and judges, helping them better understand the historic breed.

Gudjohnsen, now in her 70s, adopted her first Icelandic Sheepdog, the half-sister of McDermott’s Perla, in 1972, when dogs were forbidden in Reykjavik, where she lived at the time.

“I got one anyway,” Gudjohnsen said, describing how she, just like McDermott, had simply fallen in love with the breed.

Gudjohnsen said that at one time there were as few as 15 Icelandic Sheepdogs living in Iceland, as a distemper epidemic and the introduction of imported breeds put the breed on the verge of extinction. She and McDermott marveled as they retold the story of Sir Mark Watson, a wealthy Englishman who visited Iceland in the mid-1900s and subsequently began a crusade to find the remaining dogs and bring the breed back from the edge of extinction.

“He fell in love with Iceland and the dogs,” Gudjohnsen said. “Without him I don’t know what would have happened.”

Gudjohnsen went on to become a founding member of Iceland’s kennel club and the president of its Icelandic Sheepdog club, an organization that set breed standards and is credited with preserving the dog in Iceland.

McDermott grinned as she explained that Gudjohnsen, though shy about her accomplishments, was integral in the Icelandic Sheepdog’s survival.

“Here’s a person who made that possible,” she said. “I think its really a historically beautiful story.”

Gudjohnsen, who has watched the Icelandic Sheepdog spread throughout Europe and North America, said she was equally thrilled to see people like McDermott and Warnock work to preserve the breed was pleased it would gather even more attention this month at Westminster.

“I’m very happy when I see a good Icelandic Sheepdog with a good temperament,” she said. “My heart jumps with joy.”

Parts of the Westminster Dog Show will be broadcast on Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 14 and 15. See your local listings for details.