(light blue roan) (Touchwood Talisman x Applewyn Abby of Touchwood) “Gusty”
It was Gusty that started it all.
Having been denied a dog as a child, I had to satisfy myself with “someday”. I was an avid reader of non-fiction that spent a lot of time in the library so I had a lot of opportunity to research beyond simple pet dogs and learn about purebreds. I picked up Lynn Hall’s book Kids and Dog Shows in the school library when I was 10 and that was the hook.
I was able to convince my parents to allow me to acquire a dog when I was 14. I had been corresponding with Lynn Hall for a few years by then. My first love was collies, thanks to Lassie and a small collection of Terhune’s books, but my mother preferred cocker spaniels if I was to have a dog at all. Lynn happened to have both, albeit cockers of the English flavor (“Touchwood”). I got my first and second cocker (Toga) from her. Gusty was paid for by me with money earned from the first significant sale of my artwork.
Gusty was a high-drive, high stamina, and smart little dog but she was also insufferably stubborn with a dominant personality. She made showing her in conformation extremely difficult, especially for a novice handling her in the ring.
Gusty was on the smaller side, with good body substance but not as well-boned as one would have liked. She also was very correctly coated at a time when thicker, more sculptable coats were coming into vogue. She was an easy dog to groom, and I bemoaned the relative lack of furnishings at the time. The practice of blow-drying coats before going in the ring had not really started yet, and because her coat was correct, it would not have made any difference anyway. She garnered a lot of group placements at matches, in part because of her sound structure and lovely movement. Matches were a lot more forgiving about her fidgeting and her sparser coat.
Between the struggle to handle her and her minor deficiencies, she did not compete well in the conformation ring so I gave that up fairly early in the game and concentrated on obedience, if only to control her energy and manners. She was one of those lively, independently minded types that either passed brilliantly or failed spectacularly, so competing with her was a challenge and never dull! Among her favorite stunts was to leave the ring if she saw anyone she knew, greet them, then come back to finish her routine nicely after disqualifying herself. It was entirely too stressful for me and while she did achieve her CD fairly quickly, CDX was never completed.
Gusty was extremely birdy and full of tenacity and heart. She spent a lot of time in the summer at the shore where she did a lot of swimming and chasing gulls. She was tireless and a powerful little swimmer.
We played fetch with tennis balls and sticks. One favorite game was for me to throw a wiffle ball in the water for her and she would try to retrieve the ball, failing over and over as it would sink and rise in the water, sliding out of her mouth every time she tried to grab it. She never gave up. The longest I let her keep at it was well over an hour before I waded into the water and held it still so she could actually “win” and end the game.
Low tide was for gull-chasing. The gulls would fly off, sandbar or water, for about 40 yards before coming back down, only to be stirred again by the dog in hot pursuit. On a few occasions my brother and I had to go out in the rowboat to get her a quarter mile out to sea beyond the last sandbar, swimming after the gulls. Sadly for her she did not get a chance to show her field ability until 8 years of age when she, along with Toga (at about 4 months of age) got her first contact with game-birds (quail) and the gun and quartered, flushed, marked and retrieved her birds as if she had been doing it all her life. I determined that she would be the first and last dog I cheated and all that followed would hunt. It is, after all, their purpose for being.
