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Christmas 1972. Peter and I had travelled to Sydney
via Melbourne to visit my Uncle and Aunt, meet with
GSP breeders and attend some shows. There they
were. Three Irish Water Spaniels with Major
Everingham. Finally, in the flesh, the breed that I
had been searching for. All that I had read about
the breed had fascinated me – a Gundog with a great
sense of humour, but decidedly Irish. All efforts
to obtain one of these had been thwarted as, even
then, numbers were small.
It
wasn’t till September 1979 that I was to see
another. Viv Bretherton and I had returned to
Melbourne Royal for Group Specials with Ch Dunfriu
Nicola QC CD. Benched behind Nicola was a family of
IWS owned by the Yeadon family. Brooke insisted
that he wanted to be mine so thanks to the
generosity of Gaynor and John, Rawdonred Kitebrook
returned to Adelaide with Viv and me, finally
fulfilling my dream.
When
Brooke titled, I phoned Gaynor and discovered that
she had a litter. My beautiful Bracken soon joined
our family, while her brother went to live with the
Partridge family.
Brooke and Bracken
were the start of a life long commitment to the
Irish Water Spaniel breed.
Bracken had just the
one litter to Robin and Robin Kinlough’s Ch
Craythorne Mr Finigan producing three Champions:
Shawn who claimed Bianca as his best friend, Moira,
Peter’s girl and Erina. This family were to be the
foundation of our early IWS and the learning tool in
so many aspects from presentation, training, hunting
… a whole new ball game.
We will always be
grateful to Gaynor and John – without them we may
never had the opportunity of sharing our lives with
this incredible breed. |
