Above is the oil painting that my son gave Grandpère for his birthday the year after Rusty died at the age of nine from lymphoma. When he had to be put down, we all cried, but GP cried and cried and cried. Rusty is buried in our back yard, and there's been talk (fantasizing) of digging up a fragment and having him cloned. Although he had no pedigree, he was a noble dog, perhaps an unacknowledged bastard son of a royal line.
Unlike our present dog, Diana, who hates cats, he was friendly with our cats. At one point he co-existed with six of them. I know that some of you don't like hunting, so you may want to stop reading here. He was a natural retriever. He was so good that he sometimes retrieved game that belonged to others. Diana? Well, that dog don't hunt, although she was deliberately named after the goddess of the hunt.
UPDATE: Rusty was a stray that appeared in the neighborhood. Our neighbor across the street began to feed him, because he was such a nice dog, but he seemed to prefer our house. He went off every night, and he'd return in the morning, tired and dirty.
When we and he decided that he would be our dog, we took him to the vet for an exam and shots, and the vet told us that he had venereal disease. Then, we knew what he was doing with his nights. I had never heard of a dog having venereal disease. He was treated and neutered, and that was the end of the nightly carousing.
Several people asked us if he was a short-haired collie. That was the first I'd heard of that breed, but he does have a collie's long nose.
I had written these words in the comments, but then I decided to add an update to the post.
