She’s finished! Took me quite a while as she got put on hold for commissions and when I was sick. I also had an attack of I’m going to mess this up and put off this final finishing touches. There was also the emotional component as Aya is sadly no longer with us. She was such a big character. We got her as a boarder collie cross, and only having had boarder collies before meant that we thought we’d gotten a crazy dog (the fact she didn’t like men immediately and black dogs was telling of her past).
Turned out she was a first cross with an Alsatian and all those behaviours that were so baffling to an ‘experienced boarder collie home’ were Alsatian breed traits. These included guarding behaviours, screaming (there’s nothing like the sound of an excited Alsatian) and practically lying on the wood burner until she was panting so much we had to make her move.
The Alsatian can be seen in her ears and tail, but when we first picked her up from the dog rescue kennels she was such a little runt we thought that maybe she was crossed with a whippet.
And here’s another view of her, from a much older painting, with our other old dog, Sam.
Susanna Heath 