Usa was bred by Ric and Linda Cosner, America

pedigree

Usa was our third Havanese, but she became the broodbitch in our breedingprogram.
It was love at first sight.
How funny, sweet, cheerful, happy, playful and beautiful she was!
And soon we found out very clever and incredible intelligent.
Before she was that old, she loved to play with other dogs.
She also immediately accepted strange dogs.
She was always friendly to "each and everyone".
The last few years she wasn't involved that much anymore with the other dogs,
and mainly lived her own life and went about her own business.
When she grew older she became a real lady, she had great royalty,
always acting dignified, and therefor we called her our "duchess".
Usa was civilized, we cannot call it anything else.
Usa has had 4 litters, with 16 beautiful kids,
amongst which our famous and unforgettable Mucho Bravo Wild Willy.
She is the grandmother from our Spekkie, Turbo, Pidoe and Toppie,
the great grandmother from our Branie
and the gr.- gr.-gr.- grandmother from our Lizzy.
Usa is also the mother of
AKC Champion Mucho Bravo Cuby's Mi'Hijo (ROM)
HCA, CKC, Intl.CKC, Champion Mucho Bravo Dutch Dynamite
German Youth Champion Mucho Bravo My Fair Lady
Luxembourg Youth Champion Mucho Bravo Joyful Jossita

We took those last pictures of her on August 23, 2009.
These show Usa so typical all over!


When she was looking around with those precious and alert eyes, we could enjoy that immensely,
and we felt so rich still having her with us.
Her beautiful eyes stayed that sweet and soft until the very end.
You just couldn't help yourself and had to go cuddling and kissing her.

On July 26, 2009, 2 months before her passing, we still wrote on our site:

It's time to praise our oldest girl Usa again!
So here come some pictures we took of her today:


Doesn't she have the sweetest touching old face ever?!

going for a tour through our yard.

She loves to sniff around everywhere.

on her way back home

16 years and a little more than 4 months old!
We feel it's very special that we have Usa still with us.
Of course such an old, fragile little lady needs special attention and extra care,
as the old age comes with infirmity.
She has arthrosis, for which she gets painmedication every day.
For her leaking valve she gets fortekor every day.
She is almost deaf, but reacts great on hand signals
and she has a bit of senile cataracts, but she still sees everything.
We have been so stupid for we never neutered her,
and because of that she is getting more and more problems.
She should not get into season again, because that is giving her major problems,
therefor she gets a hormone injection every 4 months.
She also gets "mamatumors" of which we cannot do anything anymore at her age.
So we have to watch very carefully that she remains to have quality of life!
That's not always easy, as she has good days and not so good days.
Thank goodness there are still far more good days than bad ones.
We let her believe she trained us well,
and she gets everything she wants.
A few times a day she goes for a tour through our yard
which keeps her busy for half an hour or so.
She still loves having visitors coming over
and always makes sure she will be around then.
We realize she is very vulnerable and we always take that into consideration.
We hope to be allowed to enjoy some more time with our grand old lady Usa!!!
Anyhow, today was another very good day!

Unfortunately the time we still had with her appeared to be very short.
Thank goodness those were two good and nice months,
in which we have enjoyed her very much, even more so because she seemed to do so well.

But not only we enjoyed her these last months,
from the very first moment we met til the end we loved and enjoyed her with our whole hearts.
See the small "résumé" we made from our beautiful years with our sweetheart:

Our "grand old lady" celebrating her 16-th birthday.

Usa on her 15-th birthday.
Considering her age she was still doing very well.
When the weather was nice enough she still went with us for a short walk in the forest,
which she enjoyed so much. We went with her alone, without the other dogs
and left it up to her how far and how fast she could go.
On her birthday we took the following pictures:

Run run run!! Yep, she still runs!

Her nose is still working well!
She loves the smells,
and she gets all the time she wants to sniff around.
Sometimes she makes a long study of it.....

And of course she still marks,
and makes sure that everyone knows that "granny" was here.

Then it's time again for a short sprint.


Usa on her 14-th birthday.

September 2006

September 2006

December 2005, almost 13 years old

January, 2004
We took our "old lady" (9½ years), our duchess Kimbriel's Starlet de la Rouge, aka "Usa"
-actually just for fun- to the worldshow too, and entered her into the veteranclass.
She enjoyed all the attention, and much to our surprise she did very well.
We were surprised as this was her third show in her entire life, so she hardly had any experience.

She earned the 2-nd best place with the females, and got the RESERVE CAC.
And in veterangroup she even made the cut, and ended with the 6 best veterans.

January 2004

At the very first Dutch Havanese Specialty, on September 7, 2003 with an entry of 40 Havanese
our Usa went "BEST FEMALE"
Being the oldest Havanese (10 year and 7 months) at this show,
we were so proud of her performance!
She earned the Dutch Champion title, as she got more than enough points with just a few shows,
but our Kennelclub didn't give her this title officially
as she was registered in the addendum,
which was done 10 years ago with Havanese imported from the States.
These dogs cannot earn official champion titles.
For this reason we never showed her much.
Our duchess of course was our own champion in every way possible,
and naturally we've always been proud of her.

January 2000, almost 7 years old.


1997, supermom

1996

1995

1994

a year old

10 months

8 months

6 months

3 months

Usa's first day with us, 9 weeks old.

ALL THIS AND BRAINS TOO!