This is how Lilian tells Crissi's story:

"Crissi" was almost a rescue dog. In a way, I suppose, she was. She was bred by Marge Rutherford, a very wonderful dog trainer who taught her IGs things like playing a toy piano and walking on a tightrope (I have a picture to prove it). Marge kept dozens of dogs in outdoor runs at her home in the desert. The dogs she was training lived in her house. Unfortunately the others were badly neglected. I maintained as much of a friendship with Marge as I could. One day I went to her house (about a 2 hour drive from me when we lived in Morongo Valley) and we had lunch. Then she wanted to show me her new IGs from Dasa. She loved very small IGs even if they weren't very good. We were walking around the property when I saw an IG that really caught my eye. It was a blue, rather large but very striking bitch. Actually she was very similar to Cio Cio, who I wouldn't meet until nearly 20 years later. I asked Marge who she was and Marge replied very casually, "Oh, that's Crissi. I'm placing her on a pet home on Monday. She's too big for me." I couldn't believe what I was hearing and wanted to see her.

On closer examination, Crissi had a horrible case of demodectic mange and had lost a good part of her coat. Her nails were VERY long, and she was really filthy. Long story short, I told Marge I would like to have Crissi --and even said I would bet I could show her to her championship. Marge simply gave her to me and signed her papers over. There were a few vet bills to get the mange cleared up, and I found that Crissi has, like all of Marge's dogs, really good temperament and was easy to train for the show ring. I did show her to her championship, including a 5 point major on the weekend of a National Specialty in Ohio. Crissi was beautiful but had a a not very nice pedigree. I bred her as an experiment to Ch. Canio Di La Scala and the litter produced two champions (Ch. La Scala Gift of Gavilan and Ch. La Scala Mary Lou R of Scarra) and a dog that appears today on some pedigrees La Scala Edgardo of Coachwynn who sired quite a few litters. Nothing was as good as Crissi herself, and I didn't breed her a second time.