Shanghai Surprise

Almost 9 weeks ago, about 6000 km away in Mission, British Columbia, Rifka was bred to a dog named Akala. Rifka is one of Zero's 6 sisters and she has been busy cooking up puppies to carry on the Invictus or rather, to start, the Elyia Ridgeback kennel. She is loved ... scratch that ... adored, by Taryn who has doted on her for the last two months (and her entire life) and has been eagerly awaiting the arrival of an undetermined number of puppies. How many were waiting to burst forth?

This morning Rifka surprised everyone and easily whelped 9 healthy puppies, all with ridges and each easily 16 ounces. Apparently she popped them out, cleaned them all up and carried on as if she'd done it 100 times. There are 6 boys and 3 girls, 8 of them have what we in 'the biz' call show ridges and one multi-crown. So far Rifka is the only one of her siblings to produce no ridgeless puppies! Just like her Momma ... seems she takes after her mother in a lot of ways - this is Halo when she was on day 58 with Rifka's litter a mere twinkle in her eye ... or a lump in her tummy.

Rifka is a very surprising 5 days early to whelp this litter, she was only bred 9 weeks ago on May 1st. Large litters do have a habit of showing up before their due date but this early is not very common - I certainly didn't expect to have to start bugging Taryn for maternity updates until at least Thursday!

Rifka is being the fantastic mother we all expect from these girls and with the milk bar shown above I am quite sure there won't be a shortage of food! Congratulations to Rifka, Akala and Taryn on a wonderful healthy litter, hope they are everything you wanted them to be and more. I am of course showing this to Leeloo and expecting her to live up to her cousin's reputation! Then again, Leeloo does what Leeloo wants ...