~TabanyaRuu Hyppia at Lumikoira (29/06/2007- 28/10/2023) ~

~ Elbereth Osmo X TabanyaRuu Sisko ~

In her 16 ½ years Kiva touched the lives of so many people, and we will be forever grateful to her breeder Liz Mowatt for asking us to be her guardians.

Kiva came into our lives unexpectedly, it’s not every day you get an email from a breeder, with whom you have little contact other than being members of the same Yahoo chat group, suggesting that one of the pups from her current litter come and live with you. It took Louise and I quite a while to decide whether we should take Liz up on her offer – probably a nano-second, maybe a fraction longer – and a couple of weeks later Kiva came to join us, and Mylo, over the August Bank Holiday in 2007.

Over the previous year we had learnt a lot about Lappies, the pros and the cons, and as a result we were able to adjust to having a second Lappy far more easily than we were with our first – then again maybe Kiva was just wired differently, because she really was faultless.

From day one her recall was 100%, her willingness to learn at training classes a constant, her joy at strutting her stuff at ringcraft evident for all (she qualified for Crufts in every year that she was shown, her high-point being Reserve Best of Sex in Crufts 2010) and her tolerance to, and understanding of, other dogs uncanny.

She was also a wonderful ambassador for the breed as she was a regular attendee at Discover Dogs. She was also the reason a number of families decided upon a Lappy rather than any other breed as Kiva would spend weekends living with potential owners as our “try before you buy” initiative.

Kiva was a perfect mum, taking to motherhood like a duck to water. She had 3 litters, one of which we kept a pup from. There were 44 Kiva descendants born in her lifetime; 12 children, 15 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and 2 great-great-grandchildren, and a lot of these Lumikoira pups were what we refer to as Kiva clones, both in looks and temperament.

She was a healthy dog. Her only medical conditions being a cyst that needed to be removed from her eyelid in 2016 and a case of pyometra in 2022. However, in the late summer of 2023 she showed signs of deterioration in condition, appetite, and demeanour.

Our vets suggested several treatment plans which, for a while, did stem her decline, however in late October a final consultation with the vets identified a serious liver condition, so we did the right thing, for the right reasons and, we believe, at the right time and after her living with us for over 16 years she was given sleep and reunited with Mylo.