Ahi By Brada1878

Ahi by brada1878

Shikoku Ken

~dog aesthetic~

We've been watching Kida closely as she's looking very pregnant now (although you probably can't tell from the picture-- she is normally a very tiny cat) and we're anticipating her milk coming in any day now and then kittens soon after. Today I set up my old Ferret Nation cage as a sort of "safe space" for her to relax and start nesting in, and a place where we can keep her when no one's home and know she won't start giving birth under a bed or something. This is our first time doing it this way so fingers crossed it goes better than last time when she was squirting birthing fluids all over my six-year-old's bed. I have a good feeling about it-- we have the towel over her "nest" to give her privacy, but I can easily access it from the door if she goes into labor and needs help.

I saw this beautiful girl at the dog park today and immediately had her pegged for a street dog... Asked the owner and sure enough! She's from Mexico. You can't tell cause she's wagging it in the picture but she's got the signature tail curl. She was soooo sweet and licked my face all over when I bent down to take pictures. Unfortunately she was standing in her (super nice and patient) owner's shadow in the picture so I had to heavily edit in order to salvage it. Last picture is a better shot of her actual colors. @streetdogmillionaires

This is the face of a young woman in labor

Glad you asked :D 

Yushoku refers to non-white dogs in the Kishu Ken. Originally white dogs only made up about 30% of the breed, but due to the popularity of a particular line of white dogs, as well as the ease of covering up imperfect markings with a white coat, white became much more popular. And since white is recessive, once the genes for pigmented coats are gone, you have to have another yushoku to bring them back into the lines. This made it very easy to breed only white dogs, and many people actually believe that white is the “preferred” color, although the NIPPO standard specifies no preference.

Yushoku Kishu are rare these days, mostly popping up in hunting lines in Japan if I’m not mistaken. However, efforts are being made by the breeders here in the states to preserve these dogs. Cosmia was the first yushoku Kishu born outside of Japan-- her whole litter of four was yushoku, actually, but she was puppy #1. :) The only other yushoku Kishu here before that were her dam, and her sire’s dam. And now there’s a whole new litter of six born! @crispbean is also importing a yushoku male sometime in the next month or so, I believe? So we’re slowly upping our numbers.

This page is a really good resource if you want to learn more about what colors Kishu can come in, as well as the genetics behind it. Yushoku itself isn’t a specific color, and most yushoku (Cosmia included) would be considered “sesame,” although the variance within the sesame coloration is much greater than it should be. Since the genes for a white coat are essentially just “covering up” another color, a lot of yushoku Kishu end up with “undesirable” traits that had been hiding in white lines, such as masks or uneven pigmentation.

very exciting news

Cosmia’s dam, Shizuka, had six healthy puppies last night. And they’re all yushoku! That more than doubles the number of yushoku Kishu here in the states. Very cool!