Champion Puppies and dealing with loss

Its been a while since we updated. We had a litter in April that was stressful, and we have just had a lot going on! That didn’t stop our puppies from shining though.

Northern Tier Finest in the Shop “Evija” was the first puppy in the litter to finish her AKC Championship. She is busy working on her obedience titles now, continuing to have fun in Idaho.

Her brother Northern Tier Benjamin Barker “Raven” also finished his championship last weekend at our local club specialty supported entry on Sunday. We are so very proud of our babies.

Zangief finished his Grand Championship this summer in Fargo, and continues to be the best boy there ever was here at the borzoi farm.

Lady had three puppies via C-section on April 4th 2022. She was bred to GCH Satara’s The Desired Effect “Brexit” belonging to Danielle Steenkamp down in Texas. The pairing was a great one and produced some beautiful puppies. Unfortunately Brexit died of sudden death two days after they were born. This spearheaded a massive group effort by all breeders, led by Danielle, to holter test their dogs and send the results in to the heart study. We will continue to monitor Lady and the puppies closely, to gather data and hopefully keep the puppies safe and healthy. Brexit was only 6 years old. Owned and loved by Danielle, who is also a vet. He had seemingly normal results on his heart testing all his life. Sudden death is a terrible and scary thing, and I really hope all the research we are doing can give us some answers and help save our breed.

Just this past Monday- Cedar (Northern Tier We’ll Do Wonders Wont We My Friend) from the Sweeney Todd litter (Zangief X Lady) died of sudden death just before his 3rd birthday. His body was taken to Texas A&M university for a necropsy and his heart was donated to the Borzoi Health and Welfare foundation for examination. It has been a rough year and I really hope we get some answers on Cedar soon. I will make another post about it once I have those results.

For now, we are trying to have fun with our current puppies Brynn and Bandai. And we are continuing to campaign Eastleigh and Raven, and finish their health testing so that we can hopefully start making breeding plans again.

More information on the heart study and sudden death in our breed and what you can do to help can be found here: https://borzoihealth.org/