Koko was the granddaughter of our dear late Lassie. Her mother, Heart, was from his only litter. I was desperate to have some connection to him, and in my desperation I accepted a puppy during a time that I was not ready for another, fearing that if I passed her up I would not get another chance. My solution was to place her in a co-own home with a breeder I trusted at the time- but that ended up not being the right place for her.
She never ended up shown, nor health tested. and after a while it became clear she was having reproductive issues as well as she was not producing puppies, and she eventually stopped having a heat cycle.
I ended up insisting upon her coming back to me.
Unfortunately I'll probably never know the why or history, but when she came back to me she was the exact same size she had been at 6 months old when she left me, sans having filled out, sitting at a very tiny 21 inches tall at the shoulder. I suspect her stunted growth contributed to her repro issues.
She stayed with a friend of mine for 9 months or so putting on weight and muscle before I took her back full time. Unfortunately she was quite insistent on hating other dogs, and she had to continue to be an outside dog (something I don't do), which lasted until the first thunder storm. I felt so horrible for and watched her out the window in her dog house the entire 2 hours it stormed, and decided my attachment to her and her grandfather did not mean more than her quality of life.
I ended up placing her in a companion home very shortly after that, unable to watch her stuck outside. It was another bump in the road for her however, when the young family that took her in ended up not being an exact fit for her- but another family member of theirs took her in where she settled in nicely and permanently.
Koko's situation is one of those that had me completely reevaluating my policies regarding pups leaving on full registration or to co-own homes. A lot of homes can be great for a year or so, then things happen, and it's the dogs that end up in a bad spot.
Pedigree Notes: If you are like most, you look at Hachi (Koko's sire) and go, "wait, this dog looks different!", and you would be correct. Hachi is what is know as a chocolate, or liver colored akita. This is the result of him inheriting two copies of brown at the "B-locus". This is the same gene that produces chocolate labradors over black. It is a color completely natural to the akita breed (unlike blue/dilute) but it is a fault and not something that should be bred for. As Heart (Koko's dam) was not a carrier, he never produced a single chocolate puppy. At the time of his birth, chocolate akitas were one of those hush-hush situations. They popped up from time to time, but they all went to pet homes, and no one talked about them, refusing to let people know their dogs produced this "different" coloration. Hachis breeder was not a very well informed individual, who only ever had the one litter, and sold Hachi to a friend of mine that was as intriged with the color as I was. Hachi was likely the first chocolate akita to be sold with breeding rights, and at a time in which that was unheard of. As of 2020 however, the faulted color has since been exploited by color breeders, and a unique color I once loved is now a very heated topic in the akita community and breeders are going to extreme lengths of inbreeding to produce chocolate puppies, a sad fate for a once rare occurring color.
