Blue Heaven Kennels
littlenewfBreeders of Newfoundlands:
Champions and Soulmates
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Watercolor by
Sinclair Stratton
2009


If you ever loved a dog, if you ever lost a dog, regardless of breed, you must read one of the most beautiful books ever written about dogs.
Read the first chapter
Read reviews
Find out how to buy it


written by Rhoda Lerman,
owner of Blue Heaven Kennels

2007's Week of Puppies
Where did Celeste, Elsa and Bumper's 2007 puppies go?
They've
moved over here...

"Snowpocolypse 2010"

click the picture for more snow pics & videos

Two photos from 1994 that we just received in Dec 2009
(Our first) Molly at 4


Pippa  (aka Peeh-Pah) at 18 Months

Packard at 10½

Family resemblance? LaaLaa &
Theo's daughter, Maggie, at 4 yrs.

Great Grandmother Katie at 13½

LaaLaa at 11½
(summer 2010)
Compare to her pic at 3½ yrs  

More family resemblance. Katie's Great Granddaughter, Rosie at 8 months.

Instructions from the Newfie manual:
Keep mouth & eyes shut tightly
 when getting a smooch

Juno's Puppy Page
Rosie's Puppy Page
 


In Memoriam
___________LaaLaa  CH Blue Heaven’s Secret Dance_____________

LaaLaa is gone, at least in the flesh which was getting pretty worn out and we were immensely relieved to free her of her pain and weakness. She was with us almost l4 years.

She was the most remarkable of little pups. She never took her eyes off me, cocked her head at every sound I made. She had too long a nose and her bones were not big enough. So her potential for breeding and the show ring was minimal. And she was very small, too small for showing. But she was so intelligent and so connected when she was only a few weeks old, I had to keep her, show ring or not.

Well she surprised everyone. She had the fastest recall her trainer ever saw. When we finally did take her in the ring, her movement was so extraordinary that she took four majors in one weekend and was a champion. Handlers and judges called each other to talk about her movement.

Then she produced Bumper, Gus, Bouba who also became champions who then had their own champion offspring. Bouba became the number l newfie in France. And LaaLaa, at age 11, got an award for best veteran in one of the shows. LaaLaa has also passed on wonderful genes.

While she could still climb the stairs, she occupied my pillows and wrapped herself around my head to sleep. Tail over my face, head on top of my head. She ran the kennel with an iron hand just as her mother Katie did. She would jump a guy twice her size to stop a fence fight and chase him back to his kennel. However she would lead her little pack over to a kennel to start a fence fight when she thought it was appropriate. I remember her trotting along on the trails, suddenly looking over her shoulder to give the attack signal, and off three or four of them would race to have a “conversation”. Once, out on the trail, their walker paused to take something from her pocket. A cookie fell out. Four dogs leaped backwards away from the cookie. They knew who was the boss. LaaLaa walked in and took the cookie to which she and she alone was entitled. Her daughter Elsa has taken on LaaLaa’s role.

We will miss LaaLaa terribly but so many parts of her are still with us, including her children, grand children, and many great grandchildren.  //April 2012


___________Update to Ordering In the Company of Newfies__________
You can get a signed copy of Rhoda's book directly from us through our Blue Heaven Books website.
Ordering will be processed for us by our daughter's company website, KatiesBumpers.com, which takes credit cards.
While you're there, you might want to pick up some dog toys!   More info here.

___________Finally a Solution for Finicky Eaters___________
We've learned about an easy solution for dogs who won't eat. Bring in the pig!
Bou, who has to be fed by hand, will eat everyhting to the bottom of her shiny bowl in self defense
 as soon as Eisenhower comes into the kitchen.
Don't have to change the diet; just get a 400 pound pot belly and you're good to go
.

Bou us also very proud of her new vest! She's training to be a Service Dog.
     

_______________*THE* World Champion Veteran!!!_______________
Our Rudy, daughter of Katie and Packard, just became the world champion Veteran
 We had a call from her owner, Carole Bernard in Paris, moments ago.
Rudy, Champion, Excellent, (they have to be ranked Excellent in order to compete
in this show) just became
THE world champion veteran at 11½
at the World Champion Dog 2011 show in Paris.

Rudy is the mother of Theo and Celeste and Jules, grandmother of Solomon and Juno.

____________________ Elijah 1st Show at 9 months ____________________

____________________From the Archives____________________
We found this cute picture of Rhoda with puppies.

Four Generations Again, December 2010
From the left we have Elijah (5 month old puppy), Ben (father), Elsa (grandmother) and LaaLaa (great grandmother).
Laa Laa was the puppy in the January 2000 and the granny in the April 2008 pics below.
Now she is the great grandma!
Four Generations Dec 2010

Four Generations, April 2008
Left to Right: Ch. Blue Heaven's Catherine the Great (Katie; 13 1/2; Great Grandmother),
 
Ch. Blue Heaven's Secret Dance (Laa Laa; Grandmother),
Ch. Blue Heaven's Katie's Bumper
 (
Bumper; Mother) and Rosie (4 months)
Four generations, January 2000
From right to left they are Molly (our foundation bitch, great grandmother & ROM,
Ishtar (grandmother and ROM),Katie (Mother & VN), and LaaLaa (daughter).

In this photo,  Laa Laa, who is a grandmother 8 years later to the left, was the baby below.

 
 

__________________Summer 2010 PUPPIES!__________________

On June 29 Elsa had a litter of one puppy out of Solomon.  Elsa is the girl who had 17 puppies 2 1/2 years ago.


On July 2 Juno had a litter of two puppies out of Ben. This was her first litter. 

 Here are pictures of them at 5 weeks of age and growing up.


Elias at 4 months

Elijah at 4 months
Elijah at 8 months

Elsa's son, Elias

Juno's son, Elijah

Juno's daughter, Willow


Be careful, Elias...

Elias, she is just sucking you in...

We warned you, Elias!

________________Just For Fun________________
Loki and her little friend

Our beautiful, handsome Ben, son of Solomon & Elsa, at one year.


Our French connection, Tadoussac Newfs.
Left: Blue Heaven's Cosmo pulling Carol Bernard's daughter, Lou Ann, and friend. Cosmo, son of Packard and Annie, 
is one of the top twenty working dogs in Europe...which is a big deal, an ocean rescue dog.

Right:
Blue Heaven's Bouba pulling Lou-Ann in the cart. Blue Heaven's Rudi standing by.
Bouba was the #l ranked Newfie in France for an entire year!

 
  On this page...
«News!
«About Blue Heaven Kennels

«History of Blue Heaven Kennels
«Championships, Honors, Awards
 & other nice things
Elsewhere on this site...
«Family Photo Album  (3rd page added!)
«
Unusual lives of our dogs:
 Panda & the Pig, Rollo the Dancing Dog
«You think your dog is big???
«Our Heroes

«More Pictures: "Look at that Face"
«Even more pictures: "Photos"
«Our "French Connection"
«
Past News
«In Memoriam

Recent News From Blue Heaven Newfoundlands and their progeny

October 2010

Emma (Celeste/Nemo daughter, sister of Solomon) had a Reiki session which was written about online at:
http://www.reikifurbabies.com/2010/09/27/4-yr-old-newfoundland-with-wisdom/

December 2009

2007's Year's Mega Litter(s) Puppies Celebrate their Birthdays
Click anywhere on the gallery to go to a page with everyone's pictures!

 

September 2008
Here is a picture of LaaLaa winning Best Veteran at the Wine Country show on 9/27. 
 Very proud.  She is ten years old, and not only did she look beautiful and move great,
but there are not many ten year old Newfies that can still go around the ring.

OLDER NEWS LIVES ON THE "PAST NEWS" PAGE.

 
 

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About Blue Heaven Kennels

Blue Heaven Kennels is a small kennel in Western New York. Many people know us well because of my book, In the Company of Newfies, about the dogs at Blue Heaven Kennels and our relationships with each other.

And many more people know our dogs since so many are in the show ring. Our outstanding characteristics structurally are balance, large heads, soft expression, straight topline and race-horse movement. Our foundation bitch, Molly, and her daughter Ishtar, both now Register of Merit dogs, have produced many champions and titled children. We are extremely proud of them and grateful to them.

We are very proud of our beautiful dogs, but what we take the greatest pleasure in is their sweetness and goodness and willingness to live our lives.

In August, 1998 we moved from our house of 26 years in Cazenovia, NY to our present home in Port Crane, NY which is right outside of Binghamton. This is the place we had been looking for for years. It is perfect for our Newfie family. It has 140 acres of wooded land laced with old lumber trails. And the dogs have a 10 acre pond all to themselves, except for some resident ducks and some very cheeky beavers. It has been everything we dreamed it would be...and more. We walk constantly with the dogs and we can't keep them out of the pond.  

History of Blue Heaven Kennels

We got our first Newfie, Ben, in 1988. The following year we got Molly. The next year Molly and Ben gave us Ishtar and Celeste. And that was it. We had no intention of breeding again, and we weren't interested in showing.

Until, that is, someone told us we should show Ishtar because she was, in his words, "the perfect Newfie". And so, we suddenly became Blue Heaven Kennels. (The name, by the way, came from the old song, "My Blue Heaven", which goes "Molly and me, and baby makes three, we're happy in our blue heaven.") Ishtar, of course, wasn't the perfect Newfie (is there one?), but she was very good, and 6 months after we started showing her she became a champion and about a month later took Select at the Nationals. We lost Ben when he was seven, but dear old Molly is still with us. This March she will be eleven and in October Celeste and Ishtar will be ten. In 1998 Molly and Ishtar honored Blue Heaven Kennels by both becoming ROM's at the same time.

Every litter we have had came from Molly. She is the mother, grandmother, great grandmother and yes, even great great grandmother of every one of our puppies. We have four generations here at our kennels and we are so proud that we took a group picture which is on this page (above).

This adorable picture of Molly at five weeks came to us from a friend of her breeder who was a dear friend of ours.

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Blue Heaven Kennels
Bob and Rhoda Lerman
phone: 607 648-6199
email
: bobrhoda@aol.com
for more information about Blue Heaven Kennels

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