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.
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, 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Breeders
of Newfoundlands:
Cowboy
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We
got our first Newfie, 
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.