Way back in Jan of 2019, we had the utter delight and privilege to be a part of the world-famous Piff the Magic Dragon show, when Piff and his wonderful assistant, Jade, came to Christchurch for the internationally renowned Bread and Circus World Buskers Festival.
A fixture in Las Vegas at The Flamigo casino, where Piff has his own theatre named after him, it was a real coup to get Piff and Jade to New Zealand. Unfortunately, Mr Piffles the Chihuahua, the 3rd member of the act, was unable to travel to NZ because of the quarantine restrictions.
That's when we got the call asking if Nikita (well known in NZ theatre circles for her successful stint as Bruiser in Legally Blonde the Musical at the Court Theatre) if she would be available to fill in for Mr Piffles. You can read all about it here.
So we brought Nikitia to the theatre to meet Piff and Jade. She was an instant hit, had one rehearsal and she was hired.
At the time, we had just mated her, but like the little trouper she is, Nikita did all the shows (and posing for photos afterward) while we wondered if she was expecting. It was just wonderful how careful Piff and Jade were with Nikita and she is such a calm dog, she never missed a beat. She adores being the centre of attention and it doesn't come much better than being the assisant for a world-famous magician.
Sure enough, we confirmed the pregnancy just after the show's run ended and around 6 weeks later, with Piff and Jade back in Las Vegas, Nikita gave birth to 3 gorgeous babies. We named the 2 boys Kitaco's Dragonborn and Kitaco's Dragon Embers and the girl, Kitaco's Vegas Show Girl, in honour of Jade Simone, the original Vegas Show Girl.
We found great forever homes for the boys, but we kept Jade and soon learned two things about her. She did not share her mother's love of the limelight, and she was anything BUT a Vegas Show Girl, LOL.
We dubbed her Just Hold Me Jade, because the only thing Jade is interested in, is being cuddled or sitting on a lap. She doesn't want to be a show dog, a theatre star or even go for a walk if it means she has to walk on her own (although she is just fine if you carry her). She is, however, scarily clever and you can see her working things out in her head and then before you know it, she's escaped from Chihuahualand so she can come inside and sit on a lap, or worked out how to open the pantry if she wants a snack...
She's had two litters now (and will have no more as we only ever do 2 litters with our girls). The first gave us Ben and Katie who are attention hogs just like their grandmother, Nikita, and then, exactly a year to the day later, she gave us another 3 beautiful boys.
Their father is NZ CH Eldivino Rio Grande. This is a very special mating we had been planning for a long time. We strive for genetic diversity, but we also wanted to consolidate the Eldivino line that Nikita, Tinky and Jade are descended from. Rio was the last Eldivino stud and given his advancing age, the last chance we had of preserving his line, so we were thrilled when, and at the end of November, Jade gave us BJ, Ed and Trevor.
All three were white at birth although Trevor is starting to develop as a parti-colour like his dad. BJ and Ed, so far, are still white.
When it came to naming them, we couldn't resist following on with the Vegas theme from their mother so we have named them after the most famous Vegas magicians we could think of: Kitaco Piff the Magic Dragon, Kitaco Penn and Teller and Kitaco Siegfried and Roy.
They are magical babies indeed.
