Meet Niya!

Meet Niya! My baby bear.

Her registered name is Meriwether’s Dance of a Burning Sea. 

I have been wanting a female pup for quite some time to be the foundation of my own breeding program. But things in life kept happening and the timing never seemed right until I had my first litter with Trouble. 

Even when they were born, I had zero plans of keeping a puppy from this litter. This was just supposed to be my first litter and I was planning on keeping a puppy from the next one. But Niya had other plans.

Niya adored me from the very beginning. Sometimes I think she knew all along that she would be staying with me. And that I was obviously the slow one to figure it out. And when I say slow, I mean it took me all the way up to the day of evaluations to know it was her.

As it turned out, the timing for keeping Niya from this litter was right when I really thought about it.

Niya as a baby

Niya was the tenth and last puppy born in the litter shortly after midnight on November 21, 2024. I suppose her birthday would be November 22, but I’m sticking with the 21st as her birthday since it was only 10 minutes after midnight. 

I had hoped puppy number ten would be a boy since I only had two boys up to that point, but she was a girl, giving the litter a total of eight girls and two boys. 

Since there were already so many girls born ahead of her, I had used all of the girl yarn colors and even the left over boy colors. Puppy number nine and ten both got double colored yarn collars. Pink purple and pink teal. 

Pink purple is a common enough color combination for Mom’s litters that it didn’t feel like a mouthful to say. Pink teal on the other hand was entirely new and seemed like a mouthful. Since the colors reminded me of Barbie, that is what I called her for the first eight weeks of her life. 

Niya as she grew

I spent nearly every waking and sleeping moment with the puppies the first three weeks of their life, which included sitting and sleeping in the whelping box with them and Trouble. There were days I was just so tired, I couldn’t sit upright anymore, but if I left the box, Trouble would get up and stop nursing them. If I stayed, she would stay until the puppies were satisfied. Many times this resulted in me sleeping on the foam insulated floor with them. 

At first, Niya stayed with her siblings after they were done nursing and slept in their puppy pile. A week into their life, she started crawling over to me to sleep when she was done nursing. She would climb up on my legs while I sat cross legged on the floor to sleep in between them. At the time, not all of the puppies had homes lined up and as I sat there watching her settle into the space between my legs I started thinking, maybe I should keep one.

I told Mom my idea and we talked about the pros and cons of keeping a puppy from this litter versus the next litter. The pros outweighed the cons because the only con I was able to come up with is we were not able to go swimming right away when she was young and I wouldn’t be able to teach her about the kayak. Not a good enough con when there were so many pros for keeping one.

Then one day she crawled over to my pillow and slept on the edge of it while I laid in the box with them and Trouble. I was ready for a nap as soon as they were done, but I couldn’t bring myself to wake her and steal the pillow. I took a picture instead because she was so darn cute.

I slept in the room with the puppies until they were much closer to five weeks old. I did it more for Trouble than for the pups. Every night I would sit on the edge of the bed and prop my feet up on the wall of the whelping box while I brushed my hair. Niya would always come toddling over to say hello. Thankfully she did not inherit the foot fetish gene from her mother like some of her siblings did.

Niya’s Personality

Her personality, like all Newfie puppies, didn’t start to show until around six-ish weeks old. But when it did, boy was she hard to miss. 

I described her to Mom as the life of the party social butterfly (the complete opposite of me). But she also knew when it was time to snuggle and cuddle. 

She would always be the first one at the door to greet me and always climbed over all her siblings to come say, “Hello, tall mom, you’re back!” 

She still adores me and seems to have the personality where she would do anything for me. The rest of the puppies in the litter did love me, I was tall mom, how could they not love me? But none of them loved me quite as much as Niya.

Niya is also really smart. Like scary probably going to be a problem and might figure out how to open things smart. My sister describes her father, Bruce, as all love, no thoughts. But he did figure out how to open the refrigerator so she had to put a lock on the fridge door. I hope I don’t need to invest in a fridge lock. Her mother, Trouble, is also a very smart dog. She’s quick to pick up on things and seemed to know the way home after only one walk on the trails.

So far, Niya has also learned the cat’s name. Whenever I say Maze or Mazey she looks all over the room. If she can’t find her, she’ll get really excited and look for her. Sometime she succeeds in finding her, sometimes Maze isn’t even on the same floor when I say her name.

Niya also seems to be a very intuitive dog. She’s starting to calm down just a teensy bit. By that I mean she sits when it’s time to come in from the backyard instead of jumping on the door while I open it. She also sits politely (begs) while I’m cooking in the kitchen. Even though she’s really begging, I’ll take the sitting politely.

Evaluating Niya

When the pups got older, I DNA tested all of the girls for the pi-bald gene to see who carried Landseer as a recessive trait. Only two of the eight girls did. Niya was one of those two. 

I was really bummed when I got the results because I had already ruled out the other puppy and still didn’t think I was keeping this puppy as Niya. Having the Landseer recessive trait was something I really wanted in my girl, but I did accept that I probably wouldn’t end up keeping one of those two. 

Even up to the day of evaluations, I never could have imagined it’d be her. I already had my top two picked out and she was not on the list.

That morning I remember telling her she was so sweet and I loved her, but I wasn’t keeping her. I also told Mom that day, I wish whichever family gets her luck in raising her, because she already was a handful.

Then as we made our way through the puppies, the one I thought I would be keeping wasn’t what I was looking for structurally. She still was a really nice puppy and could have been shown in the conformation ring, she just wasn’t it for me. The next one of the two was really nice and would have been an excellent puppy to keep also. But then, we picked up Niya and she stacked beautifully and with ease. She held it, without moving a foot while Mom and I took turns walking around her. 

When it came down to it, even though Niya was the smallest by far, had a much more petite and feminine look, and was the wild child of the bunch, she had everything I wanted.

Training 

She is doing really well with training. 

Every time she wakes up from a nap I take her outside. Niya used to stop at the edge of the patio unsure if she should follow Trouble or me beyond the edge of the bushes. She usually ended up going potty on the patio, as a baby while it was covered in snow and she was just learning, it was what it was. Now that she’s a little older and getting over her fear stage and fear of the backyard, she charges out into the grass and smells everything before deciding on the best spot.

I have been stacking her frequently. I kept Pink Teal – Barbie – Niya – because structurally she was the best for showing in the conformation ring and I have always wanted to put a championship title on a dog, it’s just a bonus that she’s from my breeding and will be my first champion as a breeder. 

We started puppy kindergarten last week. We were both sick and missed the first week, so now we can’t miss anymore weeks or we fail the class and have to take it again. Niya was a little overwhelmed and I was too for different reasons. But we made it through class and will make it through the rest too.

So far Niya knows sit, down, stand, take, we’re working on give, and possibly come. Can we do any of that at class though? Nope. Her best friend, Whiskey, one of Mom’s puppies a week older than her is in class with us and all they want to do is play together.

I can’t wait to watch this monster continue to grow and learn. But at the same time, she can slow down on getting older for just a little bit.