01/21/2026
Hi Everyone!
I want to use 2026 to review where the Bosun Dog project is, and reveal where we are going. My plan is to highlight each group as their birthday comes along.
This means we start with our amazing foundation dog Zephyr, and her brother Scuttlebutt. Scuttlebutt lives with wonderful friends of ours and they adore him. He also has a bakery named after him: Scuttlebutt Bakeshop, LLC
Zephyr and Scutty turn 9 today. Zephyr gave us our first two litters of Bosun puppies. She was bred first to a wonderful Icelandic sheepdog and then to Cyril Cherniak's dog Kai. More on them when we highlight those litters.
Zephyr is doing great. For a 9 year old she is remarkably active. In fact, she is our most energetic Bosun, even more energetic than her three younger relatives. Being 1/2 Border Collie and 1/2 Labrador probably explains that.
She has a vet appointment on her birthday and we will be doing a full health work up to get some more information on how she is doing. Zephyr and Scutty are the oldest Bosun's and their long term health and vitality is super important to our program. Being a new breeding program we really have almost no data on longevity. And a dog with a long, happy, energetic life is one of our goals.
One issue that Zephyr does have, is she is mostly deaf. This has come on quite rapidly over the last year and a half or so. It's hard to pinpoint when it really started. We will address this with the vet today, but we suspect this is related to her Merle coloring. Even though she is a heterozygous merle (not a double merle) a small percentage of single merle dogs are also deaf. You can read more about it here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19192156/
The good news, is this has not affected her happiness. She is still ball crazy, snuggly like having a giant rock in your bed, and an all around great dog. Everyone who visits loves her. I adore her and I owe her so much.
More on Z's origins in the next post.
