ganda, my labradoodle.

This is ganda, my labradoodle. (Labrador Retriever + Poodle)

Ganda means beautiful in Filipino.

I am very proud of this dog as she is the great-grand daughter of my original dog named Blackie who is a black Labrador Retriever from Australia.

I got Blackie back in 2000 as a gift from my father. She was the first dog with papers I had. Prior to her, I’ve had a couple of mongrels, but really exceptional ones who has done a lot of heroic deeds (more on that on a future post).

Throughout Blackie’s 8-year existence, she gave birth to more than 30 puppies of different fathers. Her very first litter of puppies was sired by a Yellow Labrador named Frodo. That set of puppies were very dear to me since I assisted Blackie during the delivery. It was a 5-hour ordeal and I had to do some stitching and cleaning of the puppies. The puppies were breast-fed and then sent to different places as each of my aunts wanted one.

I kept one dog as a companion to the mother and named her Chubby. Her sister was sent to Davao and was named Noochie, Ganda’s grandma. Noochie would then go on and have a lot of adventures in Davao like climbing Mt. Apo, the tallest mountain in the Philippines, and swim in different beaches before giving birth to another puppy.

Noochie’s daughter was a chocolate colored Labrador. Her name was Maldita and wasgiven to my other Aunt as an early present. Now what makes this lengthy genealogy interesting was that an ash colored poodle raped Maldita in the middle of the night. It was an unexpected pregnancy that resulted in a brood of weird looking puppies. There was only one blonde and pretty dog in that set and that was my dog Ganda.

From Davao, Ganda was sent to Manila on one evening through the same aunt who got a black labrador puppy from us. By then, all of the original Labradors have passed away. We used to have more than 7 dogs at home and now we only have 3. Ganda came home to us as the newest member of the family. She now stays at the very same cage where her great grandmother Blackie used to stay.

I got Ganda last year. I never thought I’d own another dog after Blackie and Chubby passed away but now, it comes back full-circle after 11 years.