Quito

About Quito

Officially, Quito doesn’t really belong on this website, for he was never ours. However, since he played such a big part in how we got to fall in love with this breed, we give him a place here anyway like he has always kept a place in our hearts.

A friend of mine, Katja, had adopted a Ridgeback. The young, already castrated male was hardly 6 months old and had zero obedience. He couldn’t stay alone without completely ruining the place, wasn’t completely house broken yet, stole everything remotely edible, and when you let him off leash he ran away. 

Back in those days, Katja was living in a caravan at the stables she was working. Within the first day Quito managed to redecorate the place thoroughly followed by her car whom got a complete make-over in no time at all. As you can imagine, this was a problem during the weekends where she had to work all day rinding the your stallions at competitions. What to do with Quito…

Well, the answer to that was quickly found 😉

Katja rang suggesting we should meet at the horse stables in Soest where we used to live. She told about Quito and that she would bring him for she was Sur I would love him. I had never heard of a Rhodesian Ridgeback and after hearing her description I imagined some kind of hyena. I thought she had lost her mind, getting a dog like that in her current situation, being on the road for work so much. 

Turning into the parking lot I spotted her car right away, the door flew open and out came a caramel coloured dog, all muscle and power, shining like a horse and trotting and bucking like one too. WOW! What a gorgeous dog! I stooped to my knees and Quito flew into my arms and straight into y heart. It was love at first side and the feeling was mutual. 

Katja watched us play with a satisfied smile. Are you busy this weekend? She asked later that day. We weren’t 😉

This was the start of our Rhodesian Ridgeback adventure. After that first sleepover weekend many more followed. Every time we met he jumped for joy and we looked forward for the weekends and other days Katja had to work and h would come to stay with us. In the mean time she worked really hard with him, no more running away or destroying things. The only real point of attention remaining was the counter surfing and stealing food from wherever he could find it, but that was easy to manage. 

When Katja got her own paddocks,  she got another dog to keep Quito company and with always people being around at the stables and house our dog sitting services came to an end. Every now and then we visited or came by to pick him and his new friend up for a walk. Seeing each other again was always a joy, parting painful. 

After the second break in to our home we started thinking about a dog of our own. I had started to work part-time and since we missed our Quito weekends so much it was sort of a no-brainer. There was no discussion about what type of dog it would have to be. 😉

Unfortunately there are hardly any photo’s off Quito. Just some low res scanned images where he is already 7 or 8 years old. Due to a sudden death of my computer and no back-up I lost all photo’s. However his image is forever in our hearts.