A California family grieving the loss of their beloved dog was astonished to learn their new adoptive dog was the father of their late pooch.
Days after their dog Rufus died unexpectedly in April from a terminal illness, Jillian Reiff and her family met Ziggy, who eerily resembled the dog they just lost, with similar markings and ears.
“I don’t think there was more of a true example of love at first sight,” Reiff told CBS News after meeting Ziggy.
The night Rufus died, Reiff’s six-year-old daughter, Maya, was looking at dogs to adopt and stumbled across Ziggy’s listing at Muttville, a San Francisco senior dog rescue.
“Just in the state I was in, I looked at it and for a half second I thought she may have been in my phone’s photo album because they looked so similar,” Reiff said.
From that moment on, Reiff couldn’t stop thinking about Ziggy, visiting his profile multiple times a day before she finally made an appointment at Muttville to meet him.
“When Ziggy trotted through that little gate with the adoption counselor and I could see he was slumpy and bumpy and old,” Reiff said. “He was a little wobbly, which is what Rufus was when we lost him. I didn’t have any questions.”
The family agreed to adopt Ziggy within minutes, but soon after bringing him home, they realized he had quite a few similarities to their recently deceased pup.
“We learned that probably hour two of him being here,” Reiff said. “He was hungry, and we weren’t moving quick enough and then suddenly from the corner that very familiar warbling sound and my husband was like, ‘Oh my god, is that Ziggy?’”
The sound coming from Ziggy was so reminiscent of Rufus’ bark that Reiff decided to do a DNA test on the dog, which she had also done on Rufus in 2017.
Not only were the two pups the same breed, rat terrier-chihuahua mixes, but relatives.
When Reiff opened the results, she learned that Rufus, her late pet, was the son of their new adoptive dog, Ziggy.
Muttville, the senior dog rescue where Ziggy was adopted from, shared side-by-side images of the two pups on Facebook.
“Ziggy was adopted from Muttville by the Reiffs in April, days after the lost Rufus, the family’s pup since 2016. Not only do the dogs look similar, but they also both ‘talk,’ are obsessed with the kids, cover their heads with a blanket at bedtime, and more,” the group wrote.
“Convinced they were related, Jillian Reiff got a DNA test for Ziggy, as she had for Rufus. The results: Ziggy is the father of Rufus!”
Rufus was about 15 years old when he died, and the family estimates that Ziggy is 16 or even 17 years old.
Reiff even received paperwork that suggests the two dogs may have been together before she adopted Rufus in 2016. Both dogs were neutered the same week at the San Francisco SPCA, she said.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Reiff said. “And I have to be OK with that and just accept it as the amazing gift that it is.”
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