Kaika (怪火) officially joined the pack on November 2nd, from Kyuden Kitsune kennel in France. She is Kirin's Great Great Niece through her mother's side. Kaika's name means 'mysterious flame' and is a group of Yõkai known to cause fires of unknown origin - she was named in tribute to our late Northern Inuit, Yõkai. Her pedigree name is an homage to her puppy name 'Kuttara' (after the lake on Hokkaido island) and roughly translates to, 'the mysterious fire of lake Kuttara'. Though she's only been with us for a short time, Kaika is already settling in well with the rest of the pack. She loves playing with (and winding up) Chuuya and Tsume, trying to keep up with them at the freedom fields, and loves her walks on the Salisbury Plain, exploring and experiencing lots of new things.

Kaika has some typical Hokkaido wariness of strangers, but she absolutely loves food so with the help of plenty of tasty treats we'll hopefully be able to show her that people aren't all that scary after all. We hope that Kaika will be able to join us on our 2025 adventures as a breed ambassador. She is quite a 'busy' puppy and always has her nose (and those sharp puppy teeth) in something!

As is quite common for female Hokkaido, Kaika is quite a 'thinker', and you can often see her pause and look at something as if she's trying to figure it out, before making a decision on what to do. However, any thinking goes right out of the window as soon as she spots a bird or something to chase!

Kaika started joining us as a breed ambassador in training for our 2025 events. She surprised everyone by being rather social and allowing complete strangers to give her gentle pets and attention. Though she wasn't completely comfortable with being stroked at her back end and preferred head and neck scratches, she is gaining confidence while in our penned off marquee. Outside of the marquee amidst the crowds, the noise and lots of flapping things, she is a lot more anxious and cautious and would rather not be approached by strangers, which is fair enough in such a busy environment.

In May 2025 Kaika joined Chuuya and myself on a trip to Belgium to get her rabies vaccine updated. Though we attended the Flanders Dog Show, I decided to take her as a spectator rather than entering her in the show. The atmosphere inside the halls was very loud and overwhelming for her, but she did really well, chilling out in her crate in between walks and taking everything in. I'm not sure whether she will ever be confident enough to step into the ring, but she definitely enjoyed the adventures and exploring we did across Belgium over the weekend, so she's a perfect travel buddy for Chuuya.

Kaika is Embark DNA tested: click here! Please note that Embark are not able to test for the variant of black and tan found in the Hokkaido Ken, Kaika is a confirmed carrier of black and tan through the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at UC Davis.

More coming soon as Kaika grows and matures! For more up-to-date information on Kaika's adventures, keep an eye on our Facebook kennel page.

Kaika's baby puppy photos are copyright Kyuden Kitsune, and are used with permission.