2020 and onward. The Pandemic Era. As if this one even needs to be explained.

You may have seen me mention elsewhere that Petz players are drawn back to the game during difficult times, and the pandemic was no exception. There was an explosion of new members on the RKC forum in 2020, a great many of them adults in their 30s whose need for a comforting escape immediately brought Petz to mind.

This game was the perfect nostalgia balm as we worried about toilet paper shortages and whether or not to stock up on dried pasta, and the community was a way to stay connected with other human beings while we all sheltered in place. Because of all this, this time period became one of my most vivid experiences with the game. Some of my favorite litters would be born in the midst of it, too.

Like all dogz in my original family tree, these families are naturally raised. ♥

Temple & Charmer
Focus years: 2020

Temple and Charmer. These two have become as important to me as my Old-School couples, and that's saying something. Both of them are incredibly sentimental to me individually, and their puppies each capture a specific aspect of joy that helped me through the height of the pandemic.

Charmer was a very special adoption from the website Over the Sunset Rescue Center, which hasn't been active since 2016. I remember seeing his little ad at the top of the kennel roster and falling in love, but not adopting him straight away; he stayed on my mind and I went back a few times before I realized I couldn't let him go. I'd never seen a dog with pink eyes before, and I'd never had a sheepdog coat in my family line. His genetics were so intriguing -- and he was adorable besides.

I don't remember why I decided to pair him with Temple, but I'm so glad I did. Every single one of their pups delights me. Shelter was the first dog born to me after I returned to the game for comfort during the pandemic, and he's just perfect; he inherited his mom's stocky frame and his dad's eyes, and his surprise orange coat blew me away. All the rest of the siblings seem to have more-or-less kept Temple's silhouette too, which was exactly what I was hoping for, and each is named for something I was doing during the shutdown to bring myself happiness. Playing ukulele. Mapping my way through Ultima III. Star Trek. Bubble tea. Moving into our condo.

I love these chubby babies with my whole heart and am so looking forward to their having puppies of their own.

Cabaret & Seaside
Focus years: 2020

Cabaret and her sister Tambourine were very special to me back in the Old-School Era: they were the first grandchildren of my first couple, the daughters of arguably my favorite dogs of all time, and I found it so endearing that they looked like twins. I stepped away from the game for various reasons before they had a chance to grow up, so I found myself inspired to go back and get to know them during the shutdown -- starting with Cabaret.

My renewed activity on RKC inevitably led to some adoptions, because wow had the community had produced some incredible stuff that I'd never discovered before! Seaside's amazing look was apparently the result of the PDH Surprise Dali Overwrite (and, full disclosure, he was not the only dalmatian of his kind that I adopted). But once again, my misunderstanding of the game's mechanics led to a deja-vu situation with this litter. Just like with Tobias and Enya, this family ballooned up by several pups before I was perplexed enough to ask the forum why Seaside's traits weren't passing. At least I figured it out before we hit ten!

The other standouts in this litter are Dana, whose all-white coat was still striking to me despite the plethora of white pups in my family line, and Samurai, who is almost entirely spotless on one side. And then of course there's Bubbly, who finally inherited her dad's spotted knees and nubbin tail!

Duster & Elessar
Focus years: 2008 - 2020

Duster and Elessar were among the couples I matchmaker'd way back in 2007 after PetzA made my game playable again; but their family will be forever defined by the miracle birth of their daughter Future, who was technically born in mid-2020 -- but also in the year 2037. Yep, that's a thing that can happen.

Elessar is a Catahoula Dog, another adoption from my breedfile discovery spree in the mid-aughts. At first glance it seemed that I'd never spent a dedicated amount of time focusing on this family,given all those spread-out birthdates, but apparently I'd had plans to. When I fired up the game again in 2020, I discovered that Duster was already pregnant!

I figured the pup would be born any moment, but the days kept passing and passing until eventually there was no denying it. Duster had a stuck pregnancy. I'd heard of this phenomenon before but had never experienced it myself. Fortunately, the Petz community is particularly great at preserving their communal knowledge, so the forums had documented a solution. By simply manipulating the fabric of digital space-time, Future was finally born!

Klezmer & Ghost
Focus years: 2020

And now here they are: our first fully themed family! Up until this point I'd occassionally matched pairs together due to their topically related names (e.g. Haunt and October), but never had I named a whole litter from a theme. What's more, some of these pups' namesakes are inspired by connections that only come about when you combine their parents' themes. That all felt pretty special to me, and it's something I'm going to do more of going forward.

The first thing you should notice here is that, once again, I hadn't yet grasped how overwriting breedfiles worked. The traits from Ghost's PDH Surprise Dali OW weren't passing, but you know what? I was really loving how each of these pups were turning out all the same.

The individual names of Klezmer and Ghost obviously inspired the derivations of Cimbalom and Tombstone respectively, but combining them together led to some deeper connections. Mixing klezmer music with Halloween-ish imagery immediately brought to mind the character of Papyrus from Undertale, whose musical theme "Bonetrousel" presented a really unique naming opportunity. Starless was named after a band whose song "5 or 8" had gotten stuck in my head around this time, after I realized how well the vision of a starless night fit in with the Undertale and Nightmare Before Christmas imagery.

I really love how monochromatic this litter is -- even their eyes are all grays! A part of me wants to bring one more puppy into the fold for a true Surprise Dali inheritance, but I think I'm too attached to this fourpack just as they are. I've finally learned my lesson with expanding litters. I'll look to the next generation for passing those traits.

Cinnamon & Hotaru
Focus years: 2020 - 2021

Like Icecap and Pumpkin, the pairing of Cinnamon and Hotaru came about during my phase of fascination with unique custom breedfiles. This litter really knocked it out of the park with the fox-leaning genetics, though!

I do remember vividly when Voyager was born. She was a product of the Comfort Era, and as an infant she was larger than her mother. o__o; I was starting to figure out that there was something going on with strange proportions when it came to the fox genetics, but years later I'd discover that this wasn't an isolated breedfile issue when I started a selective line involving chihuahuas.

Voyager's next sibling took six years to arrive, and when Nutmeg was finally born she took my breath away. I'd never seen a puppy so small. Salt was another whopper like Voyager, but then Lentil and Clove were runts. There are only extremes here, apparently! Lentil in particular is really striking to me, a perfect combination of her parents. When I continue the line from here one day, it will be by finding her a match.

At the same time this litter was growing I started trying to train Voyager up for the show circuit. I'd never shown dogz before but had gotten inspired to look into it after spectating around RKC again.

Traveller & Odo
Focus years: 2020 - 2021

Our next true theme litter! Odo was a 2014 adoption from the RKC forum whom I named after the Star Trek: DS9 character of similarly unique visage, and Traveller is a reference to my deep and abiding love for No Man's Sky. Taken together, all their children would earn names relating to space travel or my favorite sci-fi video games.

Traveller was such an instant favorite of mine. Her hound-dog look was so different from every other pup in my family tree that I couldn't help but be fascinated. My plan to match her up with Odo almost failed when the two of them decided to hate each other when Traveller got older, but I found a tip on the forums that suggested packing the Toy Closet area with perfume and plopping the dogz in there for a while. I'd never influenced a match like this before -- every other time any two dogz didn't get along, I'd changed my plans accordingly -- but I'd also never seen two dogz who liked each other in puppyhood suddenly turn enemies. It felt like I was correcting a glitch more than changing my dogz' personalities. And it worked!

Here was where I really settled into feeling like five was the best maximum number for litters in my natural lines. And Endeavor arrived just in time, as Odo really made me love bulldogs and I was looking forward to his puppies inheriting his looks. It remains to be seen if any of these puppies have inherited Odo's bulldog personality. Fingers crossed!

All of these pups look so unique that I feel several of them will eventually have families of their own.