Latest news with #Reiff
IOL News
22-07-2025
- General
- IOL News
Family adopts shelter dog and discovers he is the father of their late pet
A side-by-side comparison of Rufus and Ziggy. Jillian Reiff adopted Rufus in 2016. After he died in April, she and her daughter stumbled upon an adoption post about Ziggy on Facebook. They recently discovered through a DNA test that Ziggy is Rufus's father. Image: Jillian Reiff/The Washington Post Jillian Reiff and her husband had an ongoing debate about their new rescue dog, Ziggy. Ziggy's appearance and personality are similar to those of their late dog, Rufus, who died a few days before they brought Ziggy home in early April. Reiff thought Ziggy was the same breed mix as Rufus - rat terrier Chihuahua - while her husband wasn't convinced. So to settle the debate, Reiff submitted a DNA test for Ziggy, just as she had done for Rufus. But when the results came in June 26, she was so shocked, Reiff stood up and screamed. 'I had a verbal outburst,' said Reiff, who lives in San Francisco. The DNA test confirmed that Ziggy was not just the same mixed breed as Rufus. He was Rufus's father. 'I'm still so flabbergasted,' Reiff said. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Rufus wearing a tux on Reiff's wedding day. Image: Jillian Reiff/The Washington Post Rufus joined Reiff's family in 2016, after she and her husband adopted him from the San Francisco SPCA. At the time, Reiff and her husband - then her boyfriend - had just moved in together. Rufus carried her engagement ring around his neck when her husband proposed and was in their wedding photos. When Reiff was pregnant with their first child, Rufus regularly curled up by her belly. 'That dog was like my soul dog,' said Reiff, who has two children, Maya, 6, and Ben, 4. 'He was the most social dog ever, loved meeting people, being the centre of attention,' she said. 'But at home, when the kids came, that was his true meaning for being here. He took his job as protector so very seriously.' Rufus checking in on Ben when he was a newborn in 2020. Image: Jillian Reiff/The Washington Post Rufus died unexpectedly in April. Although he was a senior dog - around 16 years old - he still acted like a puppy, even at the end of his life, Reiff said. But one day, out of nowhere, Rufus stopped acting like himself, and his family learned he had a ruptured gallbladder. 'Given his age and the nature of that condition, there were no options,' Reiff said. The family took the loss hard. The same night, April 5, Reiff and her daughter were scrolling through the social media pages of local shelters. 'We always look at dogs on social media - dogs that need fosters, dogs that are up for adoption,' said Reiff, who has long been active in the rescue community. She has fostered dozens of pups over the years, including 18 since Christmas. Rufus lived to be about 16 and acted like a puppy even at the end of his life. Image: Jillian Reiff/The Washington Post Maya paused when she saw a dog on Muttville Senior Dog Rescue's Facebook page, as he looked strikingly similar to Rufus. She showed Reiff. 'When I looked at the phone, I thought she had just gotten into my photo album,' Reiff said. 'I could pull out a thousand pictures of Rufus that look exactly like the one that was on Ziggy's adoption page.' Reiff felt she wasn't ready to bring home another dog, but she couldn't shake Ziggy's face from her mind 'I emailed Muttville and was like, 'I need to meet this dog,'' Reiff said. Sure enough, Reiff went to the San Francisco shelter to meet Ziggy on April 9, and 'we adopted him within 10 minutes of meeting him,' she said. Jillian Reiff with Rufus, whom she called her 'soul dog. Image: Jillian Reiff/The Washington Post Reiff quickly realized that Ziggy acted like Rufus. 'They're both just very, very easygoing, very happy, very gentle and child-friendly,' she said. They also have similar quirks. 'Both of them talk and kind of warble and make these really ridiculous non-dog-sounding noises to communicate,' Reiff said. 'I used to think it was the most unique thing that Rufus did.' Like Rufus, Ziggy also sits up on his hind legs, sleeps on his back and, despite having many dog beds in their home, inexplicably rests in spots that look uncomfortable, including in the garage. Still, she had no expectation that Ziggy, who is thought to be about 16, could be related to Rufus - let alone be his father. Reiff often tests the DNA of her dogs - including fosters - to gain clarity on their breeds and health. When she saw that Embark, a dog DNA company, was having a sale, she decided it was time to test Ziggy. She had tested Rufus using Embark as well. The photo Reiff and her daughter saw on Muttville Senior Dog Rescue's Facebook page. Image: Muttville Senior Dog Rescue/The Washington Post Reiff swabbed Ziggy's cheeks and sent back his saliva in a test tube. When the results came in, it showed Ziggy's two primary breeds, and 'there was another tab right next to it that said 'Relatives,'' Reiff said. 'I had never seen the relatives tab pop up … I was like, 'Maybe there's a long-lost cousin.'' She clicked on it and saw that Rufus's profile was labeled as 'child match.' It showed they had 68 percent shared DNA. Reiff could not believe her eyes - the two dogs were adopted nine years apart from different shelters. 'It's hard for me to make sense of it,' Reiff said. 'I keep thinking, if my daughter hadn't seen that picture at that exact moment, the algorithm of Facebook probably would have panned her another dog and I would have never seen that dog.' The discovery was initially bittersweet for Reiff's husband. 'The first realization and emotion that he had was to say, 'I'm so happy, but I'm also just so sad that there was this very small window where if we had seen this Muttville posting even 24 hours earlier, they could have been reunited,' Reiff said. Rufus on neighbourhood watch with Maya Image: Jillian Reiff/The Washington Post Before long, though, they began to see Ziggy's familial connection to Rufus as something to help them through their grief. 'In three months, he basically made us feel like he was here with Rufus the entire time,' Reiff said. Muttville Senior Dog Rescue shared the discovery on social media, and people were stunned. The story was first reported by San Francisco's ABC7. 'Nothing has blown me away as much as this story,' said Sherri Franklin, who founded the rescue for senior dogs in 2007. 'It is truly serendipitous, kismet. The universe works in mysterious ways.' 'Here is a family who's grieving and now has its second chance at a soulmate dog,' she continued. 'We all wish for that when our animal passes away.' In a statement, Embark called it 'a DNA discovery that defied all odds.' Ziggy arrived at Muttville a few months ago, after he was found as a stray in March. Since discovering Ziggy's relation to Rufus, Reiff has looked into Ziggy's background, and all she has found was a medical record at the SPCA dated a few weeks after they adopted Rufus. Rufus resting on the frame of the couch. Image: Jillian Reiff/The Washington Post Rufus had been adopted and surrendered by several other families. Reiff is still trying to figure out whether Rufus and Ziggy were in the same home at some point or whether they overlapped at the shelter. Or possibly neither. 'We're trying so hard to untangle this, and we keep hitting dead ends to connect that first part of their lives and what happened,' she said. In any case, Reiff said she is grateful for the unexpected twist that has helped her family heal. 'It's more than a good ending,' she said. 'It's the craziest ending you could possibly script.'
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A Soviet spacecraft is set to fall back to Earth in the next week. Nobody knows where it will land.
A Soviet spacecraft that failed to launch to Venus is set to fall back to Earth in the next week. The Kosmos 482 capsule was built for Venus's brutal atmosphere, so it will likely survive Earth's. The capsule is unlikely to hit people or property, but there's a good chance of a huge fireball. A Soviet spacecraft that stalled on its way to Venus is about to fall back to Earth, space-debris trackers say, and nobody knows where it might land. Trackers think the object that's rapidly losing altitude in Earth's orbit is the Venus entry capsule from the Soviet Union's Kosmos 482 mission. That means it's a three-foot-wide, half-ton, titanium-encased sphere that was built to withstand a brutal plunge to the surface of Venus. Since Venus's atmosphere is nearly 100 times denser than Earth's and its surface is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit, this spacecraft is built tough. It's probably strong enough to survive the fall back to Earth without burning up in our atmosphere, according to Patricia Reiff, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. "It has a heat shield and it is also more dense than a lot of the normal space debris," Reiff told Business Insider. "The odds are very, very high that it will fall harmlessly to Earth, but there is that small percentage and so we certainly want to be alert." When, where, and how big the fireball will be Kosmos 482 was the last of a series of probes the Soviet Union launched to Venus in the 1960s and 70s. This one never made it out of Earth's orbit due to an engine malfunction. A still from the film "The Storming of Venus" depicts one of the Soviet Union's Venus missions, launched in 1969. Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The Venus entry capsule is the final piece of Kosmos 482 that's still hanging around. A large module from the mission and the upper stage of its rocket both fell into Earth's atmosphere uneventfully in the 1980s. Based on its current trajectory, experts expect the spacecraft will descend so low that it will succumb to the drag of Earth's atmosphere and plummet down sometime between May 7 and 13. It's too early to know where the Venus capsule will reenter Earth's atmosphere, much less where it will land. Most of the planet is water, so it's highly unlikely that the capsule will strike people or property. "I expect it'll have the usual one-in-several-thousand chance of hitting someone," Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks notable objects in orbit, wrote in a blog post in April. He added that, although the spacecraft is dense, it has no nuclear materials on board. "No need for major concern, but you wouldn't want it bashing you on the head," he added. As the capsule descends lower into the atmosphere, Reiff said NASA's orbital-debris trackers will be able to calculate the last few orbits it will make before falling. Then they'll have a range of places it might land. The spacecraft's plummet will be visible to anyone nearby as a big, beautiful fireball, according to Reiff. "A typical meteor is like a grain of sand. A normal fireball might be a marble. This is a meter across, so it's big," Reiff said. "It should be spectacular." Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
07-05-2025
- Science
- Business Insider
A Soviet spacecraft is set to fall back to Earth in the next week. Nobody knows where it will land.
A Soviet spacecraft that stalled on its way to Venus is about to fall back to Earth, space-debris trackers say, and nobody knows where it might land. Trackers think the object that's rapidly losing altitude in Earth's orbit is the Venus entry capsule from the Soviet Union's Kosmos 482 mission. That means it's a three-foot-wide, half-ton, titanium-encased sphere that was built to withstand a brutal plunge to the surface of Venus. Since Venus's atmosphere is nearly 100 times denser than Earth's and its surface is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit, this spacecraft is built tough. It's probably strong enough to survive the fall back to Earth without burning up in our atmosphere, according to Patricia Reiff, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. "It has a heat shield and it is also more dense than a lot of the normal space debris," Reiff told Business Insider. "The odds are very, very high that it will fall harmlessly to Earth, but there is that small percentage and so we certainly want to be alert." When, where, and how big the fireball will be Kosmos 482 was the last of a series of probes the Soviet Union launched to Venus in the 1960s and 70s. This one never made it out of Earth's orbit due to an engine malfunction. The Venus entry capsule is the final piece of Kosmos 482 that's still hanging around. A large module from the mission and the upper stage of its rocket both fell into Earth's atmosphere uneventfully in the 1980s. Based on its current trajectory, experts expect the spacecraft will descend so low that it will succumb to the drag of Earth's atmosphere and plummet down sometime between May 7 and 13. It's too early to know where the Venus capsule will reenter Earth's atmosphere, much less where it will land. Most of the planet is water, so it's highly unlikely that the capsule will strike people or property. "I expect it'll have the usual one-in-several-thousand chance of hitting someone," Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks notable objects in orbit, wrote in a blog post in April. He added that, although the spacecraft is dense, it has no nuclear materials on board. "No need for major concern, but you wouldn't want it bashing you on the head," he added. As the capsule descends lower into the atmosphere, Reiff said NASA's orbital-debris trackers will be able to calculate the last few orbits it will make before falling. Then they'll have a range of places it might land. The spacecraft's plummet will be visible to anyone nearby as a big, beautiful fireball, according to Reiff. "A typical meteor is like a grain of sand. A normal fireball might be a marble. This is a meter across, so it's big," Reiff said. "It should be spectacular."
