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Just days after saying goodbye to their cherished dog Rufus, the Reiff family from Alameda, California, found themselves facing an extraordinary coincidence that would lead to a discovery no one could have predicted.
Rufus, a rat terrier–Chihuahua mix adopted in 2016 from the San Francisco SPCA, had been with Jillian Reiff and her husband through every major moment of their lives, from their engagement and wedding to the births of their children, Maya and Benjamin.
“He was involved in our proposal. He was involved in our wedding. He was literally dressed up in a little tuxedo,” Jillian told The Dodo. “The minute both kids arrived, that was his primary focus: my children,” she said. At the age of 15, Rufus passed away suddenly in April due to gallbladder failure. The grief that followed was, in Jillian’s words, “gut-wrenching.”
That very night, while scrolling through rescue profiles to ease her daughter's sadness, Jillian came across an image that stopped her in her tracks. Maya had pointed out a photo of a dog on Muttville Senior Dog Rescue’s Instagram page.
“Mom, look, it looks like Rufus,” she said. At first glance, Jillian thought she was looking at one of her own photos. The resemblance was uncanny. “I literally just agonized over that photo for another 24 hours. I could not get that picture out of my head,” Jillian said.
While she had sworn they weren’t ready for another dog, something drew her to this senior dog, later named Ziggy. Within four days of losing Rufus, the family visited the San Francisco-based shelter.
Ziggy’s entrance was surreal. “It was like watching my dog — my dog that I’ve had for the past almost a decade of my family’s life — trotting right into the middle of Muttville,” she recalled.
Ziggy jumped into the car, walked into the Reiffs' home, and made himself comfortable like he had always lived there. The emotional weight lifted almost immediately. “He felt like a gift,” Jillian told What’s The Jam.
“Seeing his happy face reminded us so much of our beloved boy. It brought peace to a house that had been crying for days.” But it wasn’t just Ziggy’s appearance that reminded them of Rufus, it was everything. His behaviors mirrored Rufus’s, howling like a wolf, greeting the kids each morning, and even dragging blankets over his head at night.
“The way they approach the kids, the way they talk, howl, everything about them was the same,” Jillian said. She remembered that she had DNA tested Rufus years ago, and decided to do the same for Ziggy, just to see.
The results shocked the family. Ziggy wasn’t just a similar mix. He was a 50/50 Chihuahua and rat terrier, just like Rufus. But when Jillian checked the “relatives” tab on the Embark DNA report, it confirmed something unimaginable, Ziggy was Rufus’s biological father.
“I screamed. I screamed at my job in my conference room. I almost passed out,” she told PEOPLE. “There is no science I can find to explain this, only kismet.”
Jillian had adopted Rufus nine years earlier from the San Francisco SPCA. Ziggy, now a senior, had recently been found as a stray and brought to Muttville, both rescues located in the same city. Despite the years apart, fate had brought father and son back to the same doorstep.
Ziggy now spends his days lounging beside Maya and Benjamin, just like his son Rufus once did. “I think he knows he was always meant to be here,” Jillian said. “He knows that he’s in the right place.”