Name: Kaede

Gender: Female
Breed: Akita Inu

Parents: Riki and unknown purebreed female
Siblings: Aka and several other siblings; Ginand his brothers (half)
Mate: None
Pups: None

Personality:  She's calm and keept to herself. As a pet dog she could be described as smart and obedient. Some may think that her quiet behavior means that she's easy to manipulate, but that's completely oposite. She's intelligent and unusualty quick to analyze other people (and dogs) and the situations around her. She may appear rather emotionless and cruel sometimes because she tends to judge things by oportunities rather than being driven by empathy. Being a result of a selected breeding - she realizes that her blood familly doesn't really care about her and she doesn't really mind it. She did like to keep in touch with her siblings and parents (sometimes succesfuly), but she understand that being loyal to someone just because they are related to you can be decieving, so she lets actions speak rather than rumors and so-called traditions. That's why she's rather quiet - she doesn't like to brag about her ancestry to make others respect her and she hates when someone else is doing it.

Story:

Kaede was born in Higashinaruse to a famous bear dog Riki and a selected purebreed female hunting dog. She was a bigh and strong pup, but obviously she didn't fit into Takeda Gohei's standards for a good bear dog since she was a female, so out of her siblings the old man took one of her brothers - Aka.
Kaede was sold to a hunter from the same village and she quickly became an excelent hound. While most of her siblings were taken away all around Japan, she was able to stay where she was born with her father and brother. Kaede visited Aka and comforted him during his harsh training (when no one was looking, of course). She was regulary visiting her brother and she also made friends with the other young bearhound - Don.

She heard about Akakabuto's return as well as the birth of her half-siblings, but she didn't really care at this time. However, as soon as she hard the tragic news about gohei's hunting party, she broke away just to find Aka and Don's freezing corpses in the forest and no sign of Riki and Gohei. While dead humans were taken away by rescue party, nobody cared about the dogs, so Kaede buried their bodies, paying them the final respect.

Soon the bears became a threat to all hunters and villagers. Dogs started disapearing to join a mysterious pack in the mountains. Kaede and her owner could no longer safely hunt in a deep forest, but Kaede was often wandering alone just to bring some small animals home. She met some of these wild dogs and even offered her help in taking down the bears that were also a bother to her, but since she didn't want to leave her owner permanently for the sake of dogs she didn't know, she was shoved away as unworthy and sent back home.
 

Ginga relation: Daughter of Riki, sister to Aka.