The World According To Leah

Being the popular one

2012-01-31T00:49:00.000+01:00

When Roy get home from work, Leah know it will be his & hers special play time - NO MATTER how tired any of them are. She allow him time to eat, but the minute he settle down for 5 minutes of resting, she fetch the whatever toy that catch her fancy, preferable something with a good squeak sound to it, something she can stick up to his ear, as close as she can come and then give it a good chew or 2 - or 5 for good measurement. This particular Kong toy is one of the favorite, even though the squeak have been killed of a loooooong time and 100's of chew' ago. I guess it is because it is easy to use for play catch :o)

When I posted this pic on our FB page, it didn't take long before others saw the potential in it and made it into Leah being a Rock Star!

There haven't been so many walks in the forest for us after Christmas, mainly because my car was stuck in the garage for a few weeks. But we got a few very nice trips anyway. One with Marit and her Yksi. I'm amazed how well Leah adjust to the fact that Yksi don't know how to play boxer (a lot of pawing). We sort of hope there are going to be more of those walks... Marit and I managed to make a 90 minute walk into a 2,5 hour walk... giggle

And then there was a very nice walk with Roy's cousin, Hilde and their new puppy, Dennis. Gosh he is a cute little boy. I had my hands full so never got around to get any pictures of that one. But I guess there will be other opportunities for pictures later on.

Leah have figured out the new couch - yes, she can still lay in her spot to watch what is going on in the garden, in the evening, even though the back pillows are very different from what she is use to.

Last Saturday I was helping out on the annual puppy show our local boxer club throw each January. A lot of cute puppies and a lot of nice people...

And we had a great help in cleaning up when we were finished with the day. I guess Frost think sour cream is God's gift to dogs :o)

Being in January, the weather have started to turn cold - even though so far, we have been rather lucky with mostly just a little bit of frost. Which is a good thing since there it was a windy end of the month. On those rather cold and windy days (the wind-chill is killing us, even though the temp have only been a few below zero Celsius) Leah think it is heaven to snuggle up with her toys for a nap under the fluffy blanket we bought to match the new couch...

We went to get the car made "legal" for the road for the next 2 years, the bi-annual status check up, everyone is required to do.. No one can complain with a customer service that involve a 25 minute dog pet session. Yes, Leah ended up just laying there like a puddle. That was HOW nice she thought everything was... being quite the popular one !

You know you have done a great job

2012-01-17T23:50:00.000+01:00

When you find your boxer girl fast asleep, snoring like there is no tomorrow...

It was a very nice day so we ended up walking 8 km - in the neigborhood. After 6 km, Leah was worn out from all the doggie newspaper reading so I guess she really needed the early evening.

Winter Wonderland, Christmas & Such Events

2012-01-16T23:49:00.001+01:00

December always seem to be a very booring month for Leah. Not enough time to do all the stuff everyone want to do.
At least the snow came so it got more easy for the loop walks in the forest. Frost came very late this year, so our usual very nice bog walks in the late fall without getting too wet, never occurred. But that didn't really matter much. When snow came around they marked up the skiing trails and we were all ready set for some nice, yet not too cold walks.

We finally got to use the search line for what it was meant to, as Leah have perfected her nose toward the deers during this summer. With that on her, I never have to worry that she'll just take off on me if she happen to cross something particularly interesting, yet she'll be able to run loose... with 10 meter worth of leash that is trailing after her, it is more easy to get hold of her fast if I need to.
Not that I have had much to worry about. The day she found the fresh scent of a deer, she made it pretty clear that she REALLY, REALLY wanted to run after the poor thing to check it out, but still she stayed with me. I was so very proud of her.

In between the walks, Leah proved herself to be an able kitchen help. Always there, ready to wash the floor if I happened to drop some of the cookie dough while baking - did I mention, she really love my cooking ?
Man, it is Niagara Falls that starts up, the second she think there might be - just might - something in it for her. She is not a slobberface, but when it comes to a homecooked meal, she'll fit perfectly in with Pavlov's dog. It have gone so bad, that we barely have to even mention anything verbally and she'll get it going.

Actually, my girl have turned into - sort of - a food monster. It is not all sort of food groups, it is only toward specific items. Kibble are NOT a preferred item, never have - and I guess - never will be.
I have never really been a fan of kibble - no matter what type and for the longest time I have been more interested in looking into a more natural way to feed Leah, even though kibble will be at least a part of her diet. When traveling and being on the cabin it is not practical with frozen raw food - so she need to get at least some dry food. Beside, it help keep her teeth clean and healthy.
I stumbled over some raw frozen food at one of the pet stores - and got interested because one of the varieties was with salmon - there is nothing better according to Leah, than salmon.
So I brought some home to see what she thought of it. She loved it and since the store had several different types of this raw food from a place called Vom & Hundemat, it wasn't hard to start feeding her this in the morning. In the evening, she still get her boiled egg and her fish cakes.
Her bowl of kibble usually stand there right next to her fresh food - untouched. She might leave it there for up to 5 days before she decide she is hungry enough that she find it interesting.

The morning ritual....
Leah is a snuggle bug. She might start her night sleeping on the couch or in her crate or on cold evenings, she'll do her darnest to get under the wood stove. It won't take long though, before she find her way into the bedroom and under the covers. Usually by morning, I'll find myself halfway covered with a 35 kg dog, who think it is her right to share my pillow with me.

The hilarious part is the fact that she'll stay in bed until she hear me prepare her breakfast - then she'll come running tail held high, Niagara Falls running, so anxious to get her breakfast that she can hardly wait for me to put down the bowl. And she won't come out of the dish to take a breath before it is empty. She'll come back to check to see if more food magically appears in her dish - leaving her kibble just sitting there, unnoticed and untouched.

I can' say enough good things about the raw food. After I started feeding this to her - not only does I have a dog who think breakfast is the best thing invented. It is very seldom I notice her having an upset stomach, she poop maybe 2 times a day (a habit from when we housebroke her - eat, then go potty) and it really isn't that much to pick up after her.
But the best of it all - is how nice soft and shiny her fur have become. No more dry and itchy skin!

To make it more easy on the humans, gifts where "tossed" under the Christmas tree as they entered the house through out December. I can do this because Leah know that she is not allowed to just take things that are not specifically given to her or put into her toybox. Even the gifts that was for her, with treats inside - with one exception!
She fetched a gift and brought it to her favorite spot and was about to open it when Roy caught her in the act. I couldn't help but laugh because not only had she found a gift that was indeed for her - so apparently our girl know to read her own name. I knew what was inside - and it wasn't edible stuff!
Where the gift tag went, I'll never know though.....

Christmas eve came around, with 3 humans and no other children around, but Leah - we was in for a nice and quiet evening. With a very nice dinner and then there was the matter of giving out the gifts. Leah have made gift opening into perfection and she was more than willing to help the rest of us out, if she thought we was in need of a paw or a tooth to get that paper of fast enough.
The best thing about Leah, she get's happy with anything she gets and it never stop amaze me just how excited over a gift she will be.
The toy she got from her breeder at bexma was such a hit that she brought it with her when it was time to sleep...

New Years Eve was spend with good friends at their cabin - and with Birk.

Come on Birk - wanna play ?

To sum up the year of 2011 in a few lines...
Leah and I have walked an avarage of 5.5 km when we have been out and about, wich my sports tracker program on the cell phone sum it up to 1100 km in total. Which is pretty darn good if you ask me!
We have gained a lot of new friends - and lost a few, both to the Rainbow Bridge and over disagreements - the last bit is just plain stupid if you ask me, but since I have no business telling people what they can or can't think, feel or say - that was not my call. To be honest - I'm both sad and a bit relived at the same time..
And I'm happy to say that we are starting the new year with Birk still among us. They old boy have a very special and very dear place in our heart and I hope he will be around for a long time to come !

Thanks for the year of 2011 - greetings to the year 2012...
The plan for the new year - have a lot of fun with Leah, see if we can perfect the mushroom hunting and maybe loose a few pounds.. ;-)

Mummy, mummy, mummy ! It is snowing..

2011-12-20T01:02:00.003+01:00

We were blessed with a mild October and November, which gave us the opportunity for some nice walks in new surroundings. Well, not completely new as we did explore around Stavsjøen while Leah was still a itty bitty puppy. The walk around the lake itself is 4 km, so not a particularly long walk, but since the weather was rather wet, our normal fall walks was delayed since the bog simply was way too wet for my liking. It won't help with state of the art wellington boots, if you are still wading around in mud up to your hip. Snow didn't show up until mid- December, which is a good thing in my book as I'm not too keen on the white stuff..

I hurt my back so it became hard to get our daily walk and playtime. Binni came for a visit for a few days to both dogs amusement. I have a feeling Binni really love being here, even though she "have" to play with the goofy boxer, weather or not she want to. At least Leah didn't have to go through the entire box of toys to find something to Binni's liking as both remembered how much fun it was with the Kong Wubba I got for Leah in Phoenix this summer.

Even though Leah might not be the best sport when it comes to share the food, but see nothing wrong in lending out her down comforter, blanket or toys. Which is a pretty good thing since Binni thought it was the perfect place to sleep when she discovered the down comforter.

Have you ever heard of Limber Tail ?

Me neither. Not until Leah's tail was just hanging there. Literally limb. I first noticed something wrong when we went for a walk. Binni was with us and the weather wasn't particularly nice, but not really that cold either.
I didn't think much of it - mostly because it had been some crazy few weeks with hormones going crazy (again) and Leah was in the middle yet another false pregnancy. But when we came back home from the walk and she cried out with pain when Roy happened to touch her tail, I just knew we had to get it checked out - preferably right away.
When the vet told me it was what we here in Norway call "Water tail", apparently they see it a lot after dogs have been taking a swim in cold water, I was just standing there looking dumb. No Leah hadn't been taking a swim for a couple of weeks, but she had spend the day before rumping the garden for a few hours to spend some excess energy. And to be honest, it hadn't been pleasant weather, but that was the best my back could do. But never in my wildest imagination had I envisioned that the playtime would give that result.
The vet send us home with steroids and the warning "she will build up an appetite because of them"... boy, was he right about that. I can't remember the last time Leah actually emptied out a dish of kibble and then asked for more.
So while she ate her way through some extra bowls of kibble, I was googling "water tail" and learned that it is more commonly referred to as "limber tail". I also learned that I should better take extra care to make sure Leah wouldn't be cooled down when we were out for a little while, just as a precaution, so not to trigger the swelling around the nerves to flare up again. Because a boxer with a tail that are just hanging there is just plain wrong. We have over the last 2 years grown so used to be able to read Leah's mood by watching her tail, that it was like loosing one or several senses...

Now the climate changer from ruffwear came in very handy ! That coat is fitting her like a glove and she actually love it!

Leah have - well, let's just admit it - she is spoiled rotten when it come to toys in various sizes and variety. Stuffed animals and ball's - preferable with some sort of sound are high on her list of often sought out and played hard with, toys. And when she finally give in for the day, the livingroom are littered with with whatever she have fancied to play with on that particular day

But no matter how many toys she already have, she still get overly excited when we bring home something new. This rubber ball that come complete with a nice squeak AND a tail, turned out to be a major hit. So much that I spend nearly 3 weeks searching petstores for another one. Because, Leah play hard with her things so most of them don't last very long and the sorrow at display when something that she really fancy, break... well. I have learned that when we find something she really like, I better have to get at least an extra of that particular toy. This one, we won at the Christmas meeting in the boxer club :o)

We haven't spend much time with Bastian this fall. Ok let's face it - as a matter of fact, we haven't seen them for some time.. sad, yes ! Do I have a clue to what it is that is going on ? No.

But we have had the pleasure of getting to know other 4-legged, playful and very nice dogs - and their equally nice owners. So it have been some very nice play dates at Midtsand on several occasions.

Leah is reducing a venison hip bone to nothing left, enjoying it very much!!

Mummy, mummy, mummy!! it is snowing. Come out and play with me !

It is odd to think that this toy dog - not only have it lasted Leah's entire life. It was actually bigger than her when we got her home! Now it is barely the size of her head and she love to snuggle up with it for a nap.

Gorgeous Fall

2011-11-08T00:04:00.000+01:00

Leah finally figured out how to play with the new ball to get the treats out of it..

It might have been a rather cold and wet summer, but I don't think anyone in their right mind can find anything to complain about when it comes to gorgeous fall weather here in Trøndelag. Mostly it have been pretty mild, not too rainy - a drizzle have never killed anyone and we have even had long periods with temperatures with 2 digits and SUN - oh, we can't forget the nice and sunny days.

Leah have even figured out that it really IS a big deal to use that nose of hers to help me in the mushroom hunt and on several occasions, she have been the one that discovered the precious chantarelles hidden under bushes or beneath the moss. We still have a long way to go and we might never get the hang of it completely. But you have to start somewhere, right ?

Taking a rest stop with hot cocoa and sweet rolls on a rainy Sunday afternoon - in the middle of the blueberry field.

Leah sneaked into the car seat of my dad's car, instead of staying on the floor. It is so much more fun to be able to watch out the window at all the things we're passing, instead of not being able to see anything

On facebook there is a dog group for people living in the Malvik area. This picture is from when we met up with other dogs and their humans for a playdate.

Hønstad marka on a gorgeous sunny Saturday in October.

Leah love to fish for rocks in the stream...

Stavsjøen in November

The first frost is here. The light on the mid November Friday afternoon was so inviting that it was perfect for pictures. Fjølstadtrøa on Leistad.

Yada, yada, yada..... better late than never, right ?

2011-10-06T00:44:00.003+02:00

This video deserve a place in the spotlight. Watching Bastian engage Leah in this particular play situation was priceless !!

We haven't seen nearly enough of Bastian this summer and early fall - our schedule haven't co-existed with Grete and Bastian's too much, but we did manage to have some fairly nice walks with berry and mushroom picking. And Grete was kind enough so show me 2 new types of mushroom to go look for - much to Roy's delight ! So this fall we have picked not only blueberries and lingonberries - but also 3 different types of mushroom (more about this later).

I never imagined that the daily walk with Leah really meant that much to my well-being. physically or mentally. Guess I was very wrong about that.
In mid August I was scheduled for surgery, which would prevent me from being able to take the daily walk in the forest with Leah - without assistance, or a charparone if that word pleases you better, for at least 4 - 6 weeks. In reality that was EXACTLY what it was - someone who had to make sure that I didn't overdo stuff - and didn't hold Leah on a leash that would risk to knick my stitches. A thing that turned out to be harder than even I expected it to be. Less than a week after surgery, I told Roy I wanted to tag along for the Sunday walk in the forest. Halfway through the walk, Roy started to wonder how I felt, because I started to look rather pale. The truth is that, no I didn't feel OK - but gosh... I was thrilled to be outside the HOUSE as i was more than sick and tired of watching TV all day long - not to mention the sudden need to start reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga all over again. That was after Roy's dad had been so very kind to have Leah for a week. I asked him to bring her back home to me, because I felt miserable not having her around.

And then the dog park opened in Trondheim...

I think the best - and ONLY way to describe the dog park is to say it is Adventure Island for dogs ! As long as there is no more than 8 - 10 dogs there, Leah is good to go, but the evening with 30 some dogs - I think she slept for 2 full days. Just way too many dogs to play and have fun with. She simply couldn't decide to whom she really wanted to play with. It was system overload, big time !
We met Tharo, a humongous but Oh, so loveable! German Shepard and his human family - and Leah instantly gained a new friend. Not only does she go bonkers the second she spot Tharo, she will make knots on herself if it means she'll get a chance to cuddle up with Tharo's humans as well :o)

When we come home after a trip to the dog park Leah most of all resemble a wet rag, and usually I don't "see" much of her for the rest of the day, which is - well, sort of a new experience. She is simply done with her day and just want to be left alone...
If not curled up in the bed or on the couch, and if we really insist for her to move, we end up with situations like this..... like she is really telling me to just go away and come back later.

We had to stay away from the park for a couple of week because Leah got tricked into an early heat. It didn't last more than barely 2 weeks, so I guess we'll have another - and real one - in just a few weeks time... sigh !

The mushroom hunting:
With the rather wet and in general humid summer now everything is perfect for picking mushroom in the forest. It is not a sport for the faint hearted and you need to make sure that you really ARE picking what you mean to pick - and not just something because they look pretty or look similar to something you think might be the right one..
We have several great types of mushroom that will make a common dinner into perfection - and then there is the matter of some very poisonous mushroom, that will make you very sick - and some can actually kill you.

Some of the most common is the chantarellus mushrooms - There is several different types of the chantarelles, but I know - and have found 2 - maybe 3 (2 of them look very much alike)

The regular chantarelle is the one most people know about. I find it mostly by smell. They have a delicious fresh sweet lemony smell :o)

Then there is another one, the Craterellus tubaeformis ... these have a more earthy smell that blend in more with the rest of the smells in the forest. But right now it don't matter that it is more hard to smell these, because the forest exploded with them a few weeks back. I talk millions and if I want, and was able to, I could pick 20 kg in one trip to the forest.
The last one of these is Cantharellus aurora

These last ones can be mistake with another - and very poisonous mushroom, the Cortinarius rubellus - and more pictures of it here. The freezer is full so I had to start dry them and store them in big jars - and still I'm not done picking..

Another type of mushroom that I am willingly picking - this one for my dad as he LOVE them, is the Hydnum repandum. It really is a very neat looking mushroom with "spikes" all over the underside of the top.

I'm so terible overdue with this posting, Leah turned 2 years old on September 18th. But I do have a good reason this year for keeping things to a minimum. My energy are currently being mostly used to take Leah for her walks - to keep her AND me happy and sane. The rest of the time, I'm still dealing with an infection I got after the surgery...

Oh, well, My gal turned 2 and from one day to the next we had a personality transformation - again !!
Now I'm actually admitting that I sort of miss when she bounced me out of bed 4 am in the morning, ready for the day as a bouncy ball on speed.
She sleep til 10 am and then she barely go to her dish to eat breakfast and after a incredible fast potty stop in the garden, she can not get back to the bed fast enough, to sleep for another 2 - 3 hours. I mean - come on !
For a while I was worried that she was sick, but the vet checked when we went in to get a broken tooth removed and say that she is just fine, so I guess it is the famous 2 year mark that have done it's work...

Oh, a gift for me ?

Leah love balls and even though this one don't have sound, and she still haven't figured it out completly - she have to work on it to get the treats out, she really looooooove her new ball

As the favorite toys is the ones that comes with a squeaky sound, she of course had to get one of those as well. It is a pure joy to give her a gift because no matter what, she always get thrilled over getting something new. I guess it is time for me to get her a bigger toybox, since the one she have indeed start to look like it could explode any minute :o)

And then to some terrible sad news. We just received the news that our vet died this weekend. My deepest sympathy goes to his wife and family, who were also his co-workers at Strinda Smådyrklinikk. Ingolf and his son Harald have always taken the best care of their "customers". He will be deeply missed, I'm sure.

Back home

2011-08-25T14:26:00.000+02:00

While we were exploring Arizona, Utah and Nevada, Leah spend her summer vacation with Roy's parents at the cabin, being spoiled rotten and having a great time. I'm very grateful that Roy's parents are willing to help us out in such a way, since we then know that Leah are being taken good care of when we are not around.

When our vacation was over, I headed back home to Norway alone, while Roy went to Florida to work there for 4 weeks.

It was very nice to see Leah again, and I have a feeling that I missed her more than she missed me. I have to admit that I don't really enjoy being away from her for an extended time.

With 4 weeks ahead of us, where it was only the 2 of us, I had to get creative when it came to spend Leah's excess energy. So it was time to start exploring places we hadn't been before. Hilde (Roy's cousin) and her youngest son, joined us for a walk along the Humla river one day. Markus is such a great kid and not even the rain could force a complaint out of him.

The annual Boxer show was held at Rødde and even though I'm not that much into the dog shows, we had to attend to show support the local boxer club :o)

It was a fun day and we met a lot of nice people and wonderful dogs. There is just that extra super special thing about being around a lot of boxers. Leah came back home with a nice review and a blue ribbon to show for it - but more important for me, she showed that she have grown up so much over the last year. All 4 paws was mostly on the ground, and she was relaxed and well adjusted around all the other dogs and their humans. I was even able to dog a training session in obedience with her, where I had her undivided attention the entire time ! And that is a feat in it self since she can be a scatterbrain who want to check out everything and everyone and do everything all at once.
Roy's dad joined us for the day, showing Leah for me. I'm the scatterbrain when it comes to the show ring and are more likely to mess up, so it was nice that Sven was willing to help us out :o)

Leah's dad, Flashmann's Gerdt with his owner Linda. It's been a while since we saw him the last time so it was very nice to get another chance :o)

Some friends of us was going on vacation and asked if their dog, Binni (Kyi Leo) could spend a few weeks with Leah and me. The first 24 hours was HECTIC, but after the initial novelty wore off, Binni and Leah figured out that it was a lot of fun spending time together. Leah enjoyed the extended visit and went out of her way to figure out ways to get Binni to play with her and by the end of each day I had to make a round in the garden to pick up all the toys from Leah's toybox, that was littering the lawn.

It took a few days before Leah found toys that was to Binni's liking, but after that it was fair game, where both dogs invited each other to a game of Tug'o'war...

My biggest worry was how to have both of them with me at the same time on the daily walk, but it turned out that I was worrying for nothing. Leah got a new and better fitting head harness and then we was ready to go.

Doggy madness day... Monica came for dinner visit, and of course Zita and Bella, her 2 chihuahua came along. Zita is a bit on the defensive side when it comes to other dogs around Bella, but before long Bella had engaged Leah in a hectic chasing game that went between the livingroom and the garden. Boy that girl can run fast !! I would have loved to get the play on tape, but they were far to fast for us to be able to get anything that wasn't just a blur.

Roy was supposed to come home July 23rd, but got stranded in New York for a while due to a missed connection. I guess it is fair to say that it is pretty obvious that Leah by the time was starting to miss him rather badly.

Leah with the toy fish she got from Jan and Camilla as a thank you for being such a good sport toward Binni for a couple of weeks.

Summer of 2011, part 6 "Williams & Grand Canyon"

2011-08-20T20:31:00.000+02:00

Can you imagine sleeping in an old train - and it is a romantic thing ? Well it is ! Roy had been stressing out when he couldn't find available hotels in Williams. It didn't dawn on us that there might be something special going on. Sp after a while he started to search outside the box and found The Canyon motel & RV park. So we spend the night in an old railroad that had been turned into 3 hotel rooms. Very cool and very classy ! The place was located about 2 miles outside of Williams, so we decided to walk into town to find a place to eat and have a look around. We soon discovered the reason for the lack of hotel rooms in town, there was a rodeo going on - not the fancy smancy one either, but for the people who actually do work in the horse/cattle industry for a living. So we were in for a nice evening with people watching!

It soon became clear who was in the actual line of work and who was only there as a show off. I'm sad to announce that we met one other Norwegian guy in the local waterhole - and he stood out like a sore thumb, with his brand new shiny snake skin boots and his fancy jeans that was screaming out loud that he had spend big bucks on them. He thought he was the man of the evening, but in truth, he was ridiculed by several of the patrons in the bar... sort of make me sad to think about because he never realized this.

Roy got to try out some of the local beer types, but I was so full after dinner that I stuck to the good ole Budweiser so when we finally figured it would be time to find our way back to our train we was running on a buzz that made us wonder if we would be able to find our way back through the dark roads. Well, we found our way and by the time we hit the sack for the evening the buzz was mostly gone, which was a pretty good thing since we were in for an early start on the next day with a lot of ground to cover.

We started out the day with ditching the car for a while, because it is more easy to have a great look at Williams being on foot - the streets are mostly one-way's so if you miss your turn, you have to go around and come back, which is just time badly spend.

We decided to have breakfast/brunch at the "Twister 50's Soda fountain" which included their famous shakes with whatever flavor your heart desires and then it was time to hit the road toward Grand Canyon...

A lot have changed in Grand Canyon since our last visit, at least what we are aware of. Now they have put the shuttle buses into system so several places you are not allowed to use private vehicles, the visitor center have been upgraded and in general the entire national park have been getting a face lift.
We have visited Grand Canyon on 2 previous occasions, but never got so far that we explored below the rim, this was to change on this visit even though we knew that we wouldn't get the full shebang experience - not enough time and not nearly enough energy. We choose the South Kaibab trail. This is not a trail for the faint hearted as the trail is steep and the drop-of don't have a guard rail. Along the way down you'll be dazzled by the wonderful view over part of the canyon. Remember to bring enough water. The destination for the day would be Cedar ridge, a resting place a few hundred feet below the rim.

All in all we didn't go down very far - just a couple of hundred meters (about 900 feet), but the walk down and back up again took us 4 hours. But the view was worth the effort, even though I have to admit that I still like Bryce Canyon better - not as messy color a scheme.

We were very lucky with the weather. It was obvious that it was raining at the rim, but we didn't get one single drop of water. It was a rather cool day as well, or the hike wouldn't have been as pleasant as it was.

At Cedar Ridge we got a nice surprise - a squirrel greeted us and came to check if we had anything that could be shared (we didn't and it is illegal to feed the animals). I ended up having 2 of them crawling in my lap while they checked my purse. Very neat experience - I love their bushy tail and happy go lucky way of approaching life. These were not as big as some we have seen other places, but are bigger than the ones you'll find in Europe, still.

After a days hike in the Canyon, your shoes will look like this !

Summer of 2011, part 5 "Route 66"

2011-08-15T20:37:00.000+02:00

Can anyone say "Romance".... ?
Roy had planned another get-away for us, which started in Lake Havasu at Heat hotel where we got an upgrade and ended up in the biggest suite "Inferno suite 2" with a humongous bed with a tempur matress. I'm not a fussy person when it comes to hotel rooms. As long as the bath is clean and the bed is proper made up - and NO bed bugs are to be located, I'm a happy camper. But I think you would have to search a long time before finding a nicer bed to lay down in ! Yes, all the windows you can spot on the second floor belong to the suite we could call ours for the night!
The hotel are located on the shore of the lake (this part is a canal) with a direct view to London Bridge. Yes again, it is an actual bridge taken apart in London and moved to this place by an eccentric man with more money than he knew what to do with - so why, of course... spend some of them on a real bridge from London.

We have been visiting Lake Havasu before, back in 2005, right before Christmas and thought the place worth another visit :o)
Worth noting - the bridge look way more nice in Christmas decorations... no, they shouldn't have taken the lights off the palm trees the rest of the year, it added an extra flare to the place.
And I can't recommend Javalina Cantina for your dinner. First we thought the reason for the 30 min waiting line was because the place was so hugely popular and we would be in for a nice food experience, but soon learned that this place was more about quantity than quality with the result that for the first time in my life I got in trouble with an overly upset stomach the next day, that was after ditching half my dinner because the meat tasted funny. And the waiting line - it dawned on us that this was the only place open that wasn't a fast food shop, so no wonder there was a line for a table.

After a great night sleep we hit the road for another Route 66 experience. The best preserved part of Route 66 that haven't been converted into mostly I 40 (in AZ) are the western part, so we went up to Kingaman to wind our way through the Old Motherroad toward Williams that (for this trip) would be our end destination of the day.

First stop was Hackberry, once an old mining town, now a tourist trap :o) There is is still people living there, but they mostly dress up, or are selling a variety of artwork and mementos (mostly labeled made in China) for a living. And they look after the small family community of donkeys that are still living in the area. Their ancestors was used in the mines and was left to fend for them self.

Our Ride Extravaganza !! I just love the Ford Mustang and Roy is nice enough so he let me have my way when it comes to the car rental (well, my eyes might not be as big and as brown and beautiful as Leah's but I do know how to offer the right sort of begging behavior). This beauty can go from 0 - 70 mph in the time it takes to turn on the ramp until you hit the highway itself. Pretty darn fast and I LOVE IT!

In the area of Yampai you'll find Hackberry General Store. Why it is not located in or near Hackberry, I can't say for sure. But this is a MUST STOP AND VISIT place !

A little further down the old Mother Road we passed Seligman. this the real world of "Cars". And they sort of regained popularity after the movie ended up being so hugely popular, which in my humble opinion is a good thing. The last time we passed by in 2005, it was pretty much just a closed up sort of place...

By then the last daylight faded away pretty quickly and it was time to head toward Williams and find our "hotel" for the night...

Summer of 2011, part 4 "Las Vegas"

2011-08-09T23:58:00.001+02:00

How fittingly it turned out that Jay Leno had one of his Stand- up shows in Vegas just in time for us to be able to drive over and catch the show !
Man, he can talk both on inhale - AND exhale. It was non stop from the minute he entered the stage til the show ended a couple of hours later. Seeing him live was great and it was SO worth the drive over to LV.

Roy had managed to fix us a room on Luxor which was a hoot. But I have to admit that the hotel don't do as well in daylight as the magic sort of wear off then. And yes - the floor lean ! so it feels like you are pretty drunk when you walk from the elevator to your room. Nothing a huge beer won't fix, though :o)

After the show, we had time to go find a late dinner and stroll the Strip for a while, which was pretty nice. And we got a chance to catch up on some of the details at the various hotels, like these door handles I found at Mirage. Pretty awsome! I think they are made of polished petrified wood, but it might be marble... It don't really matter, they are just very cool :o)

And we had time to go have a look at the conservatory at Bellagio, which had changed a bit since my last visit. The green house was turned into an aviary - which made me sad and a bit angry. The poor birds didn't get their 12 hours of rest time since the light is on 24/7. Some still managed to adapt, but it was pretty obvious that several of the birds was pretty stressed out.

Things NOT to spend your time or money on in Vegas... the Las Vega Monorail !
First of all, we had to go from Luxor up to MGM to catch the monorail before the show with Jay Leno - we came to LV late so didn't really have the time to walk up to Mirage from Luxor. But man ! They really did their best to confuse people where to find the monorail station and the lack of signs and the number of misdirections was a huge bummer. And then, when we finally found the station we was put off with the fact that they wanted $5 for a ticket. That is insane ! The conclusion was that we would have been less stressed if we had been running from Luxor and all the way to Mirage, because of the amount of time we had spend winding our way through MGM.
And the sightseeing need to be done in the evening. The place hold far more magic when all the lights are turned on and not to be viewed in broad daylight. I can't remember the place was this run down the last time we visited back in 2008. Make sure to have change in your pocket.. even though there is a lot of beggars there who is there for the suckers - there is bound to be at least one who will be really grateful for the hand-out !

It was an all time high to spend the night on Luxor - too bad Roy missed out of the chance of catching a show with Cris Angel's "Believe", but hopefully he will get a chance another time since he is a huge fan.

On our way back to Phoenix, we stopped in Wickenburg, some 50 miles north/west of Phoenix at Chaparral to get their famous banana split with their homemade icecream & a rootbeer float for me - and for Roy is was a great tasting sandwich with a rootbeer float

Back with Yvonne in Phoenix it was time for some serious resting for a couple of days where we mostly did nothing but spending the day in the pool, having fun with the birds and bring the dogs for a late evening walk...

Yvonne's very cool cat, Logan - or Meow if you please

Summer of 2011,part 3 "Bryce Canyon"

2011-08-04T23:01:00.003+02:00

"Its a heck of a place to loose a cow".... Ebenezer Bryce.

Bryce Canyon nationalpark... This candy colored place is one of the most beautiful places on earth, in it's simplicity.
We have been fortunate enough to visit the park on 2 occasions - in November of 2005 and now again this summer. I insisted that I wanted to go back because the last time we missed out on "Wall Street"

When we visited in 2005, we saw the entire park from the rim viewpoint. Even though we knew it would be a laborious hike to do the Navajo trail, we wanted to go for it. After all, it's not something you do on a daily basis.
We started out at Sunset point and walked down Wall street, a narrow winding trail that brings you down to the bottom of the canyon, where it meets up with the Queens Garden trail that brought us back up to the rim, since half the Navajo trail was closed due to cave in's.
It was blazing hot at the rim but a very pleasant temperature down at the bottom so we were in for a very pleasant walk through the Queens Garden.

Wall Street on Navajo Trail. Remember to bring plenty of water and make sure to remember that it is easy to go down, compared to getting back up again.

The big fir tree growing along Wall Street. These trees are humongous !

Roy standing in front of Thors Hammer in Queens Garden.

Yeah, OK... I know I have a thing for taking pictures of trees. But darn, those things can be beautiful !

On our way back up again toward Sunrise point.

The Columbine flower sure don't need a lot of soil to grow. These "merry go happy" flowers was to be found all over the place and of course I couldn't help myself from taking pictures...

When you see this picture, it is not very hard to understand the famous quotation from the Bryce farmer. Indeed it will be hard to spot AND retrieve a lot cow in this landscape. But, oh ! what a beautiful place to loose a cow in...

After finishing up the Navajo/Queens Garden experience, we decided we should check out part of the fairyland trail as well. We didn't walk far because by then it was late in the afternoon and I have to admit that I felt like a used up rag

We ended the Bryce Canyon experience this time with a drive up to the end of the park with the top down on the car and then make a stop at all the view points along the way... I was too tired to do more than just sit there, waiting for Roy to jump out to get pictures... and what do you know. It turned out that other than just us, fancied the mustang convertible ! I thought for sure that this bugger was going to jump into the car. I have a vague memory of this bird from our previous visit, but it was nothing like this experience !

Summer of 2011, part 2 "The Zion Experience"

2011-08-04T01:03:00.003+02:00

It was nice to see Yvonne, Mira, Wanda & Meow again - not to mention meeting up with Olivia for the first time and see JoJo again - it is 8 years since I met her at Mike's place and I'm glad to see that she is doing so well with Yvonne.

For once we mostly stayed put with just a few road trips, first up to re-vist Zion Nationalpark in Utah. We stayed at the Cable Mountain Lodge just outside the nationalpark. We enjoyed a great night's sleep in a luxury bed and could start out to explore parts of Zion we hadn't visited before. Roy suggested that we should go for a hike through the back country to East Mesa Trail instead of taking the more labor intensive climb up from the valley. We knew we wanted to enjoy the view over the entire park and we also knew that if it should happen, it couldn't involve too much climbing or my hip would go "bye, bye" before we even got started.

Originally I wanted to have a closer look at The Narrows ( you have to scroll down a bit to get to the part about the narrows), but since it involved getting wet and wading in rather cold water - some places waist high, we decided against it. This will have to wait for another time..
So getting a chance to see everything from above wasn't a chance I would miss out on, since it would be the next best thing in my point of view. Yes, I do really love this place. Even with thousand of visitors, this place have the serene quality, that makes you feel all rested to the core. It's our third visit to this park and I have a feeling we will visiting again at one point or another.

Roy had been doing some major reading in the guidebook and found the back country trail, leading in to Mesa Trail without having to do major climbing. No this trail are not well known and are not described in the officially pamphlet you are handed when entering the park. The description in the guidebook lead us to believe we would be in for maybe something like a 5 mile hike (about 8 some km) in total, which we decided would be ok since we had the entire day ahead of us. Well, think again ...
100 some Fahrenheit (about 40C), we did remember to bring a snack and plenty of water, though. If I had known just how far it really was, I might have decided against the entire thing - but I'm glad I didn't know, or we would have missed out on one very cool experience, that's for sure.

Before we came to the destination of the day, we had walked more than 5 miles (8,6 km), and even Roy started to be glad that I insisted so hard to make sure we had enough water with us before we started out. But the walk was worth it. The view was stunning !
You can see the road winding right next to the river. During the spring, summer and fall, the only way to get in there is by shuttle. In the winter time, you will be allowed to drive your own car.
If we thought Zion deserved it's name when seeing it from the valley floor, we truly understood the choice of name when sitting on the edge of the mountain overlooking the entire valley from above. The valley really do offer a place of shelter - "Zion" do mean "Shelter".

A pair of ravens paid us a visit while sitting enjoying the view. I guess they thought we might have food to offer (even though it is strictly illegal to feed the wildlife). It was pretty awesome to watch them up front and personal while they drifted on the current right in front of us.

This is the official trail up to the top. We could see people walking the trail - and were truly glad we didn't have to take this way when we went up. It could have been cool to go the trail back to the valley floor, but then we would have a slight problem getting to the car, as it was parked in the middle of no-where outside of the park itself. And no - you don't just call for a cab as there is no cellphone reception to be found within the boundaries of the park itself.

After getting back to the car, Roy suggested that we did a slight detour up to Kolob Canyon. It was starting to be late and we would only have a few hours with light still, but it would be enough for us to get up there to enjoy the view.
The trip ended up being a little bit too much excitement, as the gps on Roy's phone suggested to follow a dirt road so we didn't have to go all the way back through the national park (with a speed limit of 25 - 35 mph). When you go to Arizona and the southern part of Utah in June, you don't really expect to see snow still laying around in the ditch. But that was EXACTLY what we was in for. As a matter of fact, in the news the previous evening they were talking about that one of the other parks that was scheduled for season opening this very weekend, had to remain closed for a few more weeks. There were 10 ! feet of snow still on the roads and they had no means to get it removed in a few short days.
A few miles before we were scheduled to hit back to the highway, we had to turn the car around (a mustang are not build for driving in 2 feet of mud and snow and who knows what else) and go all the way back through the national park, giving us 2 hours worth of delay on top of the delay we had already picked up by choosing to follow the guidelines on the gps in the first place... Oh, well... you learn as long as you live - and we did see a live skunk and the landscape was pretty awesome. Actually it felt like being back home, driving in the mountain range of Dovre Fjell! Pretty, pretty...

After going back and forth through the park entrance several times in 24 hours, I finally got around to remember to stop the car to get a picture of this truck... It's my "Bella's truck" ! ;-) and I happen to think that it is one cool beauty...

Summer of 2011, part 1

2011-08-03T17:03:00.000+02:00

Roy went diving, I went horseback riding, Leah went to the cabin, we went to Phoenix, Leah earned the blue ribbon & second price on the dog show, we went hiking along the river, Binni came for a vacation and they had Zita & Bella over for a couple of visits, more hiking in the forest, playing with Bastian, berry picking and mud bath...

Nah, don't think the Jay Leno way or talking on both inhale & exhale won't work for the blog. So to do it properly we start in one end and work our way through the long summer days and short summer nights.

I guess I'll start with the day trip to Ingdalen with Lars, Marian and their 2 girls. Lars & Roy wanted to dive - and the day was nice so the rest of us tagged along. Leah got a lesson in eating a hole sausage. And that is not easy, if you ask Leah, because for some unknown reason, she haven't quite figured out the art of taking a bite, chew, swallow and then take another bite.... Noooo, ahah, nope, not gonna happen - not our girl. She is so fussy that she will refuse to eat unless we break the whatever object up into bite sized pieces and THEN fed it to her. Well, I thought it was the perfect time to let her grow up, so she got herself a sausage that she had to figure out all by her self. After several try-out's, carrying it around to find the perfect hiding spot (like it would be there for the next time we visit this place, I think not), she gave in and swallowed the darn thing...

My dad came to help me fix the fence in the back yard so I don't have to worry that Leah get out of the garden again. The Great Escape last summer left it's bad mark on me and I can't bear the thought of her running for another hike along the highway, ever again.

I went on the annual Girls Trip with a group of Fun Loving Girls to Patrusli Gård with a little bit of partying, a lot of fun and a lot of riding. Coming back home Sunday evening wasn't as fun as it turned out that Leah wasn't happy with me leaving her for the weekend. She really made a point of showing me that she took personal offense of me going some place and not brining her along for the ride...

So it was with a heavy heart we bid her farewell for 3 weeks on the cabin with Roy's parents, while we jumped on the plane that would bring us to Phoenix.

Easter, spring and false pregnancy

2011-05-17T01:54:00.000+02:00

Leah turned 19 month on April 18th, so it is fitting to add her "birthday" picture as the main attraction to the blog - especially since I'm one month behind in the updates. After all she'll turn 20 month this Wednesday. But I can't help it - I spend all the energy having way too much fun with Leah, and beside, who cares if I'm running a bit late with the updates, right ?

Our intention was to go to the cabin for the Easter, but after spending 10 days in Denmark with full spring time and more important NO snow, it suddenly didn't really appeal to me to spend more time wading around in wet and cold snow. So my plan was to send Roy and Leah to the cabin for a few days, but then the big melt started and the ski season was officially over - after 6 months with snow and cold weather. I can't say that I was one bit sorry to see the snow disappear and I can honestly say (even though it will most likely never be a reality) - I wouldn't be sorry if I never saw another snowflake again.
So instead we spend a couple of days home, Roy had to work anyway and then we went to visit my dad in Åfjord. It was perfect as it was also his birthday :o)
For once we got a great chance to enjoy each others company while being out with Leah and made it into a point to explore a bit. Our first walk for the weekend took us to the very north end of the valley of Stordalen. To our surprise it turned out that we had to park the car several km before we had planned since the forest road was still burried in snow and ice that was way too deep for driving. But with the first really warm day of the year, it ended up being a very nice walk - the heat was reflected back from the snow.

Leah have a thing for sticks. Mostly that is a great thing since I can catch her attention very easily when needed :o) And it is loads of fun playing with her. And she have turned out to be quite the expert when it comes to retrieve the proper stick when we throw it into the forest and she have to conduct a search to find it. She really do put that nose of her into work and I'm very proud of her :o)

As it turned out, Åfjord was the hottest place in the entire country the weekend of 23 - 25th of April (22.5 C), so we spend a great deal of time outdoor.

With all the nice weather we decided to go explore another forest road, and this time there were no snow to stop or slow us down. The forest was wild with life, mostly rodents (it's a lemmen year) and birds - but we also stumbled over several smaller ponds with mating frogs. Wer crossed the path of the bigger animals - I know because Leah have some very distinctive reactions toward the bigger game. She is afraid of the moose and snow it clearly when she find the scent of the big animal, but find the deer that much more endearing so I have to be careful when she get the scent of those, because she is likely to make a run for it to find them.

I have to realize that my dear dog is much more to the snow and colder weather, at least when it comes for the high energy consuming events - because she get so hyper that she prefer to cool down from time to time. In late spring when we come across some leftover snow like this, it is hilarious to watch her just spread herself out like a poodle to make as much contact with the snow as possible.

I haven't been this far into this forest road before so it was very exciting to suddenly find not only a huge river I didn't even knew about - but also a rather large waterfall. We couldn't get to it as it dropped maybe 30 meters strait down from the road - and by the sound of it, it might even have digged itself through the rock at one point or another. Maybe another time we'll get a chance to go down to the valley to explore more - that would be very cool !

In this particular poodle we found - I think - 4 frogs all mating up in one big heap. Beautiful creatures!

While being in Denmark I got Leah a stuffed cat - Sylvester. She loves him dearly and if it had been up to hear, I suspect she would have treated my moms cat just like she treat her Sylvester - including banging the poor thing up pretty badly from time to time. But mostly he is used to snuggle up along for a good afternoon nap.

I can't really explain the great feeling of walking in the forest - where there is no snow left ! So being able to go back to the hill of Leistad after several months of absence - the feeling is - well, it makes me thrilled ! The hilltop really isn't that big, but are littered with several trails and animal path, so if one choose to, you can get a good 8 km of walking when I go from home and go all the way around on the outer rim and then back again.

Things have been busy after we came back from Denmark, but still we have had the pleasure of being joined by Grete & Bastian on a couple of the walks int he forest. Leah really love Bastian - more than anything else and actually get the blues if it goes too long in between their playdates. She gets along with most other dogs, but there simply isn't anyone like her Bastian!

There is supposed to be a cave up here. One day I might go explore some more :o) Grete show me so many great places in the forest. The vast amount of possibilities and choices when it comes to a get some great outdoor experiences !

For once - well, it's not often it happens - I decided to join Roy on his Sunday afternoon walk with Leah and we ended up having a very nice walk. It turns out that the terrain hold a lot of grouse. And they are not easily scared away. So we can get pretty close and have a rather good look at them before they take off. - See it IS a good thing that Leah is easily distracted with a nice stick ! because when the grouse take off - they get to be so much more interesting and fun to chase - and that I can't have !

I had to go get a new windshield on my car - the old one was scratched and simply worn out to the point where it wasn't really usable when the late afternoon sun came directly upon the glass. So while the glass company changed the window - Leah and I took a stroll on Ladestien. It was a gorgeous day, but I was glad I had brought a jacket, because the wind that came in from the fjord was still chilling to the bone - that is early spring for you here in Norway... brrrr
When we had picked up the car (Riis bilglass) do a great and fast job - faster than promised) and got home, bot Leah and I was literally worn out. We had conquered heavy traffic, loads of school classes and kindergarten kids, squirrels that passed in front of us on the path - a runner and his loose dog - that litterally scared the heck out of both Leah and I because it came around a corner so fast I was sure the poor thing was going to have a heart attack. But I'm proud to say that Leah behaved pretty much very nicely throughout the walk - the dragging only became prominent when we meet a lady with her itty pitty tiny pekingese, which btw wanted to play as much with Leah as she wanted to play with him.

Then there is the matter of false pregnancy.
It culminated litterally a few weeks back after Leah had refused to eat anything unless it was cooked salmon for several days - and before that, she had eaten next to nothing. Now that might have been totally ok, if not for the fact that she had kept up a rather high energy consuming level and I started to get really worried. A few questions to Bente at Bexma and we finally figured it was Leah's "labortime", hence the good reason for her to refuse to eat properly. So in the last few weeks we have had milk production - actually it have been so bad that Leah leaves marks all over the place because it runs freely. For one evening her choice as a puppy ended up being her ball. She made a point of getting it in from the garden and then she just refused to let me take it outside again.
Mostly it is not a problem - unless you count in the milk that run freely - with 2 exceptions. One being that I'm going crazy over the fact that she won't eat properly, but the other things is way more prominent - she is SO jumpy over anything, especially when we're out on our daily walks. Some days she looks like she just want to run back home again and hide under the bed and even get scared over her own shadow. We might have to consider having to spay her because it looks like it is a problem that just won't go away - more likely it will get worse as the time goes by. And in the long run - having to medicate her heavily every 9 months or so, is not something I really look forward to. Her state of mind and her overall wellbeing is way more important than anything else. And after we have spend several years on a full time basis with Aina and her neurotic antics - I don't want that for Leah. It's like having a completely different dog in the house... Hopefully it will be over for this time. At least her appetite have picked up again over the last few days - and with a bit of luck that will also mean that her milk production will slow down and just go completely away again within the next few days.

Leah don't sample toys like other dogs in the state of false pregnancy - Leah sample us ! and will do just about anything to make sure she have full control on her "puppies" weather or not we agree with her on her choice of how to do it.

Spring is finally here for good. The forest starts to grow green and become more animated from day to day - we even crossed the path of the bobcat the other day. Gosh, those footprints are HUGE!

The violets Grete spotted last week when we were out exploring, enjoying a gorgeous day while the dogs played in the marsh...

A girl is allowed to be pooped after 2.5 hours of playtime with her ALL TIME favorite, isn't she ?

With the snow gone (please don't watch all the dead grass spots on the lawn), Leah get to spend so much more time out in the garden through out the day

Roy had to go to Oslo for a few days - Leah took the opportunity to spread out as much as possible in the bed.. cute isn't she ?

Play ?

Ok... I'll eat the food as long as it is ON the floor - not in the dish. We had to hadfeed her for a few days because she refused to eat and in the end we just scooped her food on the floor for her to lick it up. So now I definitely have the cleanest floor !

The Globetrotter

2011-04-27T00:29:00.000+02:00

On April 5th, we set out on a longer roadtrip than usual. I sort of high jacked my dad for a road trip to visit family in Denmark, and since Roy was very busy on a project at work I couldn't just leave Leah home alone all day long. So of course she was to go with us. After all, there is no use in having a passport for Leah if we don't use it, is there ?

Leah never have a habit of making a fuss when we travel, but she really surprised me by being more than just a bit easy going about it all. We had scheduled in rest stops along the way to allow more than plenty of time to both eat and take Leah for walks - and it went more smoothly than I could have possibly hoped for. We used the big travel cage, so if she wanted to, she could really stretch out, but mostly she just curled herself up in a ball, using the sheep skin as a pillow and slept through the entire trip, including the nearly 4 hours on the ferry to Denmark. I have to admit - I was a tiny bit worried about how she would take that ordeal, since I wasn't allowed to even check up on her while being at sea. Now I could have asked color line for room at their on board kennel, but I figured that she would be better of in her own travel crate with no stressed out individuals around her. Beside I really didn't want to expose her to unknown health problems as there is no limitation to the health of the dogs being boarded in the kennel. As it turned out I had nothing to worry about at all. She slept like a baby and woke well rested and ready for both breakfast and a walk when we came to Hirtshals in Denmark.

We were scheduled to stay for 10 days, and every day presented itself with a lot of new places, experiences, people not to mention all the new dogs and my moms cat...

Leah was more than willing to make friends, but it proved to be a bigger task than even she was capable of.
Leah yawned, Leah tried to speak cat (very hard when the tiny furball is only hissing at you), Leah tried to pretend she didn't notice the cat, Leah looked away and Leah tried to invite to playtime. To no avail at all. For a week the closest they came to being friends is what you see in the video and then things sort of took a wrong turn. Leah was getting her dinner and suddenly the cat decided to prove a point so he walked out into the kitchen and literally shoved Leah out of the way and started to eat her dinner. If it had been another setting the situation might have solved itself, but as it was, the cat had thoughtlessly positioned itself up against the wall so he had no where to go when Leah didn't went along with him taking her food out from under her nose.
When I managed to drag Leah away so the cat could get room enough to get out of the kitchen, both were swapping the air aggressively with their paws and hissing like mad - keep in mind that Leah mimicked the cat to her best knowledge to make friends in the first place.
Now you have this mental picture in place, go back and read the last sentence again... to say the least it was hilarious to watch.

After that incident things calmed down again for a few days, until the sad moment when the cat took the direct route to the kitchen to jump right into Leah's dish with leftover food that she really didn't want because she had just cleaned out the cats dinner... Before I had a chance to grab hold on her she slid off the couch and was into the kitchen in a split second. Now I don't have a habit of handle Leah in a firm way because it have never been necessary to do so, so the effect on her when I jumped at her yelling at the top of my lungs to get her of the cat before he got hurt in any way, was stunning. I grabbed a good hold on her neck and was amazed when she just followed suit back into the livingroom with no fuss, staying where I told her to stay for the remainder of the evening with no fuss what so ever ?!
I guess I can appreciate the fact that, even when she get mad I can still get through to her to direct her out of the situation before it really do get out of hand. But then again - she have never experienced being yelled at quite this much ever before and frankly I hope it will be a while until - if ever - the next time. After that she pretty much left the cat alone.

My granddad making dinner for his dogs, Fifi & Prik

Betram 7 month old - my childhood friend's youngest son.

The matter of visiting people..
I have to be pretty busy not to be able to make room for a visit to Louise in Aarhus. And of course Leah was coming along :o)
Leah fell instantly in love with Betram and really made a point of showing it. The younger the child, the more happy Leah get. It always amaze me to watch this no matter how often I get the chance to see her interact with kids of different ages. She is more eager the younger they are and get more timid the older they get. But she really made me proud when Louise's oldest son, Valdemar came home from school and she was so polite and friendly toward him as well. No jumping what so ever, no attempt to knock him over. She made sure to move around rather slowly so not to scare him of. Turned out that all my worries how she would react to Valdemar was completely put to rest once and for all. It was nice to be able to spend some time with Louise, meet Betram for the first time and see how tall Valdemar is getting :o)

As a matter of fact, Leah have grown up in her head. Jumping seems to be a closed chapter when greeting people in general and are something that she actually save for the people who have indicated that they are OK with that type of greeting at one point or another.

Having Leah meet my granddad for the very first time will be a moment that I'll be savoring for many years to come. Not only did she patiently sit right next to me, waiting for him to enter my moms house, take of his jacket and his shoes. She stayed right next to me until he indicated that it was ok for her to come say hello to him. She was so very gently when she went to him, after about a minute she stood up - no jumping - and gently placed her paws on his chest reaching up to give him what only she can - a true Leah kiss and he bend down to meet her halfway. You could see that she was visibly strung hard and nearly going out of her mind with joy, but still she made no rough moves or jumped around.

Now if only she would be this gentle when meeting people, weather it be for the first time or the n'th time, giggle - then I wouldn't need to consider signing us on to another obedience class.
OK, admitted - even though she is not this gentle around people normally, she have calmed down a lot after her second heat (started on February 23th) and it was a lot of fun having her with me to meet new people because I didn't have to worry how she would act - she made most other dogs we met on our vacation to look like savages.... so I guess we are finally getting paid off for all the work we put down in the obedience class. We still have some way to go, but compared to what I thought we had managed to nail down and what the reality have actually turned out to be, I can't complain :o)

Another atempt to befriend the cat. See how Leah really go out of her way to mimic the cat ?

"My" childhood forest.
This is were I was usually to be found whenever I had a chance to get away from the city. It could be early or it could be late, it didn't matter one bit because I was having way too much fun with my horse, Robin.
It have been 20 years so I was thrilled when I once again got the opportunity to spend some time here. And to be honest, I was looking forward to see just how much had been left to be the same as all those years back - and to see if I could find some of the more secluded spots where I spend all those days.
On the first walk with Leah I actually managed to get sort of lost and had to walk over the fields on my way out to say hello to my aunt and uncle. I managed to get that much out of the way, that I had to enter the farm from the pond side. I bet I made more than one person wonder who the heck I was who suddenly turned up out of nowhere.

Leah was scared of the horses that greeted us, so I thought it would be far better to see if I could track down my uncle before Leah decided to freak out on me. After all, there is 70 some horses on the farm, and a lot of them are in the paddocks..
Actually, having her being scared of the horses, might actually have helped us cure her irritating habit of eating horse poop when we find it in the forest. At least she leave everything alone after we came back home, which is a good thing in my book.

Here Leah is giving it another go at the friend thing...

One is getting really exhausted with all the new things...

I made arrangement to go visit my uncle and aunt again another day, and then Leah got the chance to meet Tino, their collie. He is such a sweet boy a couple of years older than Leah. But they still managed to play just fine.

Leah managed to find her way into my moms bed on a couple of occasions - to the cat's big frustration. But who can blame her - after all, she tried everything to befriend the cat...

My grand dad was a little bit worried about having Leah meeting his 2 dogs - so Leah was left home alone at my moms house for a few hours when I went to visit my grand dad. But when he heard about Leah having the playdate with Tino, the decided that we should try to let the dogs met after all. The worst that could happen would be that Leah was to spend a bit of time in my moms care until it was time to go back to her house again, if she wasn't welcomed into the house at my grand dad...

Prik is having a nap in his favorite chair

And Fifi - well, she claimed my grandmom's chair.

It is springtime in Denmark so Leah had some fun with the frog we stumbled over on one of our walks. Actually, it was a toad and it was humongous - and I really wanted a picture of it, but had to settle with Leah's tale wagging since she thought it was her right to sniff the darn thing from head to toe...

And the fun one can have with a pile of leftover leaves from last fall ! Is this what they call taking a "Leaf bath" ?

Denmark is littered with barrows and there is at least one of them in this forest:

Vis større kart

I have been all over this one so many times and have never spend one minute thinking about it, until when I walked to the top of this one that is rather large, with Leah and it dawned on me what it really was more than just a bump in the terrain.

A girl gotta have her favorite squeaky ball and Lo & Behold - momma got me 2! new ones... weeeee !

Visiting my mom's uncle and his wife. And of course Leah got a chance to meet their girl. Right now her name have escaped me... But gosh she was just such a sweetheart.

Leah sought refugee behind anyone she thought be provide shelter... Prik got sort of angry at her at first when we came, but after a while he figured that she was nice enough that he wanted to play with her. But Leah - ridiculously never overcame that first jolt of fear, even though she tried very hard to be nice, she never felt completely at ease around Prik. And poor Fifi vanished into the background. She is usually the queen of the house and will tell anyone this. She got intimidated by Leah's size and the fact that Prik was interested in checking Leah out...

I can watch TV, I....

My last evening with my granddad was cut short as Leah decided she was too tired to staying.. She made such a fuss for over an hour where she made it very clear that she was worn out and just wanted to go home and find the bed... too much excitement for one day..

My dad came to pick up us at 7 am the next morning, the fog was thick as soup and didn't lift until we were all the way up to Hirtshals again - and then it just vanished within minutes. As it turned out that was a good thing for me, since it meant that we was to be able to enjoy the beautiful day while giving Leah her walk before it was time to head for the ferry and we decided to go to the lighthouse just north of the harbor, where we would get a fantastic view over the ocean. If there had been the time and if not for the fact that Leah was in for 4 hours on the car deck on the ferry (not heated space), I would have brought her down to play on the beach. But wouldn't risk her taking a bath since I wouldn't be able to dry her before we had to be on the ferry again.

The next time, hopefully there will be a chance to bring her all the way up in the lighthouse tower... I bet she would have enjoyed that experience :o)

Before we knew it, the fog came in again from the ocean and turned the bright sunny day into something right out from a scary movie. But gosh what a brilliant touch to the pictures that fog offer you !

We were back home on Vikhammer 3 am the morning after. I think it is safe to say that Leah was just as tired as we were. She slept like this for the entire day before she woke up and was ready for food and a walk.

Traveling with Leah is a joy. She is polite when we visit other peoples home - and go along with anything I throw in her direction. Hopefully it won't be long before we get another opportunity to do some more traveling...

But still - as much fun as it is to be out exploring, there is no doubt that she think it was nice to be back home again.

"Special search" class

2011-04-03T21:57:00.000+02:00

In February we attended the first of 3 classes in "Special Search" - and are planning to take the level 2 & 3 on a later occasion.
Our first goal is to give Leah the chance to use her nose and head, then to teach her to find Chanterelle mushroom when we're out and about in the forest in the late summer and early fall. I don't eat any type of mushroom, but Roy and the rest of the family do. I don't mind pick the gold of the forest when I'm at it anyway. I pick the berries, so why not bring home some of the other things I find when we're out. I bet I have you wondering what the heck "special search" is all about, so let me try to explain.
Any dog have a great sense of smell, some are better at using that sense of smell than others, like bloodhounds, for instance - they are designed to find humans and are able to track down people from a trail several days old. Bottom line is that as long as you can manage to get your dog interested enough in the game of "finding the smell", you can teach them to find just about anything you want them to find.
The class was held by Stig Meyer Berg
In modul one we're taught how to play the game, and I have to say that the dogs was doing great, while we humans - we have a thing or 2 to work on before we can say that we really know this game. But that is a good thing, actually, because it means that it is not only the dogs that are having a lot of fun, but the humans as well :o)
Since it is very unlikely that we at a later date want to get our dogs to sniff up the lipton tea "yellow label", that is the smell we were working on in this 3 day class. Now the smell used to teach the dog the game isn't realy important - but since Stig are teaching classes for both the military (dogs that on a later date will be used to find bombs and explosives) and the police (narcotic), it makes a lot of sense to use a smell that the dogs won't be asked to find at a later date when they really know how to play the game - the tea is an easy and inexpensive way to get the dogs working.

For the teaching purpose Stig have made a special platform, that will be easy for both owner and dog to figure out and use. The point is - that the dog has to find the box with the right smell, and then get the treat for work well done...

The treat dispenser view

The top part of where the dog will have access to the smell. As you can see, there is 4 slots to choose from.

Here, the slide are shown - this is where the boxes with - or without, the smell is placed. There is a total of 7 boxes, and when working with this platform you have the smell in box no 4. The others will be kept empty or have a "disturbance" of some sort - Stig used another tea and coffee (easy access and cheap)

The game is taught, where the dog first get a treat for going near the training device. Once that is accomplished the dog will be rewarded for starting to sniff around to figure out what the heck this thing is. Sooner or later the dog will suddenly find the box that smell different than the others - and then get the reward. You as a human don't say anything, you just have to wait for this to happen. Now of course, the dog get really excited because - oh, boy, it got something real nice and delicious (that treat might be everything from a small piece of cheese to a piece of juicy t-bone), for sticking it's nose into that smell. So, hey - why not try it again and see what happens ?

You as a trainer have to make sure that you give a sounded cue, like "yes!", or "good" at the exact right time, so the dog start to connect the dots of - finding the smell, getting the cue and then getting something droolworthy. The really important part is getting the verbal cue nailed down, the treat - once the dog have figured out the baseline of the game, it will be more than willing to wait for the treat :o)

First you don't move the slide with the boxes at all, because the dog is figuring out the game. Once it have sniffed the right box several times, you can give it a go in moving the slide - and hence the smell to another slot. First then that happens you'll see a dog that get very confused - some might try to use both teeth and paws, or bark at you, because no verbal cue AND more important (in the dogs view) there is no treat coming!

After a while, when the dog have exhausted the "known" possibilities of sniffing the box it used to get a treat for sniffing, barking, pawing or biting don't seem to work, the dog will start to sniff around on the other holes - and eventually the nose will get down into the hole where the smell is located now. You as a trainer have to be prepared and hurry up once that happens - give you cue and then give a nice fat good treat !

First, you only move the box with the smell between the middle hole and the 2 holes on each side - because it is more easy for the dog when it don't have to "go far" to succeed in finding the smell. Once it find the smell and start give it a good sniff - Everytime. It's time to start explore the posibilites of using the last and furtherest away hole, and then move the box with the smell after each successful finding.

Now, I went to this class in the end of February - and have used until now to figure out how to put down in words, what we learned - and more important, what Leah and I have worked on in the last 4 weeks. It is far more easy to show what this is all about, than telling it, so enjoy the short video of Bastian who are having his first go at the platform. It is Stig who is teaching, and Grete is holding the colar and being the mental support for Bastian while he figure out the game.

Another type of platform:

Here Julie and Bajas are working on the platform.

And the box we have home - no video though as it's pretty hard to work on it while filming at the same time.

Here it is pretty obvious that Leah know there is Lipton's yellow label tea in this box. She know the smell a mile away by now :o)

To summarize - you can teach your dog to find anything you want, weather it be a lost child, or a grown up person, a body (to my astonishment Stig could tell us that dogs will shy away from the smell of a dead body, unless taught to find it), any narcotic (and you don't need the real deal to teach your dog, just the smell of it), bombs, rot in houses, mushrooms, ants - well, it is your imagination that will limit what you can teach your dog to find. If the item have a smell, you can teach your dog to find it!

It's a fun game - for dog and humans alike. A 5 minute session with special search and you dog (if done correctly) will be just as tired and worn out mentally as a 2 hour walk in the forest :o)
It will show you, just how brilliant a dogs mind are - to spot the moment the dog recognize "The Smell" and then are able to show you that he/she know the game - is just amazing. To observe the switch in body posture that happens the moment they know! and then watch when they again and again find the smell and give it a great sniff - that is just priceless!

Winter of 2011

2011-03-12T14:46:00.001+01:00

The days with Leah goes incredible fast so when evening come it's way more tempting to just curl up in the couch, than to sit down and update the blog.
It haven't been very cold after Christmas so we have had our fair share of walks in the forest - both alone and with Grete & Bastian.

Ålvatnet became like something out of a movie with the mist that crept along the ice.

It was here we met the young and very curious moose the other day. When we passed the spot the next day it became very clear we made the right choice when I decided to just turn around and go back home the way we came. He had followed our trail for a bit.

Leah had been pre-occupied over the fact that we had already passed one of them, so we nearly ran directly into the next one. It was standing right next to the trees and we only spotted it when we were some mere 15 meters away. That is way too close for my liking. After all one of those big heavy babies can run faster than me and with a dog, I'm not in for taking any chances.

Usually we park close to Mørkdalstjønna, walk up to Husmyra and then choose one of 2 trails, around Ålvatnet or around Vulusjøen, the latter being 2 km longer than the first one.

Lately I have started to also park down at the parking lot at Hønstad, then follow the ski trail up to Mørkdalstjønna and then fall back to the forest road on my way back. This because Leah got her 2 second heat on February 23rd. We meet less people there which is a good thing since I'm not nearly close to be strong enough to hold her back if we met a male dog

Some days the snow decide to come down more like rain and all the trees is covered with this rather cool looking slush.

Vulusjøen covered with ice.

I don't think we need more snow now. I long for spring and summertime because the winter have lasted long enough. We're in the middle of March now and the first snow came in the middle of October - and stayed!

Leah love her bulldog. It's a gift from Bastian. It's a toy with many uses...

A late afternoon walk with Grete & Bastian. The moon was gorgeous and rather big that day. The only thing I miss on my cell phone camera is the zoom...

We started to use diapers on Leah when she started to bleed. It's very convenient to just cut a hole for her tail. The new ones that can be opened and closed several times come in handy when she want to go out. She accepted the diaper right away, contrary to the bitch diaper which she hate of all her boxer heart. It came of just as fast as I could manage to put it on her and I suspect the reason is because those contraptions feel more like a strangulation on the dog that won't allow them to move around freely. Baby diapers on the other hand are designed to allow free movement without sitting too tight :o) Libresse no 7 (for kids up to 30 kg) is the perfect fit for a boxer :o)

First sign of spring...

Some days I wonder what is going on in Leahs head. I would sure love to figure out why the heck she thought this sitting position was preferable over anything else ?

After a while she decided it was time for a nap and ended up like this - still her legs was sprawled out in a weird looking position behind her...

Leah love these pillows and will position them to support her in the best way possible... This is the Princess nap time !

Things I play with

2011-01-31T00:05:00.001+01:00

Today I figured it was about time to check out what was stored on the memory stick in the camera. I openly admit that it's been a while since I have bothered using the camera, since my cellphone is way more handy and does actually do a desent job when it comes to taking pictures...

So the surprise was great when I found these video's from last summer. Leah know nothing better than using our stuff as her toys....

I found so many stolen moments on the camera - both live and still photo's. No wonder we thought the first summer with Leah went like a breeze.

Bastian !!!!

2011-01-12T00:27:00.000+01:00

Leah show her affection for Bastian by crying out loud when she realize we're headed for a walk in the forest with him and Grete - or if we're headed for a playdate visit....
Bastian on the other hand are not this subtle when it comes to show the entire world what he think about Leah. She belong to him! - and to prove it and to make sure every other dog know about this fact, he have gotten a habit of peeing on her when we're in the forest..... Yes, it's actually pretty hilarious !.

As usual Leah never stop amaze me with all the different ways she can manage to take a nap, but the most funny versions usually involve a paw or 4 up in the air - and as an afterthought, her head leaned comfortable on a pillow - most preferable my pillow.

To summarize the year 2010, I think the most easy way to describe our day to day life with Leah is to say the the week days she and I have spend walking on our own, or with Grete & Bastian, or Leah and Bastian have spend the afternoon or evening playing together to the point where both of them were tired enough to need a serious nap.
Grete have shown me a lot of very nice places, I didn't even knew about even though it's all in the neighborhood, we have had short and long walks, found berries and picked them with great help from the dogs, found enough various types of mushroom and brought home some of those as well. Roy have mostly walked with Leah in the weekends, because he then have more time. The combination of walks and playtime, have most likely brought Leah the distance that equals the length of Norway from the southern most point to the northern most point.... which is a pretty cool thought :o)
We have met the King of the forest a few times and Leah don't like him ! But when she thought Roy came to the rescue, she went a bit too far and the darn moose charged her and Roy... yes I keep thinking about getting her one of those safety helmets, because I would rather have her looking silly, than risking loosing her because she got her head smashed in by a kicking moose....

We have gotten a lot of snow and some days we have waded around in "Winter Wonderland" with the lanscape looking like something brought out from a fairy tale. Other days it have been crisping cold with minus 20 Celcius and Leah came home freezing and needed to curl up beside Roy under 2 blankets for half an hour before she started to get the heat back in her body.

She love to have a nap in front of the fireplace these days and I can't say I blame her one bit. Because kibble isn't her favorite she try her best to eat that as the last thing she do - when she know that the "kitchen are closed" for the day and she don't have any other choice. This is actually ridiculous and very silly of her. Because even though I do give her something in between meals, I don't hand out food all day long. The result is that she use more energy throughout the day than I can manage to feed her. Top that off with all the exercise she is getting is all skin, bone and muscle. There is not fat to keep her heated...
Ok seing it typed down like this - it makes me feel like a terrible dog owner and mom... but what the heck can I do. I give her a high quality diet with extra stuff thrown in for good measure and still she is skinny to the point where she is more than just thin.... Oh, well... I guess I have to put my hope into the new food that was suggested to me Norwegian Polar hundemat. It's not kibble so maybe my "royal princess" will accept it :o)

We spend Christmas at my dads house and I'm amazed that Leah didn't unpack all the gifts in advance... When I was up for the task of gift wrapping in early December, she was more than eager to help me out. That is, if it was up to her, she was unpacking the already wrapped up gifts faster than I could manage to wrap them... it was actually a bit hilarious....
Actually the biggest surprise this Christmas was the fact that Leah learned to navigate the stair in my dad's house in only a few short try outs. And now I'm talking about your average sized staircase, but a very narrow and very very steep stair. People are known to end up on their behind down this one and last summer I had to give in and sleep in my dads livingroom because I didn't have the strength to carry her down the stairs from my bedroom...

Here she is waiting patiently for the Christmas dinner to arrive on the "table" because then it's time to unwrap all those nice gifts that she know is waiting for her under the tree. My sister had gone overboard a bit, but Oh, those toys were some really nice toys and Leah love and cherish them tremendously :o)

Hey, how come the pillow don't sag down ? It do that in the couch home..... come on !!

When Leah had finished working her way through all the gifts that was for her - and there were a lot that was for her only, she tried her very best to bring all of them up onto the couch with her - where she ended up falling asleep with them....

My sister have a cat - Leah would have loved to be able to use the cat door... as it was, only her head fitted through the hole (and what a good thing that was)...

My dad lives right next to a huge lake and this winter it froze over very early because it have been so cold. It's the perfect place for running around like mad and give easy access to the other side with nice walking terrain.

No place like infront of the fireplace when one is cold and have been out playing in the snow for close to 2 hours !.... she slept like a baby for some time, first curled up like a itty bitty tiny ball. You know when she feels all nice and hot again, because then she opens up like a flower. It is rather cute :o)

We spend New Years Eve with good friends and their Irish setter, Birk. Leah love Birk... but Birk !! he absolutely adore her back and he know to show his affection !...

My brother gave me a "Oh that is just bullshit" button for Christmas.. what he didn't know is that it's perfect for when we want to be alerted when Leah want to go out in the garden to pee. Normally she just sit in front of the patio door, saying nothing, patiently waiting for us to notice. She just sit there, saying nothing at all..
So I took the BS button and put it on the door... the video shows the learn process Leah went through and now she know what to do when she want out !...
OK, I admit - I guess we're going to be sorry as heck when she decide to use it in the middle of the night.... giggle

Interim...

2010-12-12T12:56:00.000+01:00

In late October we had Leah x-rayed for HD & spondylosis and got her heart checked. The heart and spondylosis came back just fine, but her HD I'm not happy about. Mainly because I think they made an mistake when checking the x-rays. Oh, well. I'll get a second opinion later on this one.
While waiting for Bastian to get back to his normal self, Leah and I explored the forest and found the perfect running place, so we ended up making the bog our daily destination so she could get rid of all the excess energy.

And then winter came - waaaaaaay to early for my liking. But Leah. Well, Leah think snow is a lot of fun. According to her, our walks just got that much more fun.

My mom came for a visit in mid November. She and Leah connected right away and Leah got one more person to spoil her rotten.
My poor mom got more winter than she expected, but was still a good sport to join us at our walks in the forest.

When boxers get bored, they start to be creative. With icy temperatures outdoor it's no fun have a run in the garden. Lucky for me, Leah is more into destroying cardboard boxes, than eating the furniture. And when done with her work, she just curl up as close as possibly to the fireplace.

I have learned one major thing about Leah in the last month. She'd rather stay close by, than having another up front and personal meeting with the moose. Normally when we walk in the forest she don't run far and come back to check up on me every few minutes. I rarely have to call her, so when one day she just took off and only left a dust trail of snow falling from the trees, I sort of expected to be in for the long haul of waiting for her to come back. Not a thing I was particularly looking forward to as it was rather cold that day. A few minutes later I thought I heard a yelp - but wasn't really that sure since it sounded to be at a distance. I started to call for her to come back. And ended up being rather startled when she came like a rocket between the trees just some short minutes later. And when proceeded to be like glued to my leg and kept on looking behind from where she came from. She was in a hurry to go back home. Apparently all it took was that one meeting with the King of the Forest and she will make sure to stay close by. Not that I'm complaining one bit, because I know just how ugly it can turn very fast if you cross path with a moose in a bad mood...

The last few weeks our daily routine have consisted of visiting Bastian & Grete for some playtime. The dogs have so much fun playing - and to my astonishment, playtime in the garden for an hour - an hour & half takes out more energy than an 2 hour walk in the forest - with playtime...

Booring days and health check at the vet's office

2010-10-30T00:02:00.000+02:00

Poor Bastian got very sick, so he is sort of out of the game for a little while longer, before he start's to put on weight again and then be ready to more fun and play time with Leah. To put it in a mild choice of words, his stomach got very upset after his choice of food couldn't be put into what you would call a normal foodgroup. So for a week he threw up just about anything he ate and hence lost a lot of weight. Then he had to get his tummy checked and it turned out he had gotten a bad case of gastritis and will have to live on a diet for some time to come so he can recover fully again.

So what do you do when you have an active boxer who have grown used to her weekly playdates with her gorgeous brother ?, well - first of you send her off for walks in the woods with your dear husband, while youself lay curled up under the comforter being sick as a dog. BTW, please anyone - tell me how Leah managed to remove the core of the roll of tissue paper - without eating the entire roll of paper first ?

And then winter suddenly came with snow, ice and sleet and it got a bit dangerous having Leah on leash because she is so strong and want to be everywhere... so I suggested to Roy to bring a squeaky toy and some treats - then let her of leash. I was willing to bet that she wouldn't go far at all and I was correct in my assumption.
So now she get to run the forest on a daily basis with us skidding along without being dragged around like a rag doll.

Leah have figured out that sticks are FUN!!

And she get VERY tired after our walks

Yesterday, we went for a vetcheck to get x-rays of her hips and back to make sure everything was OK, and to check her heart as well.
Even if we have to wait for the verdict from the Norwegian kennel club, our vet told me that he couldn't see anything wrong in any of the pictures and her heart is very healthy as well :o) We took the chance to check her teeth as well, since she was knocked out anyway - the verdict there is one tooth that have a dent, 1 tooth too much in one side of her mouth (but unless it starts to bother her, we'll leave it) and one tooth too little in the other side (hopefully it will break through at some point)..
The medication used to knock her out did take a while to get out of her system - to the point where I couldn't keep her awake long enough after we got home from the vet, for me to get her into the garden and get her to pee.
So - I thought that OK, we'll just wait a little while and then try again. - or not, as it turned out.
In the end, she peed in her sleep 3 times, wetted the bed, the couch (and me) and her own bed before I finally could keep her awake long enough to empty out her bladder.
After she had slept pretty much most of the day, she woke up hungry as a bear - ate and then was ready for some serious playtime and waiting for Roy to get home from work...

Toys comes in many various forms - like "daddy's glove"

Or she can bang up the already half chewed squeaky toydog she got for her birthday...

Today we met a lady with her dog in the forest - and since the two of them got along nicely, we ended up walking together. What a nice surprise. And it turns out she is a neighbor, so maybe we'll met up with her again on another day...

Obedience trial

2010-10-14T23:19:00.000+02:00

Boxers are NOT build for obedience trial in foul weather.... So all of us sadly failed, even the ones we were SURE would pass the test.

What Leah and I managed to do before I made the POOR decision of stopping two steps too far, so I would have to lay Leah down in a puddle of water, for the "Lay down and stay until being picked up again" exercise, made me understand that not only did we have a lot of fun, Leah is actually good at it as well. Compared to the work we have put in - she did excellent. I'm very proud of her !

So, yes - I think we're going to try for the test again at a later date - when the weather is more gentle toward us. Rain, wind and cold weather isn't really our thing. Cold weather and a little bit of wind is ok - but we really didn't need the rain...

Today have been spend sleeping for the most part. Yesterday really wore Leah out, even though we didn't do a lot of physical exercise. But I guess she picked up on all the nerves most of the humans was bothered by and it did take a lot of mental work on her part because suddenly she had to do all her stuff without getting paid along the way.
I had made sure that she knew something nice was waiting for her, when we were finished. Cooked salmon and those oh so nice, but not good for you cinnamon rolls she loves just as much as Roy and I do (just the smell of them will make her drool badly and it will wake her even if she is asleep).

She surprised me bigtime by staying by my side (even if she didn't stay in the sit position) when the judge came to greet us. We haven't had a good chance to work on that one, so she really took me by surprise. Because normally she get so over excited that people are coming to greet her, that she will bend inside out on her self out of sheer joy.
Even the hell on leash she did acceptable - and normally when she is on a leash, she'll drag like she is paid to do so. So she made me proud :o)
Heel without a leash - well... it could have been better. But it could also have been SO MUCH more badly done. All in all, I'm pleased :o)
And then I messed up when I didn't stop two steps earlier than I did to lay her down, to walk away from her. And after that it was game over. She had had enough of it and decided that she called it a day - which by that point was OK with me, since I felt badly for her. She was wet from the rain - and even more wet from laying in the pothole... She wasn't sorry when I put her back in the car which were still nice and comfortable warm - and there were salmon and cinnamon roll waiting for her to enjoy :o)

Leah being creative with a paperbox...

Getting tired when using my mind

Grete and Bastian was first out. He did so great under the "warm up" time so when the weather turned bad when it was time to do everything for real - it don't feel right ! because he is so good at it...

A breakthrough in when I get to get out of bed... & ranting !

2010-10-11T23:42:00.000+02:00

WoHo... today is the first day since we got Leah that I was allowed to get out of bed WHEN I WANTED !! and not when Leah decided she needed to get breakfast &/or have some playtime. For the longest time my day started at 4 am..

Leah decided to sleep in a bit longer after I got up, so I had plenty of time to fix breakfast for her and the birdies - and found her like this, when I went to see what was holding her from getting her breakfast... :o)

In the last 10 weeks we have attended obedience class and this upcoming wednesday is the last day in class - no exercise to learn, but we are going to see if we can manage to pass the test of the lowest level of obedience. Actually, It's not the lowest level of obedience since we're way past the stuff she had to learn as a puppy :o)
I actually had to ask a friend what these things are called in english - and instead of starting to explain a lot of stuff that would just end up being messed up when I should try to re-explain, she gave me a link instead :o)
The level we're going to try out for is something between what they call Novice and Open.
It's not a must for us to complete the test, it's just for the fun of it and as a nice end of the class. I originally signed up for this class so I could learn to work better with Leah and the two of us have reached our goal of just that some time ago. She listen to me and respect it when I tell her to do stuff, instead of just turning it into a game of tug-o-war or something similar, only it's wills and not a toy that are bend in all directions... so wish us luck on wednesday. Either we pass, or we don't. Either way I'm very proud of Leah :o)

It's been a while since I wrote anything in the blog - mostly because with fall it's also the time of the year where I have the least energy. To top that off, an error occurred so I couldn't upload pictures for a while. And now, those pictures can't be uploaded at all for some strange reason.. Too bad, because they were taken on a beautiful fall day - the first day of the fall with a walk in the forest with Bastian !
Those trips have been badly missed over the summer, so I can't say we're sorry that the weather turned colder earlier than normally, because it actually forced the farmers to bring their sheep back to the farm earlier. Leah is a little bit too interested in playing with them for comfort. So we can't get our walks off leash in the forest during the summer time. I can't risk her taking of for some "playtime" with the big fussy looking toys...

Over the last few weeks it has been time for some great walks with Grete and Bastian and last Friday we took more than just a "short" walk. When we got back, the sports tracker showed that we humans had walked 9 km, included a rest by the lakeside.... the dogs had played the entire time so it wouldn't surprise me the least if they had run 25 km or more that day. Actually I found Leah's limit of energy that Friday - and she mostly slept her way through the weekend after that walk :o)

The last 2 Mondays we have attended the boxer club Monday evening walk in the forest. It's with a bit of mixed feelings - because the dogs have so much fun (mostly) and it's nice to be more people as well. But I can't say I really enjoy the fact that one dominant dog is and will be allowed to have her field day of chase the others at her own will, without her human doing one of two thing (preferred both if the first don't work), putting her dog in place. It's shouldn't be allowed of a dog to behave in such a way, especially not toward a dog that is much younger and not dominant at all. And if that said dog won't limit her behavior to play nice with the rest of them, she should be on leash... And I have to admit that I actually get a bit insulted when some suggest that the dogs should be allowed to work things out by themself !

A young dog who isn't dominant can be forced into being aggressive. If aggression is a learned behavior in situations where she is forced into aggression to defend herself - it's way too easy to take that single situation and put it into use in others - and way more destroying situations.
Yes, this is a verbal kick to people who think it's ok for the dog to behave badly. It's even worse when the owner think it's perfectly OK for the dog to do so !
Yes, I'll be attending the walk next week - bu ONLY because of the fact that I know the aggressive dog is not going to be there. And then - after that, I'll refrain from attending. Too bad, because I know the boxer club should be about all of the members... too bad, I have better things to do with my girl !

I tried to be polite about it, but I'm done being polite. The fact that Leah is way heavier than the other - she did fight back today, but only used enough force to get her point through. If she set her mind to it - the other dog will be the loosing part, because Leah is all muscle and she is HEAVY. My sweet girls are not going to be allowed to be forced into a corner where she should feel she would have to fight her way out of again.

We used to have a dog who wouldn't take no for an answer when it came to misbehaving around other dogs when being out on a walk - we dealt with it the only sane way - she was ALWAYS on a leash when walked to prevent her from injure other dogs - or possibly a kid. It's not good dog keeping to allow a dog to show that kind of aggression and then let it get away with it. There is NOT one single excuse for this kind of behavior !
And I will not even start to look into how wrong it is to allow a dog to be aggressive toward any humans. I have to admit - I just wanted to drop her back down into the mud hole I dragged her out of, when she started to growl at me. The owner was just behind me - she can't claim not to have heard her dog's growling.

OK, done with the ranting. I just needed badly to get this of my chest so I can be done with it...

Let's better concentrate on some gorgeous pictures from the walk last Friday. As always, being in the company of Grete and Bastian is always such a joy :o)

Birthday !

2010-09-18T17:56:00.000+02:00

Leah's 1 year birthday actually started very early for her, 00.30 in the morning ! - when she decided to do the very same thing she used to do when she was just a wee baby. Only this time she hadn't been loading up on the rocket fuel (the stuff other people call food). She kept it going until around 2 am, where she just collapsed into bed, still with a stuffed toy dangling from the corner of her mouth.

This picture are this morning at 10 am ! She is dead to the world and not even close to being interested in anything but sleep...
Well, she didn't get to sleep the entire day away - we met up with Bastian and his people for a little walk in the rather pleasant (and perfect for us) weather. The not so tiny puppies played long and hard, before it was time to get back to do all the other stuff the day would bring in their way.
I had to stop by to feed the birds, before going out to pick up her birthday present. And then back home to make a dog friendly cake for her...
On the menu for todays dinner, she'll have cooked salmon with a dash of sourcream and then a piece of her very own birthday cake with tuna/sourcream & banana

Oh, a new toy ?

And a new bright red colar

This toy turned out to be a very popular thing, so my guess is that it won't last very long. She have already removed (and most likely eaten) the tail and 1 eye. I removed and tossed the other eye... Roy caught her digging out the stuffing a while later, she is really fascinated by it.

And then the cake ! Can't forget the cake....

Visiting my dad

2010-09-16T22:35:00.000+02:00

It dawned on me, I haven't visited my dad since BEFORE we got Leah home, so it was about time to introduce her to Åfjord. I packed her, the babies and the birds into the car and looked forward to a couple of days with walks and just relaxing in between feedings.

Well, couldn't I have forgotten more ?
I didn't have a long leash I could use in my dads garden and I had forgotten to pack toys as well for Leah.. So one of the first things I did was getting my hands on a long line suited for when you're out walking a scent trail. I thought for sure that one would be strong enough to hold Leah, so I didn't risk her starting to run around on the roads - or worse, getting lost in the woods that are located right next to my dad's place.
Well, my girl spend less than five minutes to teach me otherwise. She took one nibble at the line and she was loose..
The next set-up was the same type of line that we have on the cabin - she is used to that one, so I figured she would leave it alone. Oh, how wrong was I to assume such a thing ?
That one she worked on for a little bit longer, but in the end, I once again had my happy puppy running around my dads yard...
Oh, well. Then she just had to learn to be in inside dog when I was busy doing stuff in the house.... that was until she broke the walking leash, so I had nothing !
All in all, I spend a 1000 kroners on leashes, lines and metal chains, before I found something that she couldn't break, but wasn't so heavy that she got stuck every other feet....
Lo and behold - there was a stuffed toy sale in the local toystore - we loaded up on stuffed frogs, a gator and I found a squeaky toy as well.... how easy she is to entertain when it comes to toys that can be kicked the living daylight out of, and toys that makes sounds :o)

Leah learned a few things at my dad's place.
First - the cat's bed was a great place to sleep.
Second - even though the cat's scent are in the entire house, don't mean she will be getting as much as a glance of the cat itself
Third - There is stairs and then there is stairs.... My dad live in an old house with a really steep staircase. The first time she managed to get up and down just fine and then when she went up again the second time, she learned that it's hard to get all four paws to work together on the way down.
The third time she went up, we had to be 2 people to get her down safely again - and the forth time, I had to carry all 65 lbs of her down the staircase in the middle of the night when it got too hot for her in my old bedroom.... Good thing that I think it's ok to sleep on a couch, because we basically got stuck in the living room for the rest of our stay. Leah had enough of steep stairs for a long time, I guess....

We manged to get some really nice walks and we even managed to get a great chance to pick cantharellus one day, when my dad joined us for the afternoon walk.. I don't eat mushroom, so it really made the day of my sister, my dad and Roy when we could bring home 2 lbs :o)

A stone wall, going strait up for nearly 8 feet ? Not a problem. Leah walked right up leaving to me scratch my head for some time before I found a way to follow....

Yeah - killing the frog !!

I hope the kittycat haven't any plans about sleeping here for a while..

A great walk, killing some leashes and played with all the toys. I need a rest !

This is just moments before it dawned on Leah that there was a bunch of sheep only yards away from her. Gosh she is strong!

But the best thing - my sister taught Leah to eat cooked salmon with chopsticks !

This weeks obedience class litterally rained away. Leah is ok with minus 20 C, but a heavy, rain and you'll be finding her snuggled up on the couch, with no wish what so ever to even go out peeing...
And it's obvious that she have started to have a mind of her own. If she isn't in the mood to train, she will sit with her back to me and turn her head away - not even a treat will get her to acknowledge me so we can get started.... It has been like this for the last 2 weeks now. Hopefully it will sort itself out soon, because I could sure use her a little bit more tuned in to the fact that she is starting to be too heavy for me to handle her when she really get into the dragging mode. Walks just end up pissing both of us off, instead of getting back home, feeling relaxed like it should be when you have been out for an hour or more....

Since Leah preferred to stay in the car yesterday, I took the opportunity to pay close attention to when Janne taught us a new trick for giving a treat without going back to the dog. This afternoon, Leah showed what she was made of when she perfected the retrieving of the treat perfectly in just a few minutes of work. I'm very proud of her and when she is like this, it's so much fun to work with her !

There is always 2 ways of viewing things

2010-09-06T23:08:00.000+02:00

We LOVE having the porcupine in the garden. That is point of view no 1.

The opposite point of view is - how often do you want to have to get out of bed to let Leah out in the garden to have another shit or let her throw up ?

Porcupines are carriers of salmonella. Well, we sort of knew that, but didn't think that Leah being "stung" would pose as a health risk for her. Well, we learned otherwise this weekend.
Poor Leah spend the better part of Friday evening having to make another trip to the garden every half hour or so, some times a bit more often. And then she stopped shitting because we gave her diarrhea medication, she started to throw up every now and then instead. Her system refused to keep down anything.

It's ok to loose a meal or two, but what the heck do you do when you have a dog who think she can only drink of her water dish if she have witnessed it being cleaned and filled with fresh water - and it has to be served ice cold to her, and she should happen to feel like having a drink within the next 30 seconds, or your effort of cleaning that said bowl and fill it with fresh water is all sort of spoiled work. You'll have to do it all over again very soon, because there is not a chance in Hell, Leah would drink from it.
She will go without having a drink the entire day, so she can get the pleasure of drinking running cold water from the sink in the bathroom, when Roy get's home, or maybe with a bit of luck, she can put a spell on me to remember to go turn on the water in the shower, so she can have a drink there.
Some times I really think, Leah wish for fingers instead of paws, so she could open the faucet herself. I have never ever experienced a more fuzzy dog when it came to getting a drink of water....

Saturday was not a fun day for her, especially not since she hadn't been getting much sleep the night before. So I have to admit I was thrilled when the evening came and she went to bed and before long, instead of laying curled up under the comforter, she stretched out and rolled over to lay on her back with all the paws sprawled all over the place and started dreaming. Leah only sleep like this when she feels at ease and don't have any worries in the world - which is pretty much all the time :o)

She haven't recovered fully yet, but she is on the mend. All we need now is for her to finish up the medication for the false pregnancy and she should get a chance to go back to normal routine pretty soon - that is, wanting to eat her own food and not only what would be seen as comfort food (i.e. human food)

On our walk this afternoon I thought for sure we was in for another one of those "dragging trips".. because I couldn't find her head harness when we were headed out the door, so we ended up with the body harness instead. To my astonishment she didn't drag at all - yes, she was eager and alert, so I know everything was OK - only she apparently didn't feel like dragging like she usually does.. Go figure ? !

Making new friends ?

2010-09-03T00:28:00.000+02:00

Last week sort of went down the drain. Obedience class was a disaster from the minute we came - most likely I would have done so much better if I had just stayed on the couch. Leah can read me like an open book, hence she react when I'm very tired and worn out, by being tired and worn out herself. Go figure ?

Roy's dad picked her up on Thursday to spend the weekend on the cabin with them. So I didn't get around to do any work with her with the new things we was supposed to work on - until late Tuesday evening this week. And then she just acted like the top student she really is, she also managed to pick up exactly where we left off Tuesday evening when we came to obedience class yesterday. I'm so proud of her, because even with all the errors I make, she still manage to get her part just right anyway....

Did I tell about her first meeting with the porcupine a few weeks back ? Right now I'm not really sure about much, but it has a perfectly natural occurrence, called "A week too early starting handfeeding of baby birds, compared to when planned"

Oh, well - the porcupine have pretty much visited the garden on a daily basis since the evening where Leah most likely tried to use the poor thing as a chewing toy and got stung. I happen to love those tiny little critters and feed them when I see them in the garden. They do a wonderful job of keeping the backyard free of slugs and other harmful things. So the least I can do is to offer them some extra food once in a while.
Leah didn't really share my enthusiasm for "Spike" and spend a long time doing her very best to chase him away (like that would ever happen when he know he'll have a food source in our back yard), so instead of finding other hunting grounds, he started to come during the daytime instead of in the early evening. Way cool, if you ask me. If you ask Leah, on the other hand - not so cool, or is it ?

Yesterday (ok, it's past midnight so strictly speaking it was Wednesday) I tossed out Leah's breakfast in the garden when I thought that she had really passed up on it, but before long I caught her first trying to befriend Spike - laying on her back, pawing the air (wisely, I guess she learned the hard way) above him, meowing like a kitty cat. Totally hilarious, btw. Then she proceeded to actually share her food with him. How cute is that ?

Thursday started at the vet's office to check up on a lump I found on Leah's tummy at the obedience class - turned out that she is still having trouble from the false pregnancy incident after her first heat. So now we have to give medication for a week - something Leah strongly opposes to. I had to lay down on her with my full weight to keep her still long enough to lift her lip enough to put the syringe with the medication in her mouth and feed it to her.... And the vet really EXPECT me (tiny me) to be able to do this 6 days in a row ? !

Oh, well.... I guess practice make perfect, right ?

Come on !!, I have food. Wanna share ?

Here, they're eating their way through the entire meal, sharing equally....

Obedience 101 ?

2010-08-18T23:59:00.000+02:00

This evening we had the first lesson of the falls obedience class. I honestly have no idea what to call it in english, so let's call it Obedience 101 :o)
It was a happy gang who turned up on the lawn outside the university of Trondheim (Dragvoll) on a nice and sunny day, so much different than the day the puppy obedience class started back in February.
Janne brought along Elisabeth and her wonderful dog to show all the things we are supposed to end up being very good at - and I think most could agree that theory compared to the real life might be 2 different things.

Well, no reason just sit back and do nothing, so we jumped into it and started out with practice a bit of what we learned back in February - mainly having our dogs to sit down and wait, while we took a "hike". I'm so proud of Leah - not only did she stay when I told her to - very different from the spring, where she was the happy camper who wouldn't listen to me because it was so much more fun if only she could get close enough to the others for some playtime.
Well, today she made me SO PROUD! she merely looked when 2 of the others figured it was playtime, or when another one figured it was time to say hello to an outsider who passed on the lawn. Btw, did I mention just HOW proud I am ?
She didn't run after any of the joggers and didn't even spare a glance on the ones being out on their bicycles. This is huge for her !

Things to work on until the next lesson; sitting and NOT laying down when told to sit. And I need to get my head around to the fact that I need to be more verbal in my commands - it's kind of spooky how well Leah can read me. If I loose the concentration just for a second, she think we're done, because that is what normally tells her that our training session is done. And I need to figure out a few things in the recall part. It's great that Leah indeed is coming, but I need to incorporate a very important fact - like having her sitting right next to me, with her shoulder next to my leg. It's time to grow up and I can't carry her any longer when she make a leap into my arms (that was the way I made think it's the very best thing to come when I call on her).

Janne let me have a go at her dog Sviffer - he know what to do and do it properly. I defenitly have a lot of work to do myself to be able to expect Leah to figure stuff out - but, oh boy, was it fun :o)

And the important lesson learned this evening. Leah KNOWS. She know we was on our way to the class - but more important she also knew the class had ended. I brought her out for a minor walk to pee after the class had finished and it was a very different dog - who suddenly started to drag me all over the place. And not all of it was because of all the very pleasant and new smells... oh, no ! That's Leah in a nutshell, LOL.....

Leah does NOT

2010-08-18T00:16:00.000+02:00

Like porcupines. Period.
Today the second one of the neighborhood porcupines found it's way into the garden. NOT popular at all. I can't understand howcome she feel she needs to be so mad at them - those tiny little adorable spikeballs ?
I happen to love them and love the fact that they are checking out our garden in the hope of finding something Leah left over from her dinner.

If anyone have a suggestion to how I can manage to get her to think they're OK to have around, I would be one happy camper, mainly because of 2 tings -the most obvious one, because Leah think she need to bark at the poor little animal.
Barking in the daytime might not be such a big issue, but at midnight, when everyone around us is long gone to bed ? not so good....

BTW, her guard instinct is fully awake now - personally, I would have loved for it it to stay dormant - like forever !
Leah is so different than Aina and I was sort of hoping that the same would go for the guard instinct - well, I didn't get my wish fulfilled. At least I know that no one will be able to enter the house uninvited, unless Leah knows them and know that they're welcome here. I guess that has to count for something, right ?

Leah's first summervacation

2010-07-21T00:37:00.001+02:00

Because of a lot of things but mostly Leah, we decided to stay "home" this year instead of doing what we normally do - roaming the US...

So in between Roy's work in the basement (building a private movie theater room), we spend a week at the cabin, talking some nice walks in the mountain and doing some sightseeing in the area - mostly Rindal Surnadal & Sundalsøra (located in Møre & Romsdal).
I better let the pictures speak for themself - we had a wonderful week where we really got a chance to get back to basic and just enjoy life in the slow lane.

Flowers Roy & Leah picked for me when out on a midnight walk

I think I'll take my morning nap here on the deck

On our way to "Bjørkli Setre"

Icecream is perfect on a hot summerday (26C)

Trollheimen hotel in Rindal. Worth a visit

Trying to find a place called "Skavlia"

Enjoying "Eau de Mountain"

Surnadalsøra is a study in forgotten Norway. Beautiful place btw

A norwegain "beach"

I really love my new bed...

WooHAA!!

2010-07-20T23:48:00.001+02:00

Playtime again with Bastian :oP The 2 of them hadn't seen each other since the end of May before Bastians surgery and then he had to heal up good and plenty before we could take the chance of letting them having a go on each other again - yes, Leah and Bastian sure know how to play it rough

Grete brought Bastian over for a short session on Friday evening and then we decided to take it from there - there being a couple of hours playtime Saturday evening in the garden, while Grete and I enjoyed a glass of wine in the wonderful summer evening.
It really amaze me to see how gentle Leah was toward Bastian - he was the one with no breaks both Friday and Saturday and I guess he sort of paid the price on Monday by needing a day of from just about anything - poor baby !.
So instead, they came over for a short session this evening instead.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching them play together. They simply have too much fun. I'm glad I have a garden that are designed for them to roam it at their own will :o) well, that was a great deal of the reason I wanted a house with a garden...

First dogshow - not going as a puppy

2010-07-05T02:02:00.001+02:00

Oh, time fly by so fast. I can't understand Leah is now 9 1/2 month old and ready for her first dogshow. We were scheduled to present Leah in the ring at 10.30 am, but it was past noon before Leah and Linda entered the ring. Actually I don't mind, because the judge did such a great job when judging the dogs - so what is a little extra time when you know you go back home when a objective judgement ?
Bexma was represented with several dogs today - I counted at least 6 of them and most got a CK to bring back home - I'm especially proud of Bastian and his performance, bringing home a CK2 just a few short weeks after his big surgery.
Leah got a 1.price and it was a great feeling to bring home the papers where a judge say he think our girl looks great with her log back - because now her legs go with that long back of hers :oP I have to refresh my german to be able to figure out all what was said about our girl.... actually, the judge was Spanish, but apparently he thought it would be better to speak german...

Linda did a wonderful job of showing her and I'm so very proud that Leah didn't mind showing her teeth to the judge - YEAH !!
Here's a few pictures taken with the camera of my nokia N82. It's actually a great camera, but I haven't figured out everything about it yet - so the lack of quality in these pictures and the video to go along with them, are solemly my fault altogether.

And now I'm at it anyway, I better take the opportunity to share some of the pic's from our walks...
The first one is from Leah's weekend at the cabin with Roy's parents :o)

Leah have gotten a new favorite spot to sleep after we moved the furniture around in the livingroom - now she can lay in the couch AND look out the window at the same time. She have made it into an art to fall asleep while she look at the neighbors....

It's not only other dogs and humans Leah are into. She know what we refer to if we "Mu" like a cow, which she loves dearly, btw... She have figured out the sound of the horse - and her all time favorite (to our big horror) is the sheeps ! She just think all of the above mentioned are inventions to keep her amused....

Turned out to be the Gost Dog... have a look at her shiny sparly eyes ! OK, admitted. These pictures are taken around MIDNIGHT in the middle of june... Yeah, I know... Roy is a type B personality and when the weather is nice, I actually don't mind the late walks myself. Leah have figured Roy out a long time ago, so now she sleeps the entire day and don't wake up until he get's home from work. Convenient for me if I need to do stuff, not so great for Roy when he get's home from work plenty tired and worn out....

A wonderful day turning into a nightmare

2010-06-28T22:40:00.000+02:00

And that went as fast as a blink of the eye !.
We had visitors over for the afternoon and Leah was busy playing and having a good time with the rotweiler, Luna. A thunderstorm was building up, but we didn't really think much of it since we would be nice and comfortable on the porch under the marquise.
Leah was really ok with the thunder - maybe mostly because Luna was around, but none of the dogs showed any signs as to being stressed out. The weather cleared up and we thought it was a done deal and now the sunny and nice weather would come back.

Oh, how wrong we was on that account. Suddenly a very strong wind came and got a good hold on the marquise and sent it crashing back down again. Before I could get going to roll it back in, both dogs was not just a bit upset, but afraid to the point where they tried to run for cover.
A few short seconds later the marquise came crashing down again and that went along with the returning thunderstorm. That was the last drop for Leah, before we had any chance, she skipped the 5 feet fence and took off.
Ronny took of with the car to see if he could locate Leah, Monica and I went on foot and Rosa stayed back with her gorgeous baby, Adrian, in the hope that maybe Leah would come strait back home again.
After a few minutes it became clear that Leah had gotten very far in a very short time and I called Roy for back-up.
The rain was pouring down and we needed to put a plan together so we would be able to search for Leah in a better way.
Rosa and Ronny started to cover a wider area, Roy came home and we planned that he went one way and I the other - we sort of had the general direction Leah most likely had chosen and Left Monica home because she had been drenched when she was out searching.

Before long I got a phone call letting me know that strangers had found her and had chased her down to get her into safety. Instead of choosing the direct route into the woods, Leah had managed to get down to the highway - when I head those words, my heart literally skipped a beat ! and didn't start again until the lady could tell me that Leah was safe.
I cannot tell everyone involved in getting her safe back to us again, just how thankful I am - mostly because we only know a few of the involved people, the caller, the couple who chased Leah down and got her into safety, of course Monica, Rosa and Ronny - and maybe 10 other people who tried their best not to hit Leah on her panicky run around the highway.

Someone was definitely looking out for our girl this afternoon.

Beside being obviously very tired she managed to build up a healthy appetite on the close to 40 minutes on the run at full speed, the only wear and tear she has to show off from the ordeal is some cut on 3 of her paws, which I'm going to have the vet to look at tomorrow morning, to remove loose skin and make sure there isn't any chance of it getting infected.

Og så litt reklame - på norsk. BB horses på Ranheim

2010-06-20T19:28:00.000+02:00

Her den andre dagen var jeg jo utstyrs shopping til ridekurs med Grete, og endte med å finne et kjempe godt tilbud på tørket vom, nærmere bestemt Provit sitt frysetørket vom.... dette er for folk som bor i og omkring Trondheim.
BB horses på Ranheim er begynt å selge utstyr til hest og rytter, og har i samme slengen tatt inn et liten utvalg av mat og utstyr til hund også. Her selger de frysetørket vom for den nette sum av 199 kr/kg, mot 299 på dyrebutikkene - med andre ord, er det penger å spare om man ønsker å gi noe litt ekstra godt til hunden.

Jeg bruker å blande litt inn i middagen til Leah. Det er ikke store mengden jeg bruker av gangen, så en pose holder et sted mellom 3 uker og en måned. Da er 200 kr ikke store summen, og hunden syns med garanti at middagen blir SÅ mye mer spennende

The logic behind....

2010-06-20T17:29:00.000+02:00

Today Leah caught us off guard - literally speaking.
In the mornings Leah loves very much to snuggle up with Roy when he have a chance to sleep in - only the two of them are not agreeing on the time that said snuggle-up session is about to start, Leah of course want this starting as early in the morning as possible, so we block of the door to the bedroom so she can't get in before we say it's ok.
Normally it's enough to block off the door from the livingroom -but there is another door, which are not used nearly as much, especially not by Leah.

I knew that she is a fast learner and we have caught her observing how things are done, only to imitate the behavior a short time later - mostly the art of open a door by the handle, even if the door open toward you. OK, admitted, our girl is also known for the use of brute force when things don't go her way fast enough, but the cunning stunt she did today will have us pondering for a while.

We have 2 doors to the bedroom, one from the livingroom and one from the master bathroom. There is a third door, leading from the hallway to the bathroom.
The 2 doors to the bedroom, both open into the room, but the door to the bathroom from the hallway opens out into the hallway, meaning it's a lot harder for her work.
But today she did it - and she didn't even went by the livingroom door in an effort of doing this the easy way. She had been in the garden when it striked her fancy that now was the time to do her Sunday morning snuggle session with Roy. She went strait for the door to the bathroom ( it was left slightly ajar) and directly into the bedroom to wake up Roy in Leah style. Mind you 32 kg is a lot of weight to suddenly find yourself buried under these days.....

The stunning part is the fact that instead of stopping by the livingroom door, she went strait for the other door. It wasn't some try & error type of getting around the problem of the blocked of door either. This is the kind of logic you see on display with maybe a 10 year old kid, not something you expect from a 9 month old puppy.

I knew there was a reason for me to get the gate in front of the the door to the outside world - I keep having bad dreams about her running the street, scaring the living daylight out of the neighbors because she want to greet them. But now I start to wonder if I should rather install a self lock system on both the door to the outside world AND on the gate in the garden - because after today, I won't hold it against her if she figures out soon enough how I keep the gate closed shut.
I knew she was smart, just not HOW smart...

Booooring.....

2010-06-07T23:10:00.002+02:00

Sigh..... How come life suddenly turned really boring ?
I got my first heat and mom tell me I can't have a nap in the bed unless I wear my diaper panties, and I'm not totally crazy about those.
OK, I have been a good girl, since I started bleeding on May 22nd, exactly 24 hours AFTER I had 2 visitors who both were in heat... I'm alfa in my home, so I can't have anyone being in heat unless I'm join in as well.
So far mom have only been in need of changing and washing the bedsheets 5 times in a little over 2 weeks, she keep telling me she is happy that the covers on the couch are made for being washed every now and then, or she would have gone crazy a long time ago.
But the worst part is that I haven't seen Bastian for a couple of weeks and that is a real bummer !

But the poor guy went through surgery in both shoulders last week and can't have a playdate for a long time to come. His mom tells us that he miss me just as much as I miss him - but no playing until he is fully recovered. We don't need to take the risk of him having to go through surgery again any time soon. His condition is something called osteochondrosis.

So what do I do while I wait for Bastian to recover and my bleeding to stop messing up the house ? well, for one thing, I have found a real nice spot in the garden to have my morning nap - mom tell me I'm crazy for thinking that my choice of a pillow is a great idea. What does she know ? I happen to like my pillow just fine....

We have had some garden construction the last week - both mom and dad fussing around over the new mower, which they say I can't play with.... NOT FAIR ! atleast it moves around so I have something to chase after.

And the cable company finally send out people to put down the TV cable so mom could clean up behind the greenhouse. I have to say that I'm happy those people came around, because one of the guys had his dog with him - some mut & a boy, but mom told me it was OK to have him over for a playdate since he was neutered.
Ye Haw... we had so much fun and boy was I tired for the rest of the day after running around in the garden like a mad dog for an hour or so :o)

The last few days I have helped mom weeding - well, my idea of weeding is not exactly the same as the humans. So I tend to get bored after a while and then it's time to be creative to catch mom's attention. Her skin gloves are so much fun to chew but the most fun of it all is if I can mange to get hold of the wellingtons. Boy can mom run around after me, trying to come up with ideas to get me to let go of her boots. But she don't really get it - those Wellington's make such a funny noise when I give them a good shake. I kind of hope that I'll be allowed to keep them, eventually....

In the last 3 weeks I have experienced a weekend home alone with Mom while Dad went diving, one weekend alone with Dad when Mom went on a girls only trip with the horses - those I think smell so yummy ! and this weekend I went to the cabin with my grandparents :o) I had so much fun up there and boy was I tired when I got back home yesterday....

Pictures

2010-05-23T23:53:00.001+02:00

You can always count on Leah snuggling up in the bed once she have gotten us out of it......
The same thing goes for the couch. I think her favorite sport is to get us away, so she can cuddle up in a nice and warm spot :o)

I was cleaning out some on my stuff one day, and what do you know... Leah found the kitty cat I made in 4th grade, while I waited for the others to finish up their projects... For some reason Leah really loves this tiny little stuffed cat.

The birdsa have gotten their very own private guard against the the magpies and the crows....

You can count on Leah wanting to help when new stuff get into the house... Here Roy are inspecting our newest household robot, the robomow. Now I don't have to mow the lawn any longer, because this really cool gadget will do the work for me. Instead I plan to spend that extra time with Leah :o)

Walk in the forest with Bastian and Grete

2010-05-23T14:48:00.001+02:00

We had a wonderful walk in the forest with Bastian and Grete this morning. Only downside was the fact that we had to change location since the farmers have let the sheep out for the summer - darn ......

Grete filled me in about how they did yesterday. "Gullmerke rekrutt" is pretty darn good in my point of view :o)

It was a carefree walk, just like it always is and the fact that Leah is having her first heat, didn't matter one way or the other. She and Bastian was just too busy having fun playing rough and chasing each other. I'm amazed that he didn't even wanted to check out her new smell ?!

There won't be a chance for a walk tomorrow, because it looks like Bastian hurt his foot. Grete are going to get him checked out on Tuesday and hopefully it's nothing more than a simple case of growth pain. I wonder how long it will go before Bastian stop his growth spur. It's a little more than a week since I saw him the last time and now his head have filled in to become a very typical - and - a very beautiful boxer head :o) No one can claim that his ears are too big for his head any longer !!
Compared to Bastian, Leah is petite.... but I actually hope that she stay this way. Because then I don't have to explain her gender, like I had with Aina (Aina was very big for a female and it didn't help that she was a bit overweight on top of that....).

First heat.....

2010-05-22T23:09:00.001+02:00

Well, this weekend didn't exactly go according to plan.. First of, since I'm home alone with Leah and the birds, I thought that maybe, just maybe I would be able to sleep a little bit longer than I usually get to sleep in the morning...
Not so.... sigh.

Leah woke me up as usual several hours before I was hoping to be dragged out of bed. I thought that maybe she was in need of having a pee trip to the garden - so I went up to open the patio door and then went back to bed, hoping that once she had finished her "pitstop" she would come back to sleep some more.
Not so.
So a little past 8 am, I ended up getting out of bed and fixing breakfast for her and the birds, hoping that when she was full, she would do as she usually does, go strait back to having another nap for a couple of hours.
Not today, though. She was restless and cried a bit, and even though it was evident that she hadn't had her share of sleep, she was just too restless.....
A few hours later, after I had just cleaned the house, I started to find blood spot's drizzled all over the floor. At first, I thought it was spot's I had missed from yesterday, when I had a friend over for a while to pick up her baby bird and her panda hamster - her 2 chihuahua was in heat and had made some spots on the floor while they were here. But then again, that couldn't be right.... after all, the blood was just too fresh.
It took me a few minutes to realize the reason and I'll be darned. Couldn't Leah had gotten her first heat just a few hours earlier so I could have gone to the petstore to pick up "panties" in her size. As it is right now, she is stuck with panties that are fitted for a standard schnauzer - in other words, they're at least one size too small for her..... Poor baby.

Oh, well. we'll survive.

Little did I know how right I would be, when I stated a few weeks back, that it wouldn't be long before Leah would reach sexual maturity. OMG, I have a teenage daughter in the house now LOL....
Good thing she is not a human daughter, or I would have to go through several years of "I hate my parents" issues.

We're going to attempt to meet up with Grete tomorrow for a walk, to catch up.... we haven't had our weekly walk this week becasuse she and Bastian have been too busy training for the obedience contest in the boxerclub this weekend. They made a great appearance, so I'm going to get the whole story tomorrow.... hopefully Leah will be just as bossy toward Bastian as she usually are, so he won't get a chance to sneak up behind her.... if it don't go according to plan, it's going to be some very boring 3 weeks..

Working in the garden and being a couch potato

2010-05-06T23:58:00.000+02:00

How is it really possible to be both things in one and the same day ? Because of Leah, it's a pretty simple and easy accomplished task these days.
Some days, she seems happy to let me catch up on sleep, other days - she want to start the fun a bit early. Today was one of those days.
She woke me up by sort of swimming from the footside of the bed til my pillow. Let's face it, Leah absolutly love to snuggle up on my pillow some days, while others, her thing is more of the kind where her nose nearly reach down to the floor. Today was the pillow day. The only thing missing in her "Being very cute and cuddly" act was the meow sounds she had when she was a tiny wee puppy.... Legs where up in the air, pawing at something none of us humans will ever be abe to understand, tail wagging to the point where she could hurt someone badly, her nibbling away at everything within her reach - mostly Roy's ear and my pillow as she already then had managed to push me out of bed completly...
When Leah does this, there is really only one thing to do - grab a book and remember to bring the pillow when we head for the livingroom and the couch.
This morning Leah's snuggle session didn't end until I had managed to finish up my book, which as a matter of fact suited me just perfect. It's a long time since I actually did put in the time to just snuggle up on the couch with a cup of coffee and a warm & fuzzy dog to keep me company.

We spend the afternoon in the garden. It's time to start the fiddling around and since the physiotherapy made wonders with my arm, I was actually able to do a little bit of digging.
I need to put in a another fence in the back yard to keep Leah from being overly eager in my vegetable garden. As much as I love her, I really really want to grow a bit of vegetables as well.
First thing first, I needed to move around on at least one of the planting beds - only downside was the fact that I did get a bit more help than I asked for, when I let Leah out in the garden with me....
Not only did she do a fair part of the digging when I started to loosen the soil so it would be more easy to move to another place. When I started to move the soil around, Leah first thought she needed too move everything back, or at least in the general direction from which it was moved originally.
When that didn't go down well with me, she decided it was time to do some dirtbath scooting around and ....
Ta Daaa... what would you know, she found a bone and decided to dig a deep hole in the pile of soil that I had just finished move.
In the end, I managed to get her to concentrate on the bone long enough for me to do measurements for fencepost. But the second I started to use the hand saw she was back into the helping Mom mood....

The most hillarious thing happened when I finally managed to get a hole deep enough for the fencepost to be able to be positioned correctly and it was time to fill up the gap around the fencepost. Apparently Leah thought the greatest fun would be to see if she could catch the pebbles and stones I dropped into the hole to make everything more stable and before I knew it half of her was on her way into the hole as well.

1 fencepost down, 2 more to go. Something tells me this task won't be done when or just after it has been raining, or I will be in a bad need of giving Leah a shower. Because her way of saying it was enough work today, was to jump into the couch after she had first digged in the compost pile, then tried to roll around in it as well....

Tomorrow we are going to meet up with Grete & Bastian and Bente & Maya. I hope Leah get to build up her appetite because it seems like she have decided to not eat her own food again. And no, this time I'm not going to swap the food around again - and not only because I then would be left with a poorer choice of food, but also because I just picked up a brand new bag of the good stuff last week. So Leah is stuck with what she currently is getting in her dish.
OK, I know I'm bad - I do hold back a few bites of my dinner in the evening, especially if it's fish, since Leah LOVES her fish. But she have grown into the habit of fishing out the yummy bites and then leave the rest of the food alone.... sigh.

Since the weather cleared up nice and good yesterday, the two of us managed to not only get a nice evening walk but also we managed to do some training while we were at it anyway :o) Now it won't be long before I really can start on the process of having her walk nicely alongside me, even if there is another dog within her sight - now I'm of course talking about dogs she consider as playmates.. the rest, she don't really know what to think of at the moment. I guess she think that most dogs that bark are very rude and some of them she even find rather scary. I guess she finally hit the state where everything is turning into the big bad wolf type of scary and it don't really matter if it's a human or animal. Good thing is that at least she don't find the house scary and I hope it will stay this way.....

OK, time to grap my pup and find the bed.... I have a bran new book to explore this evening. BTW, I really can recomend "Twillight" by Stephenie Meyer - even though it's as mushy as they come. But the lady really knows how to write. I have to admit, I guess that story gave food for thoughts. Normally I'm not into lovestories unless it's a classic like Jane Austen, Emelie Bronte or even Shakespeare....

Another puppyshow

2010-05-02T22:37:00.000+02:00

Today I dragged poor Leah out of bed at 6 am - and no, she would rather have snuggled up with Roy for several hours more...
Our day was planned to be spend in Selbu, at "Hoindaggan" and the puppyshow there.
We had to be in the ring at 9 am, so even if it was very tempting to just snuggle up in bed a few more hours, we had promised Grete and Bastian to join them o;)
We got a 2nd place of the female boxer puppies and Bastian went home with a BIM title. To get all the stress from the morning to go away we decided that the day should get the perfect ending with a nice walk in the forrest, so Bastian and Leah could get rid of the build up stress.

Yesterday I decided I should have a go at Leah's crate to see if I could fit it into the back seat of the car... to make good use of it, since it looks like I don't need it in the house.
Now I'm very glad I managed to get the crate into the car. Not only did Leah actually enjoy sleeping in there while being on the road this morning, but this afternoon, the crate might have saved her from some injuries when we had a very near accident involving a jackass who apparently didn't know how to drive (and he actually took of without checking if we were ok) and the ditch along the road. We are OK, but I guess Roy have to get the car checked....

Spring is here

2010-04-30T21:20:00.000+02:00

We had our last day at obedience class Wednesday this week. So until the fall, we will be on our own when it come to the training. But our teacher, Janne have provided us with enough stuff to work on to last us a while :o)
Along with the "No dragging" tip from Yvonne, I think we're all set for the next few months...

I have to admit, there haven't been much energy left over to do a lot of training sessions over the last few weeks. But a few minutes here and a few minutes there goes a long way :o) Even today on the walk with Grete & Bastian I managed to sneak in a few minutes dedicated to having Leah walk right next to me - and she was all focused on me and not Bastian. I was amazed and very pleased. OK, both dogs were tired after the hour and a half long walk, but still. It's not very often Leah think it's more than enough to focus on me when Bastian is around :o)

The snow are gone in the yard, so Leah can spend more time outside on sunny days. It was a good thing we had such a nice weather last week, because Leah sure didn't think we had spend enough time with her. We was putting down a new floor in the livingroom and the hallway, and Leah really wanted to help us do the job. Actually, she wanted to help that badly, that she actually ripped of a piece of the wallpaper between 2 doors in the hallway.... A itty bitty tiny corner of the wallpaper was loose when we removed the fittings around the doors to put down the new floor. And Leah just managed to find that itty bitty tiny corner. She just sat there, looking at us with her big beautiful dark eyes and before I knew it, she had ripped a rather large piece of wallpaper of the wall. Good thing it's between the 2 doors, because it will be manageable to fix it without it showing.

Leah's way of letting us know she think we haven't spend enough time with her, is to wrap herself around us when it's time to have a nap. I'm not sure Roy think it's great that she take up more than half the bed when she does this, but I sure think it's nice to wake up in the morning with a puppy snuggled up right next to me.

Leah loves to be in the middle of everything and are happy to help out in her own special way, even when it comes to cleaning......

I guess I can say with confidence that we can leave Leah home alone for a couple of hours without having to worry that she destroy or turn the house up-side-down.... We had to go away for a few hours this Sunday, and we couldn't bring Leah. It was too hot for her to stay in the car and a cat don't go well with a happy boxer. Because of the state of the house, Leah's crate was packed away. Beside. with her 28 kg, she will and are able to turn the crate over, so I didn't want to leave her in that, either. I guess the crate are packed away for good now. She can go have a nap in there and can sleep in there during the night. But the second the door closed behind her, she don't want to spend more time in there. It has been like this since the day she was brought home.....
Maybe I should see if I can manage to make a cozy sleeping spot for her in the basement with it. Because our girl have showed that she don't like it too hot when she need her beauty sleep. And our livingroom has large windows and it heats up good and plenty in the summer time. Even our other dog, Aina, prefered to sleep in the basement during the summertime....

Next Sunday we're going to another puppy show in Selbu. More for the fun of it and to keep Grete and Bastian company, than anything else. Besides it's terrific social training for Leah. I have to admit, I'm not really sure I look forward to this, because this time I have to be Leah's handler in the ring. I don't do well being the "center of attention". And it don't help much that I know that it's not the human people are interested in, but the puppy.... I guess I just have to keep remind myself that I do this for Leah's sake....

Interesting week

2010-04-20T22:50:00.000+02:00

Wednesday last week I decided to take Leah for a walk in the forest where we usually meet up with Bastian and his mom. Well, as an afterthought, choosing that particular place for our first solo walk in the forest without a leash, wasn't that great of an idea after all.
Halfway up to the lake that would be the destination, Leah decided she just had to get back to the car to check out if maybe Bastian was there, waiting for her to come pick him up. She turned 180 degree and ran only stopping long enough to check if I was behind her. For some reason I knew she wouldn't go further than the car, but that would be far enough in my opinion because after all, the car was parked close to a road even though it wasn't a road with a lot of trafic.
After fetching her I had no choice but put the leash on if I should have any hope of getting up to the lake and back again.
Well, that was interesting. Leah is half my weight by now (27,7 kg) and she is strong. Let me tell you, with that kind of dragging help, even the worst runner can keep up the speed up for a long while......
I had to sweet talk her for the most part so she wouldn't strangle herself, because I had forgotten to bring her harness along and even with the wide collar, she could get herself into a lot of trouble in just a short time.

Well, I really didn't have to worry about her strangling herself... there were other things to worry about, like the fact that Leah decided to take another bath !
This time it was in the ditch beside the road, which was full of ice water. When she jumped in (and it went so fast), I could see the look in her eyes that she knew this wasn't her best idea. It was terrible cold and we had about 2 km back to the car.....

At the obedience class that evening, Leah did brilliantly when it was time to learn a new trick :o) The "Stand" and stay until told otherwise and that thing came in very handy a few days later when we were at the next puppyshow on Saturday...

Friday was spend on a very nice walk in the forest with Grete and Bastian. It was a rather interesting walk as we experienced every possible weather you can imagine. sleet, rain, snow and sun.... everything mixed in with a bit of wind now and then...

Saturday we went for another puppyshow and Bastian came back home with a BIR & a BIG3. Congratulations to him and Grete. :o) Grete ought be proud of her cutie pie because he did so well !
I think Leah did great as well, and are pleased that she seems to have figured out what all the fuss in the ring is about. A bit more training and she will be ready for the real deal. Linda helped out this time around and I'm very grateful for her help. I do best behind the camera and would only freak out Leah bigtime if I was the one who was with her in the ring.

Leah was tired after the puppyshow, and her is the best possible position to have a great nap:

Sunday evening we met up with Grete and Bastian at Midtsand. Before long we were joined by no less than 4 other dogs, 2 of them puppies. All 6 dogs had a fun time playing, even though Leah was a bit set back because she couldn't focus on just one or 2 at a time. I have to say it was a great experience..

Monday, it was Bastians turn to take a bath in the local lake, good thing for him it was a rather nice and sunny day and with all the playing, he dried up fast. We have to make the most out of those trips to the forest because within the next few weeks, the farmers will let out their livestock and then we can't let the dogs run loose any longer. That is a thing I don't look forward to because I truly believe that there should be room enough for all of us.

The most exciting thing this week, was what we did this morning. Leah have been pulling rather hard on the leash and it's like she got worse the more we addressed the problem. And it have started to become a real big problem lately.
A friend of mine - Yvonne - tipped me about a great way to stop Leah from pulling and this morning I went out to see if I could figure this out.
It worked !! and we ended up having a nice walk around the block, with NO PULLING what so ever ! Not even when we entered our own street and that is when Leah really start to pull normally. She walked nicely right beside me all the way and did so great :o)

Playtime with the regular and the new one......

2010-04-13T00:29:00.000+02:00

Today's photographer is my sister, Silje. She went with us to meet up with Grete and Bastian at Midtsand. Everything looked to be the perfect day for some walk and some playtime.
As it turned out. The dogs had a wonderful time, the humans didn't need to stress and as an extra bonus we met a new puppy - Rocky. To see that there was noting wrong in having a new pup to join in on all the fun made me so very happy. I guess I still have to get used to the concept that I belong to a dog who actually think it's ok with new playmates :o)
I better let the pictures tell it's own tale. All in all, it was a nice day for a walk and I'm so very proud of Leah that left all the seagulls alone, even though they where right there infront of her !

The videos from the puppyshow

2010-04-12T10:28:00.001+02:00

First out yesterday was Bastian. Then it was Leah. Last out was Maya who got a well deserved BIM title :o)

And some playtime yesterday afternoon. Grete is showing me all these really nice places to get up close and personal with the nature.

Puppy show and a walk in the forest.

2010-04-11T20:34:00.001+02:00

We went for another puppy show this morning. Great training for Leah since she get so very stressed out by being surrounded by a big crowd. When I'm finished with the handfeeding of the birds, we are going to spend a lot of time in the city so Leah can get used to being around a lot of people at the same time.

But we had fun today. We got help from Roy's dad to show Leah today and the two of them did great. If it had been me who was to show her, it would end up in disaster. Most likely that will be the result next weekend, where we have another puppy show LOL. The judge liked Leah, but thought (which is correct) that she need more training in the show ring to be able to do a great appearance. Actually, she need to be de-sensitized to being around a crowd, more than being in the showring :o)

We was finished at the show early and what to do with such a gorgeous day ?
What better choice than to meet up with Bastian and Grete for a nice walk in the forest.

And this is what Leah and I look like after a busy day.......

Movies from this morning are being processed right now and the links will be uploaded when they're ready :o)

A few pic's from the week that went by.....
For some reason Leah just love to get me of the couch and then snuggle up to my pillow.... I have to admit, it's kind of cute :o)

When Leah enter the PlayMode there is no escape. If you don't want to play, she will find a way to make you play...

It might help

2010-04-08T10:10:00.000+02:00

To actually write in her weight, when I was writing up about it anyway....
At the vet's office her weight stopped at 26 kg. 2 weeks later, it was up to 26,4 kg, and I don't think she is finished putting on weight yet..... :o)

There is a new gardener in town

2010-04-07T22:52:00.000+02:00

We came home after Easter to a garden with no snow... NICE. or almost nice.
I have learned that it's not only me who love to dig around in the garden - Leah think it's great fun as well. Only her version of it is to dig up all my flower bulbs, including the emperor lilly that was in the garden when we moved in.
The same fate happened to the iris (very expensive and my pride, since I love the delicate flowers), the Dutch tulips I brought back home after our trip to Amsterdam back in 2008 and the dandelions....

No wonder we couldn't understand why the heck Leah was gaining all this weight. At the last trip to the vet, he exclaimed... gosh she is big, but not fat ! (he apparently felt the need to let me know that he thought she wasn't fat). That was after I told her she was 6 months... he thought she was closer to 9 months old LOL....

Oh, well... missing flower bulbs aside, I look forward to spend more time in the garden with our girl. And yes. I'm going to put up a fence around the vegetable garden, so I don't risk her digging up the potatos and carrots :o)

First Easter....

2010-04-07T22:40:00.000+02:00

Leah's first Easter was also her first trip to the cabin, located in Resdalen between The two townships of Meldal & Rindal.
And it was her first experience with the concept of skiing as well.

The first thing first....
At the cabin, there is a complete different set of houserules than she is used to... She is not allowed to snuggle up on the couch, she had to sleep in the livingroom all night all by herself (which she have been practicing a lot lately) and she had to learn the concept of a leash.... there isn't a fenced in yard around the cabin, but indeed there is neigbors close by whom might not think she is the greatest living thing on Earth.
She passed all the new things with flying colors - even the concept of going on a skitrip :o)

We got to do a lot of recall training. OK, mostly it was Roy who did this, since he and his parents was the ones providing the daily exercise while being at the cabin. She did great most of the time and they only time they really needed her leash was when meeting other people. After all, Leah is a hound for meeting new people. Actually to the point where she wore out the no-pull leash completly....

A sunny day home on the porch.....

To snuggle up and be kept nice and compy after a long day running around in the snow....

They wore out the puppy completly

Happy Camper at Obedience class

2010-03-25T00:00:00.000+01:00

Today's obedience class went like a charm. Only downside was that Roy couldn't join us like he usually does as he had a meeting.
So I wondered for a bit how things would go since I had to both be the designated leash holder & be the treat dispenser at the same time.
I actually went rather well - especially when I figured that I could just leave the leash on the ground. Even though Leah thought it was interesting with the other dogs in our group, she obviously knew that it wouldn't be a particularly great idea to attempt to walk away from me....
So we had great success with Sit, Stay, Heel - and....
Ta Daaaaaa.
We were able to do a handshake with the teacher, Janne.

Normally, the greeting situation is a nightmare because Leah is bouncing all over the place and simply don't know what to do with herself, so when we were told we should start do this exercise I thought for sure we wouldn't be able to get anyone even close by.
After a few erroneous attempts where I had to place Leah back into position, we had the teacher right next to us - and then it was ME (of all things) that messed everything up because I got so excited that Leah was sitting there with ALL 4 paws on the ground at the same time !!....
So we had to do another attempt and then we got everything right :oP

OK, I have baby birds to feed, so for now, I'll just give 2 links to playtime between Leah & Bastian:
The couch playground and then outside in the garden....

Being a Big Girl

2010-03-23T23:45:00.000+01:00

In the last few weeks we have had the bed to ourself - most of the time. Leah decided that the couch is plenty of bed for her these days. OK, not always, but more and more often I get to get up in the morning to find her snoozing on the couch.

The obedience class is going so great. The only thing we're not doing so well in, is when we're having company over and the dragging when we're out walking. The greeting situation is not a good one, especially if we get more than one visitor at a time.
Roy is the one that has to deal with the dragging issue for now. She is simply getting too heavy for me to be able to bring her on a walk on a regular leash, so I have to use the head harness. But then she is walking like the princess she is and I don't even have to have the leash attached to the part that goes around her mouth.
I have an idea that the dragging is all about having something that is getting tight on her, and she want to get away from it. The thing is, her collar is loose when she don't drag, hence she shouldn't feel the need of dragging in the first place. Besides, it don't make sense with the head harness because with that, she don't drag at all.

Our teacher at the obedience class have promised that she will help us figuring this out one way or another and if we can't manage to deal with it while being in class, we can always do private sessions later on :oP

In every other part of the obedience class, Leah is working hard on getting things perfect :o).

I got her another brain game yesterday as the first one we got her turned out to be too easy for her. I loves the game, but it wouldn't give her something to work on for more than a few minutes. So I went to bring home the level 3 game.
We kind of expected her to spend the better part of a week figuring out this one, but it only took her 25 minutes to figure out that if she want to get the treat, she need to not only push something around, she need to lift up a pin to release the box that hold the treat...

Yesterday, we went for a long walk with Bastian and his mom.... it was a wonderful day and we had the entire mountain road to ourself :oP meaning we didn't need to leash the puppies and they could run around and play as it pleased them.
We're planning more of these walks, because that is manna to the soul.

The sulking lip

2010-03-12T00:07:00.000+01:00

Leah have inherited her moms "sulking lip", only she don't show the teeth.
If she feel she is being left out - out come the sulking lip - bigger if she feel she is REALLY missing out of something good.

Over the last week we have done a lot of contact training and Leah is doing great - as a matter of fact, she makes sure to incorporate it bigtime around dinner time :o)
She drags worse than ever after we really started to work on the walk nicely part and since my arm are still bothering me, that task is up to Roy for now.

The stuffed toys are being used a lot these days. It started to rain on Sunday and it became a bit hard to walk on the icy roads. Stuffed toys are a very good way of getting rid of all that excess energy that she otherwise don't know what to do with. And being able to snuggle up in Roy's lap, make it so much more enjoyable all together :o)

We had most of Roy's family over on Sunday. Amazingly enough, Leah figured that Ididn't have much time to play during the day, while I was baking and getting the house in order for the visit. So instead she spend close to an hour and a half alone in the garden, running around like crazy and playing with whatever she happen to find. After that, she and Roy had a very long walk because we kind of hoped to wear her out so she wouldn't go all bonkers when everyone came... Well not so lucky.... But she did manage to sleep most of Monday, instead :o)

Leah is having a lot of fun with paper and boxes that are meant to be tossed.... it's a little bit worse when she figure she can go pick out every box that strikes her fancy. Somehow, those boxes is a better catch, so they always end up in the couch for demolition. Good thing is that this particular one was just one I had forgotten to give her earlier this week, or I would have been in trouble - without it, I wouldn't have been able to return whatever was in it

We was in a bit of luck this morning... it wasn't raining and most of the ice had melted, so we wasn't stuck at home like yesterday where I learned that one of my ice spike thingies to put under the shoes was missing along with a glove - problably the work of Leah the collecter....
So we went for a rather nice walk. Only downside - howcome some dog owners think they're entitled to let their pooch poop all over the place and they don't have to pick up after them. The reflection of the walk is that the more expensive houses along the street - the more poop you're apt to find. And now when all the snow is melting it's extra gross.... I can understand why so many people who are not owned by a dog, get so mad about this particular matter.... sigh.

And we who thought spring was on the way... not so. Early afternoon it started to snow again, so for now, the garden are a real mess for Leah to be in - a lot of ice....

This weeks obedience training went very well. Leah have the contact incoporated close to perfection and we have started to add on a comando with great response :o)
We had our first lesson in comming when called, if they're running loose. I'm so glad we have done a lot of such while playing in the garden - and while being out with Maya and Bastian because I'm pretty sure that Leah will come to check on me when I call her. Adding in a chance for a hug and a treat and she is all set :o)

I took the baby birds for handfeeding today and Leah got a chance to sniff them real good. After that she have pretty much ignored them - which is a good thing. Hopefully she will stay that way, even when the babies start to move around a bit more because I don't want to have to lock the door to my study.

Skinny dipping in March......

2010-03-04T23:53:00.000+01:00

Hmmm, where exactly do I start. Today when we met up with Maya and Bastian (and of course their mom's), Leah decided it was the perfect day to check out the water temperature in the ocean !. So in she went. I was glad the car was still warm and that I remembered to bring the dogcoat with us when we left for todays event. Leah was soaking wet. And it couldn't have been more than maybe 4 C (maybe 35F) in the water and even though it was a sunny day, the air temp was freezing.

Leah is now so heavy that I have trouble lifting her, so last weekend I had to get help from my dad to do the weekly weight check. 24 kg ! and Leah is only 5 and a half month old still. I sure hope she'll stop gain this much weight because now she starts to be a tad to heavy for me - to the point where her habit of bouncing on my right arm now have left me with a stubborn case of capsulitis or more commonly referred to as a Frozen Shoulder.... So no more fetch games for Leah with me for a while and please, dear puppy... no more jumping on my arm....

So many things have happened over the last few weeks. One night Leah mostly slept in her crate - by her own choice. That was just the spot she preferred when it was (in her mind) time to go to bed.... Only downside here in the middle of the winter - she wakes up early in the morning because she get's cold and then she want to snuggle up real tight. Then it's time for me to bring my pillow and go for another hours rest on the couch...

Leah is having a new sport.... getting the logs for the fireplace and scatter them all over the garden, or as in this case - chew it into itty bitty tiny pieces that will give Mom a lot of work to clean up.

At the obedience class we have started to work on greeting people. Mostly Leah does a good job of not jumping when she meet new people - it's the people she know and think are fun, we have trouble with....
The eye contact training is going great. She have figured out that she need to look at me in order to get the treat - to the point where she won't stop giving me the eye contact until long after I have stopped a session. As a matter of fact, I have a feeling that the hardest part for Leah to learn will be to slow down when we're out walking. She is too heavy for me to walk with the ordinary leash, so I have to use a head collar for now, at least until Roy have worked some more with her and until my right arm are able to take the dragging.

Last Friday I brought home a new toy for Leah. Brain Game for Dogs... I should have bought level 3 instead of level 2 because she figured it out WITHOUT any help from me. I didn't even had to show her how to move around the blocks to be able to get to the treat - in this case it was dry cat food with fish - fish is definitely something Leah is willing to work for. To the point there I can just shake the box with cat food if she don't want to come inside again after being out for a while - and she'll be there in a split second if she think there is even a slight chance to get some. And that is the contrary to what we see with just about any other food item.
When we feed her in the morning - I have to leave the dish because she'll look at it, and then will wait maybe 2 or 3 hours before eating anything... the same thing in the afternoon. She don't build up an appetite until around 3 or 4 pm. So I always worry that she is not getting enough food and have started to be real good at figuring out how to trick her into eating when it's actually time to eat.... in other words, Leah is an lazy eater...