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Sun Heaven & Sun Hell

From something that felt more like fall (+10-12 C°) we suddenly jumped to very hot summer. My husband and Stanley enjoy the heat but Alisa and I do not, we are melting. It's almost 30C° in shade and quite humid. Most pictures of the dogs I take now (especially of Alisa) have those long tongues hanging out to one side.

Stanley is our approved sun maniac; clown boy keeps following all year round any available sun rays like a solar panel (indoors as well as outdoors). So these days are paradise for him. He keeps lying outside and sunbathing and every 30 minutes or so he moves to a shady place to cool down for 5-10 minutes and then back to the sun again, feels like you can almost fry an egg on him. No wonder he is so loony, his brain must have melted a long time ago. Maybe he is trying to compensate for his cold start of life in Moscow?



Alisa on the other hand is desperately trying to hide in every shade she can find, even inside bushes, or trying to stay indoors as much as possible and would happily hibernate inside the refrigerator if she could. But if Stanley and I are in a sunny area she of course wants to be with the crowd, so she joins us. And every time she does I'm worried she'll get a heat stroke as she within a few seconds starts to sound like a steam train. But the silly girl she is, she is not leaving until someone else will move. On the walks our "rabbit-girl" hasn't slow down and keep running and hopping in the grass fields like usual, though she is now "crawling" back to the car. On top of it she hasn't seriously started to blow her coat yet, hope it will happen soon or we will have one "very well cooked" Icelandic Sheepdog by the end of this summer.


Here is a picture of Alisa, no ears though, as usual she was too fast and I was too slow.

Flowers and dogs

This how I rest after shooting and editing my boring stock pictures, do something with the dogs to rest my mind and eyes.



Of course, this was made spontaneously without much thinking or preparations. Just threw the flowers on the floor, called the dogs, said “stay here” and from there we went. But it was wrong lightening, wrong camera position, Stanley with his “I hate you” look (he hates to be in front of the camera when in the studio), only Alisa performed perfectly as usual, always happy as a clam. She actually have a slightly yellow nose because of the pollen, the girl was sniffing the flowers like any woman would. :)

Home, sweet home...

Back from vacation. It was fun, but really, really slow. I didn't have the dogs, husband, photo- video- cameras, no internet connection or a computer and to finish the list I didn't need to cook or clean. It is a strange life when you suddenly got so much free time and you really have no clue what to do with it, so you just adapt to a slow-motion life.

So when I came back I really got a speed shock, everything felt kind of unreal and I was almost giddy for the first couple of days, especially with those barking dogs spinning around you and all the stuff that needed to be done. Still not ready to go back to dog training classes and the dogs have probably forgotten everything already, he-he.

Here is one of Stanley's latest clips. A bit slow, but I think he is just too cute! :)

Hunters

Well, I took our new camera to test it under "field" conditions. While I was a "bit" distracted with the new toy the dogs went into hunting mode. I hope all creatures was hidden well and nobody died out there just because I was playing with this silly camera. |video|

The picture below is my favorite of the month :)

Obedience test

Today, Alisa failed the test in obedience to move up one level (rejecting food was the only thing she did perfect) the rest of it was just a joke. Everybody, including two trainers, were very surprised because she's been very good lately at everything, they were sure she would do it easily. HA!
I wasn't really surprised at all at what happened, I saw it coming - she was just not in the mood to behave today. It was her "off manners" day and we were just distracting her from having fun.

Do these dogs look happy?

When we were at the beach they played like mad and looked soooo happy. At some point when they slowed down a bit I thought it would be great to take their picture (I don't have many nice pictures of them together). So I said the magic word "stay" and they did, but they kept turning their heads like owls and since I wanted to have both their eyes on the picture, not only the ears. I told them "look at me" and after a few attempts they started to sort of look in my direction. Click! - the picture of my happy dogs was taken, but Ouch! Look at this photo! What happened? Do these dogs look happy? Why such stiff and depressed faces?


Of course it was entirely my fault! I did torture them by making them stay still on the beach for a whole minute or so! How cruel is that? Of course they immediately got the happy , expressions back after I released them from this agony and shot off like bullets.

Well, I still want to hope that one day, some year, I'll get my nice, happy and perfect picture of them together.

Alisa has been neutered

When Alisa was at the age of 1 year and 2 months I decided to go for it and neuter her. It wasn't an easy decision; I felt a bit contradictory at the time and didn't want to rush. But after looking at all the pros and cons I came to the conclusion to go ahead.

After the surgery we avoided the park to keep Alisa calm with no temptations until everything had healed. Unfortunately she got a little infection at the stitches so we were away for some time. When we came back everyone was asking the same thing - "what happened with the dog?" :) She had just finished shedding her coat for the first time and with her belly shaven, which usually had surprisingly long hair, she looked so thin and so much smaller, just like a different dog :)

Here are two photos of Alisa from that period.

Best Of Breed

Alisa has participated in the Brussels Dog Show, 21-22 June 2008 at the age of 9 months and she did great! She got Excellent in marks and won Best Junior of Breed and Best of Breed.

When we were getting a puppy we were not looking for a show dog. But while she was growing and turning into such a beauty I got this thought that it seemed such a shame not to show her off. I was also really curios to hear a judge's opinion about her.

The problem was that I knew nothing about shows or about handling. After reading a lot on the internet I got completely scared how complicated the whole thing seemed to be, so I decided that I couldn't do it myself in the short time we had. So we started to look for someone who could train and handle her at the show or at least give me a crash course how to do it. Turned out to be quite a task, we couldn't find anyone suitable until we got very lucky getting in touch with a dog club specializing in this who advised us to contact this nice couple. They, from pure enthusiasm, helped us to train Alisa and later decided to handle her as well at the show. They truly did an amazing job with her. Alisa is a smart and easily trained dog but she was still only 9 months old and at that point we only had 2 weeks before the show. Alisa had just 3 lessons with them, an hour each, and I learned a lot from them, so between each session I did a lot of training on my own. Of course Alisa tried to "help" us her own way by going in "heat" just a few days before the show. It complicated things a bit and made us more nervous, but everything went fine.

Our biggest fear was that Alisa would make a blast at the dog show with her barking, so we prepared for the worst and as usual we were wrong. She behaved amazingly nice! She was a bit shy in the beginning when we entered the building, with her tail hanging low because there were so many big dogs around. But I just kept walking slowly with her and 20 minutes later she was just her normal smiley, happy self again with curled tail. Alisa did just amazing in the ring, behaving so good and natural, like she's been doing this kind of thing all the time!

Though when it was time to go on show in the main ring we had been there for several hours and by now she was very tired and had no interest whatsoever to win neither "Best Junior of Show" nor "Best in Group".

I'm very grateful to Natalie and Michel for all their help and guidance they gave to us. It turned out to be a very interesting and exciting day for all of us. Even though we had a very long day and were totally exhausted at the end, it was a great experience which I really loved.