Fear of the Dark

I thought I wasn't scared of the dark but now when we live on the country-side I realize that it was never really dark in Helsinki, not even during this time of the year. There was always street-lamps to hang on to, even in the little forest and in the little park behind and in front of our building. I shouldn't be suprised though as I've grown up in the country-side.

Now though, if I can avoid it I don't go out with Faro when it has become dark but sometimes I have to, and if so it is of importance to take the road to the right because there is less forest on that side. When I can't see a damn thing I prefer to at least have open space (the fields) around me instead of forest. I know that it's silly but it's not really my rational side thinking, and possibly I should even have been more scared in Helsinki because what am I really gonna meet in the forest here? A deer is probably on the top of that list, which is acctually a lot less scary than most dodgy people in Helsinki.

Well, at least Faro is not scared and does not get bored of the same path, because every day there is new smells. I take the other direction of the road or go to the forest when I have the opportunity to take him out during the light hours.

The gear when we go out in the darkness:

Faro has a reflective west and a reflective collar.

Same goes for us minus the collar but plus some other reflexes. (Stefan in this case) Stefan also brings a little flashlight that he puts on when a car drives past (or when we see/hear something, usually Faro is the one who notices the deers or cats or whatever first in the dark).

And finally some road pics just to illustrate the pitch black for you :-)

Road to the right:

Road to the left:

Snow

We had some snowfall last night, I was sure it was gonna melt but some of it acctually stayed. Quite crazy, it was something like 10-12 degrees during the day and in the evening after the snow the temperature had fallen to 2.

In any case it does look much more pretty with some snow around-not looking forward to the cold though!



Also used some egg yellows for a sauce and what better to do with the whites than use them for some meringue. I'm a sucker for meringue but it's not very often I acctually come around to make some (like what do you do with all the yellow then?) even if the homemade ones are the best.

Happy first Advent everyone

Had my first glöggi (mulled wine) and ginger bread today! Yammi! Have been dying to drink the glöggi already for some days now.

I had even some pics but turned out that the camera is really giving up on us so I can't be bothered uploading the pics. Seems I really have to put my faith in the iphone camera for now.

Small Kisses

When Faro was younger I tried to teach him the "kiss" command but it seemed impossible he was more aiming for my ears and shoulders, for some reason. However, some weeks ago when we were waiting for our turn in agility I was bored and used the time for trying the command again and this time around he got the new command after only few repeats. He still pushes his nose into my eye or nose sometimes and every now and then I get a cute chin-kiss but it's still a fun trick to show off.

Today it was a bit difficult to get his attention at first:


after the scratch moment he was still not completely convinced:

Until he learned there was dog treats involved:




Online gif creator

The dresshunt continues

Ou gosh! I have now a dress at home but I'm pretty sure I don't want it. On the other hand I know a dress that could defenitely work but there is no hurry with that one.

Who would have thought is was so difficult to find a dress??? Somehow in my head I just strolled into a store and found the one I wanted and that was it. Apparently it's more complicated.

I have a class-mate from Ukraine who is also getting married next year and she put it pretty blunt and honest; "all dresses here are ugly, really". Let's just say that most probably she is getting hers in Ukraine. ( she showed me some pretty nice models you can get done there, probably a lot cheaper too) I wouldn't say all are ugly but it's pretty difficult to find something that makes at least me feel pretty. A lot of them are very heavy and huge and have the wrong details in the wrong place. Or maybe I'm just too demanding :-P

Well, I'm not in a hurry yet but it would have been nice to find one dress on sale yesterday. Turns out that the one I liked most was next years collection-so not so cheap. On the other hand I can now take my time and see if I can find something similar cheaper, or then I just go back to the store and get that one custom-made for me a bit closer to the wedding.

Sorry, but no pics as I don't want the husband-to-be to know about the dresses I'd looked at.

Doh!

Good new is I found the wedding dress yesterday when I googled around on the net.

Bad news is it is in New York and haute couture.

Not what I expected to find googling "rustic wedding dress".

Ou well, found something similar -ish today on the web so back to Stockholm tomorrow to try some dresses out. Will let you know how it goes :-)

Tolling training

I have absolutely zero christmas feeling so far. Well, maybe next weekend if we go to the Christmas market in Uppsala castle as we planned it will appear from somewhere. I'm also really annoyed that our course is not finishing before Christmas, but instead we will have the exam after the holidays. I'd rather have it over and done with before.

The weather is not helping the Christmas spirit either. Today we spent the day at a toller-meeting training and it was fun but when I look at the pics from there it just looks gloomy and horrible. And quite interesting if you have no idea what's going on :-D

Let me introduce to you the art of training "tolling":


Even if we have a toller I have never trained the actual tolling part before. Basically, tollers' orange colour attracts ducks. Tollers were bred to resemble a fox since foxes hunt ducks by waving their tail, again since ducks for some reason nobody really knows are attracted and curious by this colour and come closer to see what's up. So by breeding a dog that resembles the fox, hunters could play with the dog close to the shore to get the ducks to come closer and when they were close enough they could shoot them and then the dog would do the retrieving of the bird as well.

So what we did was having a toller net up which should resemble a bush where you hide yourself and the dog behind. The grass on the other side should in a real situation be water. Then you'd make the dog quickly and repeatedly fetch a ball or a toy on the sides of the bush to make the dog visible and non-visible for the ducks which makes them curious to come closer, during that time the dog should obviously stay quiet and focused on you and not the ducks. When the ducks are close enough you'd make the dog sit or lay down and eventually give him the command of fetching once the bird(s) is down. During the training a person just threw a dummy (people that don't have dogs; a dummy is this thing we train with instead of a bird) that the dog fetched instead.

It was a very funny training and it was cool to see how Faro reacted when I started whispering and pretended to sneak up to the bush quietly not to scare the imaginary birds. He was all in with me on the sneaking up part, I almost expected him to start crawling. Later when we trained retrieving with some real birds he was less cooperative but all in all he was a good boy today.

I know the play face when I see it

Has spent the whole day in the Rädda mannen conference (read more in my other blog about that). Now I'm tired and in the train home in the train. I know someone who's gonna want to play when I get home, Stefan just sent me this pic:

Stockholm trip

No luck with dresses at the vintage fair today. Found one cute one but it was too small for me.

Well, we had a nice time in Stockholm anyway and stopped by Hötorget to get some Spanish snacks that are difficult to find in other stores here.

Now I better get to sleep as I'm going back to Stockholm tomorrow.

Buenas Noches!

Beetroot?

It was quite funny in the store when the young boy in the cashier had to ask us what was the beetroot and the sweet potato for weighting them. (in Sweden you don't have to weight your fruits and vegetables before). Poor boy blushed when he couldn't recognize them .

I wonder if it was one of his firsts days or if people just never buy beetroot. (I am not sure I have bought raw beetroot from the store before myself).

Might show you later what we did of them.

Banana Pancakes

Everytime I hear this song I get the munchies for banana pancakes.



Finally, this morning my dream came through! Yammi!

Derivatives

Believe it or not but I spent the most of the weekend studying derivatives. Seems like derivatives is gonna be an important part in the next course and I have forgotten all about them. Suprisingly YouTube came to my rescue. I didn't realize YouTube could be so handy when it came to studying but in maths it really is, I understand a lot better when somebody explain it to me than when I'm trying to read it from some boring book.

All for you, definition of the derivative:



Enjoy!

Fog and agility

It's foggy almost all the time nowadays! A few days ago when I came from Uppsala it was sunny when I came home and as soon I as I got inside the fog came almost scarily over fields and blocked all sunlight and view away. Today is the same again, but we were good and took ourselves out of bed in the morning for some agility training. Pic by our trainer, here is me and Faro:

The pic is taken from quite far so you might have to use your magnifying glass to see us! Fog in the background as usual.

Breakfast smoothie

Faro

Faro turned two in September but today is acctually the two year anniversary since we got him. He was just a fur-ball two years ago on the snowy day we drove him home to Helsinki.

Now after two years with such an active puppy he is slowly calming down and we are so happy to have such a beautiful, funny and clever dog. He's quite head-strong which he completely use against me but nowadays I'm aware of it and try to think one step ahead of him, with more and less success :-)

But the things I love most about him is his playfulness & mischief, the way he knows to be gentle around kids and the cleverness.

Faro and his sister in Finland:

And yes, it is a breed that needs some activities or thinking every day and soooometimes we have maybe not been super motivated to train with him but usually that has not been a problem. The worst I think is the first morning walk, but that is just something that comes with every dog.

In the end I think we chose a good dog-breed for us so it was good that we took a lot of time thinking of that. Even if I'd love to have a new Faro-puppy I am quite curious of trying another breed one day. We have also been considering perhaps taking a dog that needs a new home one day, but there is of course always a risk in that. But we'll see, no more dogs until we are back from Sweden at least :-)

Stefan also posted some pics of Faro for the anniversary.

Back in Sweden

We arrived early this morning back to Sweden, a bit disoriented because it was so dark still outside at 6:30. The clocks needed to be updated in the house and we were not really sure what time it was anymore since we changed to wintertime back in Finland a week ago. It was also cold in the house as we turned down the batteries while we were away.

But after a few hours of sleep and a walk with the neighbour and their dog we felt better.

All in all the weeks in Finland were good. I just get so lazy to be online as we don't have our own internet in our house and have to go to my parents place. We had a master plan and were gonna get the same sort of mobile internet stick from DNA as we have here in Sweden but it turned out they don't sell you the USB stick unless you make a contract for at least six months. Gah! Why does it always have to be so complicated?

Ou well, instead of surfing I have done som serious raking, been to the hairdresser, sauna and seen some friends.


Faro wanted to have a go at the raking:

We found out he is half-chineese:


We ate some elk-meet hunted by dad and Faro ate the bones.


And the book-fair! It was a great success even if we didn't spend much time outside the Stockmann's akademiska bokhandelns stand. I even got two books signed so I'm very happy :)
One of them was Peppe's book, that everybody have been bloging about, started reading it on the boat yesterday so soon I'll now what to think of it myself.