Britain's Next Top Canine Model

And while I'm on the subject of models...

Karhu, a very fine 4½-year-old brown & tan gent from Neka's first litter, stars in his very own fashion blog.  With his pal and writer, Wendy, he features under his stage name "Mr K" in wonderful photos taken by Scott on (just about) every weekday.  Occasionally he lets Wendy have posts all to herself because that's just the sort of generous guy that he is.

 

Shamelessly lifted from www.thankfifi.com

We are very excited that Karhu's blog* has been long-listed by Marie Claire magazine for their Best Fashion Blog award, and now they need lots of votes from supporters of affordable fashion, intelligent, witty writing & dogs.  So, please go vote for Thankfifi and make Karhu the star he deserves to be.

Vote here:

VOTE NOW! Best Fashion Blog and Twitter feed

*The small print:  Ok, so you knew it was actually Wendy's blog, right?

win

Way-hey, whaddeya know - I won a competition. I won a very stylish and cool Duck and Cover Kirkham jacket. To be precise, this stylish & cool jacket. Okay, so it will neither suit nor fit me, but I know a certain someone in need of a stylish jacket who it will both fit & suit... I dare say... We'll make it work.

Yes, you're not wrong - this is indeed a dog blog. So why am I announcing my big win? Well, for one thing it's worth shouting about if only because I don't think I have ever once in my life won something by chance. Truly. The other reason is actually dog-related. No, really. You see, that jacket was being given away by my super-stylish friend and fashion blogger Wendy at thankfifi. And her blog guest stars none other than Karhu, aka Mr K. After all, what's a fashion blog without a fashionably adorable dog?

Considering I've never won a first-out-of-the-hat type competition before, do you suppose my win wasn't absolutely entirely left to chance? For, you see, Karhu actually chose the winning entry. And after umm-ing and ahh-ing a bit, he chose my entry - what a clever dog! Don't miss the cute video of him choosing the winning bone.

what's up

You may well wonder what I've been doing that is so important that I have little time for updating the blog. Apart from catching up on the work that I missed while the puppies were here, that is. Well, I've been clearing the decks in a rather big way. 2 cats, 3 (often 4) dogs, and 4 litters of puppies have had their toll on the living room carpet (cream, yet!) and so this was always going to be the winter of replacing the carpet with something more practical. Something less absorbent. Less inclined to attract and display mud quite so willingly.

All new flooring is quite an upheaval, involving putting all the furniture... somewhere, moving the piano and the ludicrously heavy television. So while facing that kind of turmoil I thought I might as well paint the walls too so that they will be more in keeping with the new wood floor. And while I was at it, having had quite enough of living in squalor, I decided to make a bid for something a little more minimalist.

The result is an enormous amount of stuff leaving via the front door the past 2 weeks. And up the stairs. One of the things we are banishing from the living room is the massive CD collection. Between us we have, er, a rather large number of them. So we're now in the process of transferring them into iTunes and onto the iPods and then out the door. Anyone want to buy some used CDs? Perhaps I should take them to a carboot sale or something. On one of those free weekends I don't seem to have.

Anyway, I've been busy. Needless to say, ever-helpful - not to mention nosey and willful - Neka has been "helping".




She just had to see what was behind the piano.
Answer: wet paint.

please sign - save our forests

A brief interlude from puppies & work to plead with all my readers: please click on this link and sign the petition:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/save-our-forests#petition

One of the forests targeted for selling off to private ownership is the place we walk our dogs 4 or 5 times a week. If you know and love Haldon Forest in Devon or Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, for example, and you want them to remain open access, please sign this petition. It's going to be submitted tonight in advance of an initial vote by MPs tomorrow.

Even if these forests mean nothing to you personally, please support the cause of all forest lovers, walkers and dogs in the UK - click the link and sign the petition anyway. If you want, you can use my postcode: TQ12 6TZ

Thank you!

i heart glasgow

No, I'm not being facetious, actually. It's a wonderful city - beautiful architecture, including a generous smattering of Macintosh - lots of green spaces & wide, tree-lined streets - a cool, relaxed vibe - plenty of welcoming cafes, comfortable pubs, great service and very, very good food that always seems quite affordable. Yet in terms of ingenuity of menu and quality of preparation, it's far and away beyond the standard pub grub served up all across England.

Edinburgh is billed as the prettier sister, but where she's all dolled up to impress the tourists, Glasgow is the one who is gorgeous just in jeans and a tshirt.

Dare I say I've also never met a Glaswegian I didn't like. You may think I haven't met many, considering I live more than 700 km away. However, I have met more Glaswegians than, say, Americans. Probably.

And then there's the wonderful weather. What? Ok, so perhaps that bit is an accolade too far. I've been to Scotland quite a few times now and, believe it or not, there has been only one occasion when the weather was unremittingly wet and horrid. Every other time I was blessed with at least some sunshine. True fact. The photos don't lie.



Bee-yoo-ti-ful apartment buildings with amazing stained glass in every window.



















Front of one of the many impressive buildings of Glasgow University. Wow!











Is this really just an empty, disused water pumping station? Really?






In addition to all these great reasons for visiting Glasgow, there is one more utterly compelling reason: Wendy & Scott live there with Karhu. And that is where I spent a few days this week.




Waiting for someone to throw the tennis ball.









On the snow mountain in the park (yes it's July - don't ask).









At the beach in Elie near St Andrews (of golf fame) on the east coast.








Sleeping off his walk on his custom-made window seat.

plant a tree

While the fumes being produced by the puppies may not be environmentally friendly, the blog can be. Today I have signed up to the Plant a Tree initiative by Ixpo, a UK company who manufacture carbon-neutral display products.

Apparently if I add their advertising button to the blog, in conjunction with the American National Forest Foundation, they will plant a tree on my behalf in areas of the US that need re-forestation. I'm happy to support this, although there's no way of knowing if the tree will get planted. Here's hoping!

I've planted a few trees in my time and it can be hard work, so thanks for the tree.

As for puppies, I'm working on it & I'll get right back to you.

presents & other bribes

Heh, just kidding!

Before you get too excited, these puppies have been spoken for for quite a long time - in fact, they have been spoken for several times over.  So I'm afraid that no amount of bribery will work.  On this litter, anyway.  There is always, of course, the next litter.  I'm just saying.

Today I was thrilled to get one of these from Kate & Jerome as a present for wetting the babies' heads.  Now, I'm not much of a drinker, really. (If you discount the odd medicinal g&t, that is.  Ok, I've been known to consume the occasional bottle or 2 of pear cider as well.)  But I'm not one for Bailey's or beer and I've even gone off wine a bit.  So, what's so great about this stuff?  Well, it's Lakka - Lapponia Cloudberry Liqueur, made in Finland.  Lapponia - get it?  As in Lapphund, Lapland, etc.

Even that's not what's so great about this stuff, though, and the best thing is that Kate & Jerome will have had no idea when they picked it out.  Have you ever had a cloudberry?  Thought not.  They grow in the wilderness of the northern hemisphere, but I've never seen one or heard of one in the UK (maybe Scotland?)  Where I come from we call those berries 'bakeapples'.  Don't ask me why, I have no idea whatsoever.  They have nothing at all in common with apples, but believe me when I tell you they are the single yummiest little fruit that ever grew wild.  We eat them right off the bush, make them into jam, put them in scones, on ice cream.  Some people even make wine or sherry with them.  They're gorgeous in everyway, even their colour.

For many years I really thought that they didn't even exist outside of Newfoundland & Labrador, since they didn't have the profile of, say, a raspberry or blueberry (both of which also grow wild there).  So, imagine my surprise when I went to Finland a few years ago and on a visit to the Lumiturpa kennel was served bakeapple jam with our afternoon tea.  I was thrilled & delighted.  Perhaps rather more than was strictly necessary for a fruit.

I'm off to the shops for ice cream.  What do you mean it's breakfast time?  Your point?

Puppies... oh, yeah.  Pics later and maybe even a little video if you're very, very lucky.

spring

On the subject of mating (which seems to be the unavoidable topic of choice for the time being), spring has arrived in my garden. Clearly we are following the pagan calendar around here. The frogs certainly are, anyway.

We have had a few days minutes of warm, sunny weather and the frogs are celebrating with their annual gathering in our small pond. In a couple of days I expect the surface of the water will be roiling and eventually the frogs will all return from wherever it is they come from, leaving masses of spawn behind. After that we will have a few more days' hard frost - enough to re-freeze the surface of the pond, and when that melts it will officially be spring.

Have I been paying close attention to the weather forecast? No, I usually don't. But over the half-dozen years we've been living in this house, I know that somehow the frogs know exactly when the last hard frost of the year will be. You can plan your calendar around them - and they're early this year.

And where is it they all come from, anyway? Perhaps the same 100 go around the whole village populating every pond with spawn and then split up to return to their normal homes. We usually have a few resident frogs keeping the newts company. It's quite amazing that we don't witness what must be a mass migration as they arrive and depart each spring.

And what's the Taika update today? Well, Kate says she seems to think she's eating for at least 7. But, frankly, that's not unusual, so don't let that get your hopes up.

happy halloween

I don't have any cute festive dog photos, but my friend Karen certainly does. Check out adorable Taivas doing her pumpkin impersonation.

And here are Jedi and Ahsoka doing their bit to celebrate in Australia.

sad

This blog is not exactly the right place for this, but I cannot let the event pass unmarked. I found out last night that on Friday night, one of my dearest and oldest friends suffered an unspeakable tragedy. Her 20-year-old nephew, smiling joker and adored light of her life, died in a horrific accident when the car he was travelling in with 3 friends was swept away by a sudden flood. It is simply too sad.

let it snow some more

And while in southwest England we're 'enjoying' unusually seasonal frost, snow and ice, this is the sort of thing going on in southern Canada/northern US, as photographed from space by satellite. I just love the images they show on the NASA Earth Observatory. I mean, just look at this image of a volcano in the Aleutian islands in the north Pacific, just south of Alaska. Ok, so I know its sides are not actually red, but what a fabulous picture.

I have been the lucky recipient of a few more fabulous pictures, too, I'm pleased to announce. Can you guess who this is?















I'm thinking it could be Inko, or perhaps Neka as a puppy, Keskiyo as a puppy, a very pretty Tarkka - any of those, really. But it's none of those. Have you guessed? It is, in fact, Kaija, otherwise known as Infindigo Sulo, or "Cross". As you can see, she's still got her cross like her mum, for which she was named at birth. Here she is looking so much like Neka.


















And enjoying the snow, like every Lappy.














Her sister (and evil twin???) Inko, around the same time, similarly occupied:



























It occurred to me today that these puppies will probably be expecting snow like this every winter now, having experienced it for their very first winter. Oh dear.