INT UCH NORD UCH N UCH S UCH IS CH Foldar Freyja
11.06.1994 - 10.03.2008
Father: Spori Sámur frá Ólafsvöllum
Mother: IS CH Garda Röskva
Garða Röskva with Freyja 6 weeks old
Freyja was a puppy who decided she wanted to own me instead of the other way around!
I had just gone to see a few 6 weeks old litters for the sake of research and this litter was not to be any different, I was going to see what the colours in the litter were, the dewclaws, how they compared to their half siblings born at the same time etc. So nothing out of the usual I went with my friend Helga and we knocked on Rakel’s door. Sweet little puppies we said and BAM, one caught my eye and I couldn’t think of anything else. I went back to see if Rakel was home a couple days later and went up to the door to knock, all the puppies were sound asleep I could see them through the glass, except for one. It was Freyja, where was she? I pushed my nose against the glass and looked closer I just had to get a glimpse of her again. Well, as my eyes moved downward towards the floor at the bottom of the door there she was looking up at me, not a peep and wide awake just looking right into my eyes with her tail wagging.
How can anyone resist that face? 6 weeks old. The first day at home, Snubbur, Freyja & Hófi.
That was it, I had to get ahold of Rakel and ask for Freyja, she obviously was meant for me. My heart sunk when I spoke to Rakel, she was apparently already promised to someone in Sweden. But with a bit of gentle persuation and a bit of groveling on my part she changed her mind and said I could have her. And so my little soul mate came home at 9 weeks old and has had a very eventful life since. She’s had a good life I think, with lots of fun, obedience and agility training and competitions, tracking training, dog shows in many different countries, walks in the Norwegian forests (we don’t have too many trees in Iceland) meeting people at an old age home, staying at various hotels, fishing trips and the list could go on and on. The funny thing about Freyja though is that she seems to have 9 lives like a cat but I’ll get back to that! I´d like to show you a bit of her life in photos.
Freyja at 9 weeks and then 12 weeks. A gorgeous little puppy who has really never had the so called puppy uglies except for a very short time when her head seemed too small for her body J
Freyja (5 mths) and Snubbur loved each other and I thought they would have made a wonderful couple!
Freyja and Hófi on a fishing trip, Freyja seemed captivated by the whole thing. The ride home she actually rolled down off the pile of clothes and still was fast asleep. A long exhausting day for a puppy!
(Pic #1) She had won Best of Breed here 1 ½ yrs old and waiting to take part in the Best In Show competition.
(Pic #2) Just one of her favourite places to chill out, she would always come in the bathroom with me or Beggi and use the few minutes to curl up in the laundry basket.
(Pic #3) A Christmas photo, I think Freyja looks a bit embarassed while Hófi looks like she is having lots of fun.
(Pic #4) Here is her best friend Rebbi, they used to train and compete together in Agility every week and really liked to see each other. We had thought of letting them have puppies together but Freyja lived in Norway during her best puppy rearing years.
A group of us used to do shows in different places to introduce Agility to the public and one time at the Reykjavík petting zoo Freyja and I had just finished our set. It went very well as usual, she loves agility, and I came back to sit in the grass and get Hófi from the person who was holding her for me. A little Papillon jumped at Freyja and grabbed hold of the back of her front leg growling and snarling. I asked the man to please take his dog off of Freyja’s leg and instead of coaxing the dog he grabbed him and pulled him away, the dog´s teeth were still imbedded. I thought it was just a little cut but as I walked with Freyja towards the first aid building someone called out to me, Oh my God her whole leg is ripped open they said. Well I didn’t even look I picked her up in my arms and ran, was I ever tired, it is a huge place and she was heavy! We got a bandage and then drove straight to the vets office and Freyja needed 12 staples, it really was the whole length of her front leg. What a fun day out that turned out to be. NOT.
Snubbur had gone to the country to a new home a while back and here Freyja is 2 yrs and we decided to mate them. Unfortunately she wasn’t ready so the trip was in vain. We intended on trying again but moved to Norway soon after so Snubbur never did have progeny since no one else used him. I was told he possibly had a litter with a purebred female on the next farm but those puppies were never registered. Freyja is looking at sheep on the last photo, it was the first time she met sheep. They really didn’t faze her at all and she went back to play with Snubbur.
This was their favourite bed, a little dog sofa that they both could fit on. In 1997 she became an Icelandic Champion, it was in June and her last chance before we moved! We were exstatic. At the same show Hófi was the 3rd place Best in Show Veteran. In August of 1997 we moved to Norway.
Her very first event in Norway was an NKK show in Fredrikstad 4/10 1997, we thought she looked great but the judge felt she was a bit fat L She got a first prize though and second place. One of my favourite photos taken in the forest behind our house, here Freyja is actually pregnant with her first litter.
In 1998 Hófi would leave us to go to a wonderful home for retirement and we got a German Pointer named Valdís so Beggi could take up hunting. Incredibly her and Freyja have the exact same birthday June 11 and they got along very well.
1999 Freyja’s trouble started. We took her and Dísa out for a walk one evening and as usual Freyja was happy to run and play and always chomping on stuff she found along the way. Our neighbour had horses and ran them by the forest and past our house. Well Freyja got ahold of some horse manure, when I caught her doing this I would tell her to spit it out and she would. As soon as we got home her face started to look funny, nothing obvious but a bit strange, we didn’t realise what was going on and went to bed. The next morning ROCKY woke me up, she looked like she had been punched in the face. The skin in her face was so swollen that it had started to crack and bleed. We rushed her to the vet who said she must have an allergy to something in the horse manure. It apperantly is very common in dogs, little did we know! She got some steriods and was back to her normal self in no time. Needless to say I jump everytime I see her chomping on something on the ground after that ordeal.
Freyja and I having fun at an obedience trial. Without Freyja’s help in obedience I would never have gotten my dog trainers degree in Norway. Many is the time I miss these days, obedience is not a competition event here in Iceland.
In the beginning of 1999 we had taken Frigg back into our home and all three were great friends by now. Another “cat’s life” moment happened in the end of March when Freyja and I lived through another even more extreme event. I had taken her, Frigg & Valdís for a walk in the snow in the hills behind our house, the road was very slippery and we were slip sliding all over when I came up towards our fencing I opened it and called Dísa and Frigg in, Freyja was right by my side ready to go in. The road was about 3 meters away from us and suddenly she heard a sound, she ran out onto the road and I saw the car (he usually drove quite fast past our house) she slid and I heard the thump. I screamed at the top of my lungs an uncontrollable blood curdling sound. Freyja disappeared and I thought she was under the car. The driver tried to stop but ran on the ice and the car didn’t stop in time. I was at least happy that I had Frigg and Dísa in the fencing already!
When the car stopped a couple meters away I looked straight across the road and up came this little face with a look of terror and what I would describe as a silent scream in her expression. A sight I’ll never forget! She had been thrown over a snowbank on the other side of the road. I ran to her and she started to drag herself over the snowbank and onto the road. I asked the neighbour to please drive me with her to the vets since I was in no condition to drive and I scooped Freyja up without wasting a second into my arms and we jumped into the car and started toward the vets office. It took about 10-15 minutes to get there and I remember thinking that she might not make it all the way, was this to be her fateful end? She was in shock in the car and very quiet and I could feel her little heart beating a mile a minute, so was my own. We hardly spoke a word the driver and I because I knew how bad he was feeling and I wasn’t angry at him, just stunned at the whole event. I didn’t know where the blood was coming from but it was all over my coat. We got to the vets and to our amazement she had just lost a dewclaw and that’s what was bleeding profusely. The vet didn’t want to do anything like exrays because she was in shock but he said that he didn’t see or feel anything else wrong at the moment. I was to keep a close eye on her for the next day or so.
We had already booked her for a show that was to be in April, just about 3 weeks after her car accident. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her so we put the other ones in a hotel and packed up the car for the long drive to Stockholm in Sweden. It was about a 12 hour drive, we had booked ourselves in a 5 star hotel since it was only one night, Easter and we had an anniversary around that time. We found it extremely strange that dogs were allowed in such a nice hotel, and the room even had a little dog bed. It was wonderful and Freyja enjoyed watching the huge goldfish down in the lobby. The show went well, she was the 4th place best female with Champion quality. The judge thought her belly looked a bit sagging! Well, we found out later that evening why he would think that.
Long story short, we drove straight home after the show and during the trip home we needed to stop a few times, we drove a big Hilux that Freyja always jumped in and out of herself. When we got home exhausted that night (very late) she jumped out of the car and screamed in pain, we didn’t know what happened. She came in the house, couldn’t calm down, tried to lay down but couldn’t, cried and looked at us very confused walking in circles. Her abdomen was bulging and we took her to the emergency. She had apperantly ripped open a hernia that she had gotten when she was hit and her insides were falling down through the hole since it was now so big. She needed an operation and here are her photos after that ordeal. We called her Freyja the Hangikjöt J this is a type of smoked lamb that is rolled up in this same type of netting and eaten at Christmas time.
Freyja has so many stories to tell, and I can’t write them all here. Her life has been a blessing over and over again, she has beaten the odds a couple times and one of the latest times was when Rúnar and I lived out East. It was the dead of winter and she had eaten a houseplant root when we weren’t looking. She started shaking profusely and I didn’t know what to do, the vet was at least 40 minutes away in Egilsstaðir on a road that is not always accesible over a mountain. I called the vet but there was only an answering machine. I left an urgent message and said I thought she was showing signs of poisoning (I’d seen them before) and asked that he phone me immediately. I tried to keep her warm, I made her drink lots of water and I tried to stay calm (inside I was actually going crazy with worry) and keep her calm. 3 hours later !!! the vet called and I told her that Freyja was looking better now and explained the symptoms and she said well, that definately sounds like poisoning. She said there was nothing she could do since so much time had passed (HALLO, was that my fault!). She said I had done all the right things and that if she was looking better then she must be recovering and all that she would have been able to do anyway would have been to give her a steriod injection. True to her past experiences Freyja got back to her normal self. Like I say 9 lives J Needless to say I had a hard time emotionally living out East so we moved back south closer to a town with both an animal hospital and people hospital close by.
The most recent illness happened at Christmas time, she was very lathargic breathing heavy and stressed. The vet thought because of her age, maybe her heart or cancer. She did every test imaginable like took an EKG, a lung x-ray, ultrasound of organs, checked for lumps, urine tests and blood tests. Her teeth looked quite bad but the vet said we can’t do anything until we know how her health is. Every thing was normal but the bloodtests that showed she was enemic. The first possible diagnosis was that she had developed an allergic reaction to her own blood or she had cancer. Freyja was given vitamin injections along with steriods for about 10 days in the hopes it would raise her blood count. A bloodtest was sent to Keldur to check for cancer and also to Denmark to check for thyroid changes. Nothing to report from that, all seemed well but still the blood count was low at the next test. So she was sent home with antibiotics this time. She perked up and was pretty much back to normal.
Next blood test was supposed to be taken a couple weeks after that, but since she wasn’t looking sick anymore and there was a dog show coming up we didn’t want her leg shaved again before the show, we decided to wait and see. After the show we took her in to get her teeth cleaned and another bloodtest was taken just for curiosity sake. She was pretty much back to normal and now that her teeth are cleaned the vet thought that maybe she will be fine, it could have been infection in the gums causing the overwork of the immune system. Hummm, Freyja also got her daughter back shortly after all this started and I´m thinking that might have something to do with her feeling better all of a sudden! I know I´m sentimental.
Here she is today with her daughter Birta Freyja, happier than ever and looking 5 years younger.
Freyja has a guardian angel of that there is no doubt, so many ISD’s lose their lives every year being hit by cars and I personally know of quite a few of them including a few of my own puppies. Why was Freyja spared? I found this question puzzling and later decided that she must have been here for a good reason. It wasn’t until the past few years going through drastic life changes myself that I have leaned toward the idea that she was put here to be my guardian angel. A couple years ago I was alone at home and fainted closing the bathroom door on her and Frigg as I fell, she whined outside the door until I came to. I managed to get to the phone and call Rúnar who rushed me to hospital, this was the middle of the night but she had shown signs of being uneasy all evening. We couldn’t figure out why. Rúnar had gotten ready to leave for home earlier that evening and she went crazy like she had never done before, she just didn’t want him to go.
She has been with me through thick and thin and helped me in my sorrows of not being able to have kids, being so far away from all my loved ones, losing my grandparents and not being able to be with them and then the pain of the divorce. Freyja knows me inside and out there is nothing that she doesn’t sense. Rúnar laughed when he figured out that when she whined and was uneasy in the car on the dangerous roads from Reyðarfjörður that it was actually because I was scared of the cliffs especially in bad weather. He learned that if he could calm me down Freyja would immediately stop whining. He now knows exactly when I´m feeling stressed or scared. Yup, she’s my “heart dog”.
What a character, where would I be without my Freyja?!
Here she is seen very sick almost thought we were losing her in 2006. Obviously she is deeply loved by everyone in our home.
Photos of Freyja taken in 2007 age 13 some of her with her daughter and grandpuppies Klói and Karma.
Freyja's Litters: March 17th 1998 - January 28th 2001 - March 25th 2003