Töfra - News

Some of the news is written for my friends and family who all live abroad. However most is dog related news that might be of interest to those who like dogs or if you just like to see what my life is like. Please feel free to read through and also check out the older news, articles or photos on the site.

Well, I'm just going to continue and if you want to catch up with the news you'll have to start at the day you last read and read up! Hehe There are some cute photos of Klói at the garden store the other day and some of the news is no doubt "old" and outdated but I'm not going to spend time going back and changing it now. I'm going to sit down and knit for awhile since my nerves were a bit tense all day waiting for news from B.C.

So the best news is that my Mom arrived safe and sound in Vancouver and I'll be able to keep up with how she's doing through my brother and his girlfriend on Facebook. Otherwise nothing else new. I have been very dizzy and no doubt it's because of my shoulders and neck muscles along with the usual ear problem. So that's about all I can think of and now I'm just going to try to get this stupid thing to update to the server again. Wish me luck!

I've been trying for a week to update but the server is driving me nuts. I've tried all times of the day and night and no go...I've decided to try again and am crossing my fingers. We had the last day of our clicker course today. It went great, we took them outside and tried walking on loose leash on asphalt and then on grass. They all did really good, then we taught them how to train the turns and corners and it only took a few clicks and they were doing great at that as well. Really great group of people and dogs and we are hoping to stay in touch and even train together in future. There is so much that they want to learn and so much we want to teach them :-) Retrieve, obedience for trials, tracking (using Steve White's HITT method) and so much more. When it goes so well you get excited about what you can do next and we were so happy to hear that they definitely feel that there is no turning back now that they have tried clicker training it's the only way they want to train. YAY!

Yesterday we took little Frigg out for a walk by herself. She had fallen out of bed earlier in the morning and I was so scared for her because she had trouble getting up again. However it turns out she was fine, probably just had the wind knocked out of her by falling on her chest. She has done that once before quite a while ago, she just doesn't realize she is at the edge of the bed and rolls by accident on her back and can't stop herself or turn around to fall on her feet. So she LOVED the attention and the walk in the freezing cold. Jikes, winter is here for sure. She's the one that is doing the best in the basketball training too! :-)

The other two didn't want to come back in the house when we were getting ready to leave. Hehe Too cute. The sun was shining so beautiful but man was it COLD. Brrrr Skella and Birta are still changing their coats but the others are done thank goodness so the tumbleweeds are not as bad around the house anymore. Klói seems to think that there will be a couple bitches in heat around here soon enough, we´ll see. They should start in November/December I believe so he could be right.

Still having lots of trouble with the server uploading the website. I tried off and on all day, evening and into the night a couple times already and last night I gave up so I'm going to add a bit of today's news as well. I'm getting a bit angry, it's making me able to update less than I used to and the traffic to the site is dwindling which is sad. Rúnar said we might have to look into a different server if this keeps up. :( He swears it has nothing to do with our website it's just a problem with the server. Doubt I'll be able to update tomorrow so I wanted to wish Val and Kiddi a happy birthday while I'm at it. I'VE BEEN TRYING AND TRYING AND ALMOST ABOUT TO GIVE UP AGAIN, IT'S ALREADY THE 24TH. GRRRRR I'm still going to try a bit more to get this stupid thing to work until I go to bed.

Can't remember so much about what we´ve been doing the past week, a bit of training. I'm trying to teach all the dogs to play basketball, some are doing better than others and Rúnar is training them to jump through a hoop (not the same one though...hehe). Yesterday we went into Hafnarfjörður (a bit farther than Reykjavík) to get some gluten free flour products from Toro (they have great tasting stuff) today as soon as Rúnar got home from work. It was a good trip except for the cost, we have never ever EVER spent that much at a grocery store before and we've often bought a similar amount of food. It cost $300 Canadian and we hardly bought any meat, a couple packages of hamburger, it was mostly dry goods although I did buy 1 knitting needle (it cost a whole $12 :-) ). Rúnar was in shock as was I, we knew it was going to cost a bit because the trips for gluten free supplies always do and we only go every few months, but we had no idea! It seems we will have to make due now with all the food in the freezer for the next few weeks, no more groceries for as long as we can get away with it. That's a good thing I guess since the freezer is so full that we keep saying we have to empty it but never do, now we have no choice. :-) It is horrible how much food has gone up in price. It's costing at least double what it used to. Hopefully we don't have snow for awhile either since we haven't gotten the tires yet, we need to go a separate trip to Reykjavík for that because the store is always closed by the time Rúnar gets home so we need to go on a Saturday (the grocery store is not open on Saturdays). Oh and he figured out what the noise in the car is, the clutch needs changing.

Anyway, we spent a little bit extra on the way home as well because we decided to use the trip and take Klói for a little training in the only store that allows dogs (a garden shop with pet supplies) and we remembered we needed to get him a harness. The one he had as a puppy has been too small for a long time and he's been wearing a collar but we want to train him using a harness rather than a collar when we start to take him out for more leash walking training for obedience in the near future. So Rúnar took him into the store and I got some photos of them. Usually I'm the one that practices heeling with Klói but Rúnar wanted to train him so that was fine. It was great to see that he was good for Rúnar too. It was pretty to see all the Xmas stuff ALREADY but at the same time I think they start way too early. It gets here soon enough. It's too bad we don't have Halloween here or they could decorate for that instead but I guess they want to start early because there is nothing else going on and they are bored. :-) Well to be fair the kids here are starting to dress up for Halloween parties and the toy stores are seeing a new opportunity to sell costumes it might catch on soon enough. Although I hope trick or treating will NOT catch on because they already do that in February/March (ash Wednesday) which is an Icelandic tradition. I HATE trick or treating, never was allowed to go as a kid because of our religion and I have never liked it as an adult either being on the other side of the door. Too much money to buy treats and too much distraction for the dogs! If I had one or two dogs then maybe I wouldn't mind constant door bell ringing for a day and evening, it might be good practice but when you have a "pack" then you really don't have "control" of the training when there is so much going on unexpectedly. I know HUMBUG...I'm not one for celebrations and parties. ;-)

So back to the garden store. I guess lucky for us we didn't meet any other dogs in there this time, he is just getting ready for distractions of any sort so we don't want to overdo it with too much all at once. We really should do that more often and no doubt if we lived in Reykjavík we would. Lucky dogs and lucky owners to have so many opportunities for training in Reykjavík. He was really good, excited at first and wanted to pull a bit on the lead to get into the store, but once he got his new harness he was better. We trained him with a harness as a puppy so he's more used to it than a collar and he has a bit of a soft trachea so the collar bothers him a bit. He did like it when people talked to him and when they stopped talking and walked away he would give a little "muff" as if he was a bit sad they were leaving, maybe it was his "goodbye". He had a big smile on his face when he did it. He is and has always been calm and collected when people are around or approach and he is on his leash but it was a bit cute that there was a little girl right beside us looking at the dog toys and he peeked around, saw her and touched her little hand with his nose so that she came over to pet him. I've trained him so much to nose touch when I show him two fingers (peace sign), maybe she was doing that or maybe he just saw an opportunity to get some attention. Hehe He was a good boy and he had a great time looking at the toys etc. that he passed along the way. Now we have to get crackin' and do more training like this if I want to be able to train him as a service dog, not sure if I will be allowed to use him in future but training can never hurt just in case. I keep forgetting how old he is already, he's always a puppy in my mind so it's terrible that I haven't gotten him completely trained yet. Lazy, LAZY owner...I am so ashamed of myself for that. Procrastinating for years at a time! It's like the shoemaker whose kids all go barefoot. If you know what I mean by that?!

Called my Mom tonight, she sounded quite tired slurring her speech a bit. She had been busy all day visiting sick elderly people. I'm hoping she is not going to overdo anything, she always has to spend her time on others and she never lets her health stop her...I guess I haven't inherited that trait from her. Oops. I could learn alot from her actually. She is going out to B.C. on Monday for a week to visit her brother, her son (my brother Chris) and my cousin and her family. She is so excited but I am nervous for her wellbeing. She apparently went to the doctor's yesterday and he told her to make sure she tells the people at the airport that she needs to have oxygen available as well as she has to use a wheelchair the whole time. Now with her going on her own the question is will she obey the doctor or will she be too embarrassed to ask? I will be so nervous all next week for sure, the flight is just as long as a flight from here to Toronto and I know how much jetlag I get. Good thing I can bug my brother and cousin on Facebook! :-) She is going to see my Nana today and Mandy and the girls were coming over to see her last night, oh so often I wish I could just drive over for a quick visit. I'll call her probably again this weekend just to say hi. I'm so scared of her taking a trip out west but she refused to listen to reason and is bound and bent on helping her brother with his legal matters before he loses any more memory (he has the start of alzheimers) and I'm glad she feels needed, that's what she lives on being able to help others.

Can't think of much more at the moment. A whole week has gone by and I can't remember what´s been going on. Huh, totally blank...oh well. Oh the stupid economy, they have decided that the first of November they will start charging for the only free TV channel we had here in Iceland. So much for that, I guess all the great shows we are used to watching will just have to be missed. We already pay for cable (both the National channel that is compulsory to pay and some foreign channels like BBC and Animal Planet) so we're not going to pay extra for that channel just to see some US sitcoms. You never know it might be a blessing in disguise, maybe we´ll do more with the dogs. Hehehe

I've started knitting my sweater and I hope it's going to be nice and hopefully finished by Xmas. I love the colour, it's a mixture of browns and greens. Something funny happened the other day during one of Klói's chores, I smile when I think about it so I thought I'd add it. I had been using a tape roll to get the hairs off my shirt and when I ripped the tape off and crumpled it up to throw it in the trash then as so often happens I dropped it on the floor by accident. Well of course that being one of Klói's chores, picking up things I drop; I asked him to give it to me. Well, it was just hilarious the poor guy he doesn't let anything get in the way of him helping. So when the tape stuck to his lip the first couple times he was trying to pick it up I thought he would give up. No not him, he just kept trying with a different grip on the middle where it was crumpled and not sticky. Smartie pie!

Speaking of Klói he surprised Rúnar today when we got back from our clicker course. Rúnar had a really bad migraine that was getting worse from the time we started until it was over and I had to take over for him teaching half way through. By the time we got home all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and close his eyes. He has always complained that Klói only uses his "healing powers" with me and he was a bit sad about that. But Klói proved him wrong. Rúnar got into bed and the other dogs joined him then Skella decided that since Rúnar had his hands above his head that it was time to play with the teddy bear so she jumped up and literally put the teddy bear in his hand to play. Pretty cute but of course he was in no mood to play.

So I decided to do some acupressure for migraines on Rúnar, the pressure points are in the face, big toe and some on the neck and back to help relieve some muscle tension that he was suffering. When I was finished (only took a few minutes) then Klói felt it was his turn so as always without being asked he started the "treatment". He layed down on top of Rúnar's chest to start with and did his relaxed breathing technique (I really don't know how he figured that out!) which relaxed Rúnar and when he was finished that he moved to Rúnar's head and lay there with a little bit of pressure on the top of head and forehead. He is such an amazing dog!! So it was good that Rúnar had decided not to take a pain killer because with the acupressure, Klói treatment and a little bit of sleep he was good as new. Now what it was that did the most good we won't speculate but I like to believe that Klói doesn't do his treatment for nothing and I definitely am not going to dismiss it without proof. Hehe ;-) I was so happy to actually be able to get some photos of him because when he is treating me I never get the chance to take photos. Believe it or not, this is not staged and he really and truly does this all on his own initiative and ONLY when it seems to be needed. He laid leaning on my back last night when I went to sleep for a few minutes because my back had been bothering me, TaDa, he jumped down and I could sleep without pain. What did I do to deserve such a dog? He is no doubt a little piece of Freyja my guardian angel, a bit creepy sometimes.

The course was fun and I did remember the camera this time so we got a few photos. Next week is the last class so we decided to check on how the shaping skills of the owners were with a bit of a "shape the jump" exercise. It went well, some need to improve their timing a bit and were getting more of a touch the cone action while others are really great at timing. The dogs were quite happy to try something new and fun and they all were walking over the jump by the end. It was great to see the concentration in the dogs and how when the click came they whipped around for their treat. As usual they all had their "let me try this!" moments and it was cute to see the different "default" behaviours or the ideas they came up with, like the little Chihuahua that thought that maybe a paw touch of the cone was a good bet. We find it a good idea to use props to assess the owners progress because it seems people like to "see" the progress very quickly, without props they sometimes get frustrated. There are however shaping and capturing exercises in the course that they are working on at home and hopefully we will be able to see their finished behaviours next weekend.

We watched them loose lead walking and added some goodies along the way as well as I stood in the middle when the goodies distraction wasn't budging them and tried to make a nuisance of myself by baby talking, clapping hands and thighs and talking to the dogs (you know like the typical "dog lover" you may meet on a walk...lol I HOPE NOT). No doubt the owners were talking about the crazy lady on the way home but the dogs did great. :-) The star of the class in that exercise was definitely the little Golden puppy and we were so happy to see how well they all did. This week they will work on duration of the behaviour (walking longer distances) so depending on the weather we might be walking down the street next weekend.

The thing that I thought was the most satisfying in terms of progress was the way the owners click and reward their dogs for attention and being calm while we talk, at first I remember them feeling a bit silly having to shovel goodies into the dogs and no doubt thought it was a waste of time but they humoured us the first few times and now they have a nice little communication going so the dogs don't lose focus if we talk too long. That can of course be a problem with me anyway, lol Everyone keeps their dogs engaged and the dogs are content, interested in what they are being asked to do even if they are just laying around relaxing, they appear happy and eye are not showing stress even in the ones that were a little bit reactive or lacking in confidence when we first met. They are getting better duration in all their behaviours and so the clicks are not as frequent but they are definitely working. They totally adore their owners and show little interest in the other dogs who are sitting right beside them, if they show a lack of interest and think of wandering away to check out the other dogs the owners are really showing more trust in their understanding of what they have learned and are using cues to get them back in the game instead of leash pulls or reprimands. It's wonderful to see. I hope the owners are happy with the results and can see how great their relationships are, it's always easier to see things from the "outside". :-) We didn't expect so much change in such a short time although of course we believe in what we are teaching!

Our student with the GSD has shaped a beautiful "accordion down" with him using the target stick and it is so great to see since he had a bad experience in a group down once that poisoned his down cue. We are hoping this shaped behaviour with a new cue will make him much more comfortable in the down stay exercise. He sure was happy to get his cue today!

I just couldn't resist including these two photos. Sweet and what a difference in this little dogs demeanour and confidence. She readily takes food from my hand now and runs to me to say hello every once in awhile and was not overly upset when Rúnar was the "distraction" during her loose leash walking (actually she didn't have a lead on).

Is it just me or is this month going really fast? I was going to knit myself a sweater for Xmas but haven't even started yet. Nail trimming time AGAIN. You can see how time flies when you feel like you just cut their nails and then have to do it again, we try to do it once a week or every second week but it's usually the clicking on the floor that tells us that they are way too long and this time we did put it off for a bit because we were busy. Skella is getting used to our nail trimming style and is pretty still and patient, although she still thinks brushing is a game of come get me and run around in circles barking after each clump is pulled out. We aren't good enough at not laughing when she does that! I tell you if a non dog person (or even just someone who can't read body language) heard the mumbling and barking from her sometimes they would think she was a mean vicious creature. She is so funny, I don't know if it's because she's figured out that people leave her alone when she makes that noise or if it's just her way of playing because she runs around making noise like that with her ball as well, shoving it in the other dogs faces and mumbling, they always look at us as if to say...what is her problem?! She always has a smiley face and play body language when she does it but it is a bit unnerving sound. She has such a deep voice compared to the others. Have to admit she is a funny dog, gentle and loving too so we really must try to see this rehabilitation through even though at times it gets frustrating with her anxiety and causes me a bit myself. It just gives me a bit of insight into my own behaviour so could very well be that my friend the natural healer was right when she said that Skella was here to help ME. I'm not sure since I have been getting worse having so many dogs but I'm trying to tell myself that there is a rainbow at the end of rehabilitation. Depending on my health we´ll see how it goes but in any case we are committed to giving it our all. Hopefully that will be enough. We have spoken about it lately that she would be an awesome dog on her own, she would be an extraordinary dog in any sport she took part in, anything from Obedience, Agility, Search and Rescue or herding I'm sure she'd rock at anything she did. She has a lot of energy and if we had her all by herself I know she'd be no problem because then she'd get 100% of the training time!

She can be a bit too loving and cute sometimes because she likes to come over all of a sudden, jump on the couch and flop on top of you for cuddles with a huge smile on her face and she really doesn't realize how big and heavy she is! ;-) Too bad her barking and insecurity is taking us so long to change, but I will say progress is being made finally although sometimes she will get a bit insecure it's much easier to calm her down now and to get her to stop barking if I'm not on the phone. However oddly enough she seems to think that when I'm on the phone is the time when she has to have a barking fit. Rúnar is such a calming effect on us all when he is home that there is seldom any barking when he is at home, drives me nuts how well behaved she is around him. Hehe, she is just so in love with Rúnar just like Birta, I think they know he's mentally stronger than I am. We have figured out that if you ask her to get her toy she can't bark with a toy in her mouth and it seems to calm her to hold on to something. Of course I have to make sure that I don't get overly stressed or anxious myself because that sets her off as well. All of a sudden today it reminded me that Birta used to be like that when we took her back. Today Birta is such a good girl and hard to believe she was ever a "problem dog" and doesn't need her "security blanket" of a toy anymore but at times Skella can get her going into an old pattern. We were afraid Skella might ruin all the progress we made with Birta but it is so clear that it depends on how we handle it ourselves when she gets over excited. In most cases Birta doesn't let her get to her but if Skella barks at a dog barking outside (which used to be one of Birta's problems) when Rúnar isn't at home then Birta will join in. Patience rather than anger is the simple answer, I'm convinced that Skella will build up confidence through training. She already has a habit of "touching the goblins" when she sees something she is not sure what it is she'll touch it with her nose, it's so cute.

No doubt it is different how dogs deal with having been in different homes over a short lifetime and when you don't know what experiences a dog has lived through than you don't know how they will react in certain situations. I think that although some shut down completely (which is no doubt the easier "problem dog" to own) it would seem that others are overly sensitive and show their emotion on the outside. The reactive dogs are the ones that people notice and condemn while the others with a characteristic of hiding emotions many feel make the "perfect" dog. Human nature is that we like to be able to control things around us. Who ever heard of a "perfect" dog being put down?

I do know that Skella is extremely smart and quick to learn things we try to teach her so with confidence she shouldn't need to be reactive to every noise she hears or sight she sees out the window and I have noticed a big difference just in the past week or so in how much quieter and calmer she is, could be because I've been calmer. I will admit that when she first came to us it would seem her problems were not as bad so inevitably I taught her how to be reactive and overly anxious while I was alone home for a month just through my own fears and lack of calm when something went wrong. She has a huge problem of separation anxiety when left in her cage so the next step is crate games with her. Thank goodness for understanding, patient and kind neighbours.

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday even though it's not celebrated here. We had to make it on Saturday because our students wanted to meet on the Sunday. We had leftover turkey yesterday and then again today. I put the rest in the freezer to make soup with at a later date. :-) Rúnar made the whole dinner on Saturday while I was outside cleaning up the yard (always a bit to clean when the snow melts) and then I reorganized the tool shed to be able to put away the dogs turtle pool for the winter and the garden hose. Now how much do you want to bet that we won't get any more snow? LOL It's been raining all day today and no doubt that will continue for most of the winter as usual.

We had our 4th clicker class yesterday so only 2 weeks left, the dogs are doing great and we added a bunch of new exercises this week so they'll be busy at home. I can see that the dogs are quite quick to learn new things these days, they have so caught on to the "game" of training so no doubt they'll be raring to go next weekend. We´ll be proofing all the exercises as well as adding distractions so it'll be lots of fun. Of course I forgot to take the camera with me last time. Oh well, next time we will have training at the house down the road so if I forget the camera I won't have far to go get it.

What else? Can't think of much. Oh the car has a funny sound again, this time Rúnar is not sure what's wrong but it doesn't sound good, it might mean putting off buying the winter tires until the end of the month to be able to fix the car AGAIN. Obviously we've had this car too long!

Needed a bit of a rest today after the busy weekend. I might have pulled something while I was reorganizing the shed because my back and my hip have a shooting pain off and on. The dogs like to share the couch and comforter with me so when I got up for a few minutes two of them got really comfy and I just thought they looked too cute. It's too bad they woke up when I got the camera ready because just a little while earlier Frigg was laying with her head on Hofi's back after she had cleaned all the raindrops off of her coat and face. Those two just love each other and have done from the first second they met at the quarantine station. I never could have imagined how lucky I would be with my choice of a puppy but obviously Hofi was the one that was meant to be with us and her grandma.

Having lots of trouble uploading up-dates again, drives me insane sometimes, I spend hours on the computer getting an error and having to push the upload button over and over again. Don't know why it decides sometimes to go through without a hitch and other times not, doesn't seem to matter how many photos there are.

Heard from my Mom last night, she's doing okay is even planning a trip to see her brother. Well as predicted we had a really bad storm last night and all day and it's still going a little. The celebration in Viðey to turn on the Imagine Peace Tower lights for John Lennon's birthday had to be cancelled until tomorrow due to weather. I'm not sure if Yoko made it to the island to turn on the lights at 8 pm but I'm sure the curator will do that if she doesn't make it and the festivities will be all weekend. Lot's of damage has been reported due to the storm and the rescue organizations were really busy all day. Thank goodness we didn't have that bad gusts although it was a bit funny that the dogs tried to go outside and when Skella who is the biggest and heaviest of them all almost blew away they decided it was better to just be indoors. The walls have been shaking today because of the gusts. I think in certain parts they were over 40-50 meters a minute or however that is measured. The rescue people said they don't remember it being this bad for many years. Rooves blew clean off some places and so did siding off of buildings, cars (pick-up trucks) blew over on their sides and even heard from someone that a 40 ft container was moving around. There were a few videos on the news websites. Here are a couple.

Put up a video of Skella outside today too, don't know if you notice her moving I did take a few more but missed the better moments. Here are a couple photos.

Speaking of video, Rúnar was a bit of a genius yesterday when we took Klói to the house to train a little with him. He took a video of Klói in a screeching recall to heel and walking in the hall but both videos he turned the camera to the side (to get us in the frame) and forgot that when you do that the video is on it's side and can't be fixed to turn right side to be played. Not the first time he's done that and I must confess to the same silly mistake myself at least once or twice. Anyway, the training went well, only did a few minutes and mostly the relaxation protocol exercises where Rúnar read what I was supposed to do and I stood by and rewarded Klói. It's similar to his sleepy training but I don't expect him to put his head down in this one (he has that down pat already) more just a regular down. I'm trying to add movement now, walking to the sides, back or front and unpredictable duration of 3-15 seconds at a time. It's all relevant and will help us with the down stay and sit stay. I will say that I'm not doing it with a mat although I know that settle should be done on a mat, I'm just doing a mixture of relaxation and "down" (stay) and don't want to have to work on fading the mat since he has down under stimulus control already. Should have gone on to distractions, duration and distance long ago but as usual I seem to hop from one thing to an other and don't always do things as I should (I have already trained all five to down while I walk into the kitchen out of sight and then back) I have cheated a bit I know I have a bad habit of falling back to the old ways of asking too much too soon. Because of that I do get the occasional break of the down from Hófi and Skella, the others are pretty rock solid. Rúnar keeps trying to slow me down and get me to train each dog separately so that I don't get one breaking and not understanding the exercise because they don't get their reward. I know I should know better, old habits die hard and I pretty much rely on them learning from each other...bad trainer! :( I am a terrible one for cutting corners and then I try to tell my students how they should do things but I don't do them properly myself. I keep telling myself that if I only had one or two dogs they would be so much better trained and I'd be able to find the time easier to train them instead of having to lump everyone's training time together, very stupid idea.

I do believe that it's not the environments that make the exercise reliable but the repetitions and how many times the dog has been rewarded for the correct behaviour. Training the correct behaviour from the start so the dog is always successful. I don't have many plans to take it on the road to many new environments (just a couple well chosen areas) because I heard that Kay Laurence (UK) has disproved the myth that you have to practice in all different environments to get a reliable behaviour. Although I do know that most teachers including Rúnar want the distractions to include getting the behvaviour on cue in different environments. That is valid too and for those who feel comfortable moving around alot no doubt the better way to acclimatize yourself and the dog to stress and distractions. Now I may be explaining this wrong but she apparently trained her dogs in her kitchen (I have a couple of her training videos done in her kitchen) with many many repetitions and then took them straight to Crufts and did the routines without any problems in the new environment. If I am not misunderstanding, if the behaviour in itself is reliable enough and under complete stimulus control then a new environment shouldn't matter so much although you might have to reward a couple times in the new environment to proof it. Could be some disagree with me but I'm hoping that my beliefs will hold true and I'll continue to train at home and in one or two other places and hope for the best.

Well, I've decided to go back to kindergarten in a sense on the down at least because it's the exercise that gives some of the highest points in a trial and I don't want him breaking it if at all possible. I have to start adding distractions and movements on my part in very small increments, and I think the relaxation protocol has good ideas for building that reliability step by step. I used to train a bomb proof down with distractions with my other dogs and never had the problem of them breaking a stay even when I was not in sight so I really want to make sure I have that reliability with Klói before I take him into a room with other dogs, that in itself will no doubt be the hardest thing for him as he gets a bit anxious around other dogs. I always forget how old Klói is and how we really haven't done any obedience trial exercises with him. I had such huge plans for him when he was small, poor baby I let him down. Hard to believe that used to be my biggest hobby with Freyja and Frigg and I used most if not all my free time training with them. Boy have I gotten lazy. :(

We have our next class on Sunday so that should be fun to see all the dogs and owners again and see how they are doing on their homework. Hoping the roads will be clear and the gale winds will have let down by then. We´ll be celebrating Thanksgiving with a turkey tomorrow I guess since Rúnar has to work on Monday and we´ll be away from home most of Sunday.

Can't think of anything else at the moment but I'm sure I'll remember something later and then forget it again just as quick so that's all you get for now! :-)

Finally got a hold of my Dad the other day and he sounded pretty good, he is still having some minor discomforts after his heart attack a few months ago but overall he's doing well and refuses to take the drugs the doctors prescribe but takes all his supplements and special organic diet with healing foods. He healed himself for so many years (I think there was 10 years or more between attacks) without drugs and he knows that it was his own change in diet one weekend that brought on the last attack. He's so much like his father my Opa and I can't help smiling at the fact that I am so much like the two of them. :-) I wish I wasn't sometimes but I know my Dad never wanted to grow up to be like his Dad either and made fun of him when he was younger. I think we can be a pain in the butt at times but we give life a bit of spice with our stubborn ways. I'm sure Rúnar could ring my neck at times. Mix my inheritance from my Dad with my grandmother Nana and it's great to be able to blame someone else for my stubbornness and negativity. Hehe. To be fair my Dad is trying to be very positive after his first heart attack but even more so after his second one so maybe I can change too! Oh but mustn't forget Nana didn't change into a happy go lucky lady until she got Alzheimer's and forgot how mad she was at the world. :-) Oh well, maybe I'm stuck being a pain in the butt for a few years yet. :-Þ

So I forgot to say we stopped at IKEA on the way home the other day and bought a small step so that I can try to train Hofi a bit more in rear leg awareness so I can hopefully fix her heel position. She is always way too crooked and jumps away from me rather than closer whenever I stop. Now mind you I know why she does that. :( My bad!!! When she first came to us and was good at heeling I accidentally stepped on her toes a few times and well no question she'd be stupid if she didn't move away as a consequence of my stepping on her feet repeatedly while she was in heel position. She was just so much smaller than the other dogs and me with my lack of balance not a good combination. My other dogs knew enough to watch out for me making a sudden step to the left when I should be walking straight. Hopefully I can convince her that if she has better control of her back legs she will be able to steer clear of my clumsiness without having to walk crooked all the time. She found the big blue step that Klói used too big although she did catch on fast to the exercise I think this one will be better for her. Here she was on the green box that I tried a couple times but it was too light and flipped over every time she got on it. The new step is about the same height if not slightly lower. The child steps are of course specially designed to withhold the weight of a child and slightly larger on the bottom so that they don't flip over if someone steps too close to the edge. I'm looking forward to seeing how she does, she was so quick to learn the concept of standing on it but not as quick to realize how to move her back legs and so we never got to that part of the exercise with her. I'm going to shape it from the start with the new step.

I can say that after feeling lousy yesterday I wish I could just be rid of this stupid dizziness, I hate when it makes me sick to my stomach too. I have good days and not so good days and never know ahead of time what to expect unless I have been stressing out too much. Quite possibly being busy every single weekend for the past month or so is getting to be too much, driving to Reykjavík always leaves me dizzy for days and we've been doing alot of that lately. My shoulders are really swollen too so that adds to it. Klói was a good boy yesterday and tried to keep the others calm, luckily it was a quiet day with no interruptions so I got to rest a bit. He followed me around like a shadow, much more than usual, it's funny how they know stuff like that. I really was in no mood to have barking or dogs playing around in the house, just wanted to spend the day under the covers but of course that wasn't an option. Made some homemade chicken soup and as they say chicken soup is the cure for everything. :-)

Rúnar is working until 6:30 until December I think so we have long days without him, he leaves so early in the morning now too. We are so lucky though that they have decided that they will always get off at 4 on Fridays to give them a chance to get to stores etc. Can't wait until Friday!!! Rúnar has been so tired all week, all that responsibility and long days and he doesn't feel like doing anything when he gets home so no dog training this week. I did want to use the chance to train in his mother's empty house but time is running out, hopefully we can do something on the weekend in between travelling to Reykjavík and eating turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Icelanders don't celebrate Thanksgiving but I need an excuse to eat the turkey we bought so we can buy another one soon. I LOVE turkey and it's really good for you too!

Klói's ear is pretty much back to normal now thank goodness, yesterday was his last day of medication.

So here is why they are so happy these days and why they all of a sudden needed to go outside a bit more than usual yesterday. It looks like we might be losing it already, it's started to rain. It's melting pretty fast and I expect it'll be gone before the day is done. Aw, it was so pretty. There is a huge storm warning in effect for tonight so no doubt the rescue organizations will have enough to do during the night with items blowing around and people's roofs ripping off like usual when we get these gale winds.

Something very strange happened the other day, around my Dad's birthday. I have a few magnets on my fridge and some of them are photos of my dogs along with one magnet that has a photo of my late step father Lennart and our late Valdís (GSP) together when he visited us in Norway. We were both in the kitchen not far from the fridge and for some unknown reason, can't even remember what we were talking about but think it was something to do with a dog school, a magnet literally "jumped" off the fridge in front of our very eyes and landed on the floor between us. I looked at Rúnar and he looked at me, he picked it up and I said that was Lennart wasn't it? Sure enough it was and we were not near the magnets, nothing touching them and of many in a row that was the only one that fell down. I still have to figure out what he was trying to say but I have been thinking about him lately as I've mentioned before so maybe he was just reminding me that he is with me.

Been so busy that I didn't get a chance to update which means I missed a couple birthdays.

Happy Birthday Dad (3rd), my late Opa (4th) and Sigríður Pétursdóttir (3rd)!

Tried to call my Dad but he was at my sister's for his birthday and then the line was busy when I tried yesterday. We were away from home most the day yesterday with our clicker course, it was in Reykjavík at the one couple's home which was wonderful but at the same time meant a long day with the drive over the mountain for us. It's already winter here which is so not fair...feel like we had no summer. Luckily for us there was only one very short icy spot the rest was clear sailing. We're still waiting for the new winter tires to arrive and are hoping for no ice until we have them changed, we have to go into Reykjavík to get the tires when they arrive as well as the next three weeks for our course. Took a few photos of the pretty (but so cold) weather on the way over the mountain.

The dogs were great and we see such a difference in their calmness, the total adoration they show their owners and attention. They didn't care about the other dogs in the room whereas when we started a couple weeks ago they were very insecure and wanted to play with each other rather than be with their owners. We let one at a time show us a bit of what they'd done during the week and they all got this week's lesson. The curriculum is awesome and we are so happy with it, it's all about building up behaviours in small steps that can be used in future to teach more complicated behaviours on their own. We teach them how to teach cues and how to proof them, teach them about rewards and much more. Giving the owners and dogs a great base for a relationship they can have for life. Pretty much what I tried to do in my own class curriculum before but I find Karen Pryor's lessons so much more understandable and geared towards TAG teaching the owners as well as the dogs. This week we started the down exercise with a target. The Golden puppy had Rúnar well trained to pet and cuddle him while the other dog was working. How can you resist letting into that face? He was so concentrated on watching the other dog and I know that dogs can learn by observation, so good dog!

Speaking of the puppy, he is such a sponge that what he has accomplished already in terms of tricks, cues and the overall understanding of the lessons is amazing. His owner is doing a great job and I can't wait to see him at a trial in future. Clicker training is real brain work though and here you can see a happy little puppy after the lessons were over.

We finally found a nice frozen raw bone, didn't know where to get one of those before and Klói is already two plus and has never chewed on a real bone before...oh the shame of it! Klói thoroughly enjoyed that on Saturday although he wasn't sure how he was supposed to go about it at first. The others got a rawhide after chewing for a few minutes on a raw bone (a small one that they got to taste). We only got ONE bone so maybe we´ll be able to find another one for sale so the others can have one too or they will just have to be content to chew one at a time.

Did some shaping as well with them all and it seems Skella is calming down slightly by getting some brain work learning new stuff. Klói's ear is getting better every day and is only a bit pink at the moment not as red as it was, a few days of medication left and I'm optimistic that it'll be fine by then. Frigg is as always her normal self but Klói is still bothering her a little about her breathing but she is having a great time training. She is always so happy to go into a "closed" training session with a clicker, she does the dance of joy! I often use the clicker with all the dogs together during the day for normal training but when I start a formal session with one dog they all get so excited about the alone time and getting to concentrate on shaping stuff.

Speaking of dogs, training and coincidences, I found out by watching a show on TV the other day that dogs are actually being used as service dogs for people like me who have anxiety disorders. Not surprising as I know how much Klói has helped me with my anxiety attacks, I often wish he could come with me to calm my nerves in stressful situations away from home too. So I googled and sure enough found a site called Psychiatric Service Dog Society. Huh, so if I lived in a different country I would be able to have an actual legal service dog! Then even more interesting I was looking at the NKK site in search of rules for Rally Obedience to hopefully get people interested in that here in Iceland since so many people are scared of the formal obedience trials. :-) Anyway, what did I find but a couple articles about service dogs in Norway, and I wasn't even looking for that. One article sparked my interest because the woman talked about deafness (I have been losing my hearing the past few years although I don't talk about that) and then she talked about her symptoms of dizziness, sudden attacks of vertigo, ringing in the ears and pressure in the ears, her problems with bending down that her dogs help her pick up stuff and how she walks or at least always feels like she walks zig-zag rather than in a straight line or her lack of balance, pain in neck and shoulders...etc, etc, etc. The symptoms were more but EVERY single thing she mentioned was like she was talking about me! What I go through on a daily basis and the anxiety that comes because of it, part of the reason I've been "teaching for fun" service dog tasks to Klói was because I actually do need him to do some things for me. Low and behold she used to have the same problems as I have with doctors and they all thought she was just making it up and dismissed it until one particular doctor, after her not giving up, decided to humour her and actually listened and checked for a brain tumour (which these symptoms mimic) and found out that this woman has a condition known as Meniere's disease or syndrome. It is incurable and can get progressively worse causing total disability or deafness, the dizziness causes people to have difficulty travelling, driving and leaving the house which leads to social phobias. It has to do with fluids collecting around the inner ear and can be caused by trauma or whiplash.

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather, I'm NOT going crazy. These symptoms of mine do add up to something and although I have once heard many years ago after some tests at the hospital that my inner ear had been affected by the whiplash/car accident, there was never anything else said or done about it. No further explanation either but I moved to Norway just a few weeks after those tests (including an MRI and brain scan) were done and the doctors between countries and even here in Iceland don't appear to share info so with me moving around so much and never having the same doctor for more than a year or two the slate just seems to be wiped clean each time I change doctors. I guess they just tend to think I'm a hypochondriac because I only go to doctors (I hate going to them and wait until I really and truly feel horrible) when I have a whole list of symptoms and complaints and end up complaining about so many things all at the same time which I guess don't in themselves add up to one particular problem so they shrug off everything I say as being in my mind. No doubt my name has a big red star beside it as an easy buck! :-)

Now that I have this new info I am determined to actually find a doctor who can diagnose this condition (nose, throat and ear doctor) if it hasn't already been diagnosed in me without me knowing...wouldn't be the first time info got lost in the system. It seems that this is a condition that a service dog can also help with so if I can't use a dog for the anxiety disorder (I've been on disability for that for years now) than maybe I can use one for this condition so that I can leave the house more. So now I think my fun training might come in handy, I might in future be able to actually let Klói or Hofi wear the service dog vest if I can get the authorities in Iceland to change their ideas of what dogs can do in society. I know the seeing eye dogs are still having trouble with public access so no doubt a service dog for the mentally disabled is a long way off but I can at least hope and for the time being I am feeling so much less anxious knowing that there is a non life threatening condition that my symptoms match and that although I will not be able to get relief for the symptoms that at least I don't have to feel like everyone around me thinks I'm a nut job. AGAIN it seems that quality of life might be best served in any other country than Iceland since service dogs are allowed anywhere else. Maybe this is meant to be a cause that I can fight for so we´ll see.

This lady was told at the time she was diagnosed that she would have to get rid of all her dogs (she had 5 at the time) because this condition is worse under stress. She did go down to 2 dogs but said that the dogs were the medicine she needed to keep her out and about and they have helped her greatly where doctors, therapy and medication could not. Oh it all sounds so familiar to me!

Dog shows are over, both in USA and Iceland. We didn't even go to watch, I really try not to stress or be in big crowds if I don't have to because the sound pollution bothers me but I got to see all the photos and results posted. Interesting to see who did what under which judge. I enjoyed seeing photos being posted by my friends on Facebook. I can't say I was surprised at how each show went in terms of type under each judge. Congratulations to all who did well and hopefully everyone had a great time just meeting each other and all the activities that were going on at the ISAA nationals. My greatgrandpuppies took all the trophies home in Iceland again as usual. Klói's half brother out of Hektor (my grandpuppy and his daughter my greatgrandpuppy in both parents linebred to Stjarna) was this years Top Dog over all breeds so Congratulations Gaua and Þorbjörg! He is a beautiful dog too bad it'll be hard to find bitches to use him on in future that are not related. I see much of Klói in him as well although Klói has his other grandfather´s (Fjalla Geri) angulation in rear and shorter back. My Klói is not perfect but NO way I'd trade him in for anything! We´re content to be at home and cuddle. :-) I might see if I'm up to showing him in future, you never know.

I was waiting for an answer about a letter I sent to HRFI last month before the deadline for Assistance Dog of the Year but I never got anything sent so obviously my dogs didn't get the service/assistance dog of the year award. Here in Iceland it's just given to dogs (not professionals) who have done a service for a human or animal that deserves recognition and it doesn't have to be in the present year. They had requested stories of dogs as it seemed they were having trouble getting a candidate they even lengthened the deadline once so on the last day I decided to send in a very very short story of myself and my dogs. Besides actually saving my life once, I talked about Klói's ability to sniff cancer and infection and the way he calms my nerves during an anxiety attack but I guess our story wasn't good enough or too unbelievable that they thought it was made up! Hehehe I'm gonna go with that explanation. ;-) I don't know who did get the award this year so I'm curious to read the story in the magazine in future. No doubt a well deserving canine. I know there was a dog on the news awhile back (Labrador) that bit and scared away a thief breaking into the house, maybe it was that dog but could be anything really. Töfra Stjarna got that award once in her life (for visiting old age homes) so maybe in future another Töfra dog will be so lucky to get the award because more than one of my dogs has done great things in their lives. In any case I think my dogs are special and I will continue to write my book and hopefully they will inspire someone in future through that.

The police from Selfoss were driving down the road near our town just after midnight last night and saw a falling meteorite. They got it on tape through their surveillance camera. They are certain it was not a flare and it looked like it was headed towards the river Ölfusá. Here is a link to the video. They say they did not however meet any strange visitors after the meteorite fell. Hehe :D

This just in: It's snowing!!!! Started this evening and the dogs are of course ecstatic...they just happen to have to go outside every hour or so. Best get to bed early I can see they will want to spend a lot of time outside tomorrow if the snow stays. I guess there will be no more cutting the grass this year and it's really long and hides poop very well. Good thing I picked up all the poop yesterday and now hopefully it will be easier to find in the white stuff.

Got a call this morning from the student vet and I'm happy to say that it appears to be just age related changes to the heart and lungs. It's very hard to understand her, she is either from Germany or Holland and doesn't speak Icelandic and not very good English so I couldn't ask her questions or when I did ask questions she didn't understand my English. She mentioned that she was sorry that the placing of the lump by Frigg's front leg is bad so that they cannot do any surgery or anything to remove it. I asked if it showed up on the ex-ray and from what I understood it did not and therefore they felt it cannot be cancer. I asked her if she knew what it could be if it's not cancer and she said yes. Then I asked again, what it was? She just said she knew what I was talking about so I think she thought I meant did she know which lump I was talking about. She didn't give me any answer as to what it could be though. We´re just supposed to keep an eye on it and there is nothing we can do so Frigg is by all accounts just fine! Anyway, we couldn't communicate too well but I'm happy to say that we will no doubt have Frigg around for awhile yet!

Klói's ear is also so much better already today and he seems calmer as well so maybe he was just a bit frustrated the past couple days because his ear hurt. He is still taking care of Frigg but although she is "alright" her heart and lungs are not normal at the moment and no doubt he senses that.

I just realized an hour or so ago that it's already Thursday. hehe Well, sure am glad I don't have to stress myself out for a dog show on the weekend like everybody else. :-) I am looking forward to hearing how the dog show in USA goes this weekend and hopefully seeing a bunch of photos. Guðrún, Diane T. Anderson and Pat Putman will all be judging fun matches and it will be interesting to hear how the dogs did and who they each pick as winners. Have fun all of you who will be going and have a safe trip for those who are travelling long distance to be there. I really wish I could have come to the event, I know I'll really be missing a great weekend.

Today would have been my late stepfather Lennart's birthday. Still hard to believe he´s gone it's been many years already but I miss his voice on the phone especially on my birthday in February. He used to sing the Swedish birthday song to me and I think of him often. His favourite dog of mine (of the ones he met) is Frigg and when he met her she was still quite young.

Speaking of Frigg, as many know Klói has been telling us for quite some time now that she is not feeling 100%. She doesn't act sick but when Klói got even more insistent today that her breath was not right and was bothering her to the point of her getting annoyed and trying to hide from him licking her mouth and face, we decided to take her along for the ride to the vets. Klói's ear has been red and inflamed for a couple days and getting a bit worse although we were hoping it would go away on it's own. His mother Birta has been licking his ear yesterday and the day before and since he was starting to shake his head today and hold his one ear off to the side I called the vet to see if we could get an appointment. I could only see a vet student since the vet was busy and our usual vet who is a dog vet (the other ones are horse vets) wasn't there today. Since Rúnar was working to 4 and we could come after 5 then we took the appointment. Klói was a good boy, he is so ticklish when you try to poke stuff in his ear but when she looked at the sore ear with the light she said it was so swollen that she couldn't go down all the way and she tried to clean it a bit but it was slightly bleeding from the poking of the plastic ear probe. We luckily had some goodies with us and used those to help him keep his mind off of what she was doing but he was so good anyway, he got some drops with antibiotics and has to have those once a day for a week. She said he should get better fast and if he is not better in a week we should come back to see her. You can see how red his left ear is (right on the photo of course). Poor baby, we should have taken him sooner I guess but thought it was something that would go away on it's own. No doubt it's either from the time he almost drowned himself in the ocean or from him playing around in his turtle pool the other day. He had scratched it more than once and I cleaned it out but obviously I couldn't get in deep enough to remove the dirt that was causing him to scratch in the first place.

Rúnar had a very pleasant surprise when he got his pay check today so that's why we thought we could finally afford to go to the vet. It's not cheap and we try our best to keep our dogs healthy but when we feel it's nothing serious we will often put off vets visits until we can afford them. I promised Klói he could get a toy...I know he's a dog...but I DO talk to my dogs like kids sometimes and am certain they understand me. Just part of the crazy life of Monika I guess. So after him being extra good I thought he deserved it even more and I wanted him to remember the vet's office for good things, we try at least to get them a treat or two while they are there so it's not a scary place. He picked a Wubba Kong which was in place of the small Wubba kong he got when Rúnar brought one back from school. He loved it and already chewed that one up but it was smaller so this one will be supervised play only! He's so happy when he gets a new toy. :-)

When she was done with Klói we asked if she had time to look at Frigg. We have pretty much told ourselves she has cancer because of the lump growing so fast. She said she would look at her for us so after a check up she wanted us to come back in the morning to take an ex-ray of her lungs. We said we couldn't come back in the morning because Rúnar was working and so she took the ex-rays for us right away and got some help from the horse specialists (they also see dogs and other animals when needed). Because our vet the specialist was not there they didn't want to tell us much about the photos because they were not quite sure what to read from them. They did feel that there was no obvious tumour but that the heart was enlarged as well as the pipes in the lungs. Our vet will be sent the photos by email (I think she is at home with a new baby for a few months) and she will call us to let us know what she sees and then we will know what more can be done. So I'm hoping to get a call very soon. We are optimistic now that she might not have cancer but Klói was not wrong in a diagnosis of her needing to be checked and that she has problems with her "breathing" (he always sniffs her breath and doesn't do it to any of the other dogs) and he has also sniffed and licked her chest area (we thought he was telling us about the lump) so maybe we didn't "read" his clues correctly. She has a lump that is getting bigger right behind her front leg on the left but I guess it didn't show up as a tumour on the ex-rays so we´ll wait to see what it can be. They didn't take ex-rays farther back today but the vet student did find a new lump in her back teat that we hadn't found before but she thought it was just from her having puppies in her lifetime and not something we needed to worry about.

Here are a couple photos of Frigg being ex-rayed. She is such a good dog I really wish she wasn't so old because I hate the thought of losing her, she has such a wonderful temperament and is just like Freyja was, never complains and always the great patient. We didn't need to give her any drugs to ex-ray and she was just perfectly behaved. Of course she was a little bit stressed but before she was on the table and after she got off the table she was doing tricks and we couldn't help but give her goodies for them, she was so cute with her little tail going a mile a minute when she saw all the other people there too. No doubt if she could still jump that high she would have jumped up onto the table on her own. She definitely wasn't scared of the place in the least, horses in the stables and all the weird smells. I love my little Frigg to bits, it's at times like these that I realize how little attention she has gotten all these years because of all the other dogs. I hope she decides to stick around for years yet.

After the vets we stopped to let the two of them run on the field and as usual, happy happy happy...two minutes of fresh air or two hours of mountain walking, it's all the same to Frigg she is always so glad to get the opportunity to walk around and sniff in nature.

I really don't know how anyone can give so many dogs equal attention or even quality time. I've never been able to give more than two to three dogs at a time the attention I'd like to be able to give them. We really enjoy taking one or two with us places and having more control of the situation as well as be able to let them enjoy the special attention. I think Rúnar and I are both bound and bent that in future we are aiming to only have three dogs maximum or even two like the old days when we had Frigg and Freyja and we want to do more with them in terms of training. That's far in the future plans of course since our dogs get to live out their lives with us as a part of the family so I would think that there won't be too many litters from us in future.

So like I said before Rúnar is very happy that he got the job he's at now that he has gotten his first pay check and what a difference to actually be able to pay the bills AND be able to take the dogs to the vet. We have realized that it really was a blessing for him to get that job, it was like an answer to a prayer. With all luck we might even be able to go visit my family in Canada next year. Now we also have a couple more new enquiries about clicker courses so it seems the word of mouth is also getting out that we are starting to teach again. We´ll be meeting our current students on Sunday. No dog show for us, better to earn money than to spend it. :-) The dogs are STILL blowing coat especially Birta and Skella, seems they waited until the others were finished. Gotta love the way they keep me busy with the broom. With all these dogs I really don't know what I'd do without a dryer for our clothes, it is amazing how much hair collects on the clothes and the dryer always leaves them without any hairs on them but wow the filter clogs up! I did notice though that there are some cat paw prints in the laundry room again because we have to leave the window open for the hose from the dryer. We have to watch when the weather starts to get cold we´ve had a bit of frost and snow already this past week. I think the cat probably snuck in the other day when we weren't home because the weather was HORRIBLE and we´ve sometimes seen paw prints after storms before. Grrrrr

I really and truly have to try to start spending time during my days writing again. I get so caught up on the stupid Facebook sometimes that the times I sit at the computer are totally spent on that. I so wanted to finish my book this year, it's been taking me so many years, first as an idea and then as a draft of ideas on paper and now as a book that needs to be finished and needs a bunch of editing and I seem to be getting no where. I'm totally non inspired these days, have to make myself get back into the mood. I'm trying to work on translating our course material as well so that is keeping me busy until I have all that done. Rúnar doesn't have time to do anything like that and we really want our students to follow the lessons that have been used with great success before. Speaking of students we also still have the course or seminar (maybe just a few hours, we don't know yet) coming up soon for the two clubs and that may be a big bunch of people. That will be awesome if we get so many people interested in the clicker that they can actually have little group get-togethers in Reykjavík of clicker trainers training and keeping each other inspired!

More news from the political scene here, the Minister of health and welfare asked to be released from his duties today because he is not in agreement with the way the government is handling the Icesave problem. No doubt he also feels bad having to cut so much costs in the health system because the current government is making the whole country pay the debts of the private bankers that owned the Icesave bank. Most Icelanders are hoping that this will cause the current government to be split and that they will give up so we can get new people in instead of them. Of course the Prime Minister refuses to listen to the public opinion and says that there will be no split. It took her so long to finally get her nice leather chair and office that she doesn't want to give it up without a fight. We´ll see what tomorrow brings, since there were some party meetings tonight. From what I understand the Norwegians gave a statement today that they have offered to loan Iceland a huge amount of money that would help us so we wouldn't have to use the IMF funds and the Norwegians don't care if the Icesave problem is solved first or not. The IMF has refused to give Iceland the next payment of the loan that they were supposed to give to us a month or so ago, they threaten with the fact that the Icesave case has to be solved first because we have threats from both Britain and Holland. The IMF also has some rule of a limit of debt that the country can be in in order to be able to pay back the loan to them and the Icesave will far exceed that if I understand correctly. Norway is a generous country and I hope the government here can see the possibilities and that we can just give back the IMF funds and be rid of them.

Yesterday would have been "Amma" Sigga's birthday. She was Beggi's grandmother but I pretty much grew up with her as a grandma because we were married so long and she was always such a special lady. It's a few years since she died and I remember I was sick when her funeral was and couldn't attend although I was invited by the ex-family but I often think about her just as I think of my own flesh and blood relatives.

I am also remembering my little Tryggvi Rúnar today who we lost 5 years ago, although he was never born he still remains in my thoughts as a part of me. It always seems strange how quickly time passes.

I'm really not updating too much lately am I? Oops, I think about updating the website then get doing something else but will try to update a little bit more often if I can even if I don't have too much to say. HA as if that ever happens. LOL. So the weekend was a really busy one starting on Friday when we had a few of our students for a lesson. It went well, we could see a big difference in the dogs how eager they were to get their clicks and they really seemed to enjoy themselves. The little Chihuahua that was so frightened of Rúnar and I (the owner said she was pretty much like that with anyone new or people who came to visit especially men) and who ran to hide under the chairs that I managed to click last time for a few minutes just for movements towards me to within a meter or so was much more open this time. I didn't see her tail between her legs for more than a few seconds off and on and then only the tip, whereas last week it was "stuck" there. She came right up and got her treat from my hand after her clicks this time and kept coming up and giving me eye contact to see if I'd click. She even almost came right up to Rúnar when he clicked her for movements towards him. I'm sure she will be much more open towards him next time. I do think we will be going to one of their homes to train next time so maybe we will have a little bit of fallback but no doubt we´ll be quicker to get results again. It was great to see the difference in her but we already know how quickly working with the clicker can desensitize a dog's fears when it's done in short sessions with patience to give the dog the choice to do the behaviour itself. After this week she will also have some target behaviours that we can use to give her something to take her mind off the fear. We can't wait to see how things go this week because we are also convinced (from our own experience) that just using clicker training in general can give a dog so much more confidence in itself and it's surroundings.

We came home Friday evening after watching hail falling outside all through the lessons and I got a phone call asking me if I could come to Reykjavík an hour earlier to judge the obedience trial in the morning because the weather was so bad that we had to have it inside the horse riding hall instead of outside like they'd planned. The hall was supposed to be used for other activities so we needed to be finished before all the other people came to take care of their booths. The day was a working dog gathering where all different types of work with dogs was being introduced to the public. It had been advertized on the radio as well as on posters all over the place. It was a wonderful idea in a country where the only "activity" people seem to do with their dogs is go to beauty shows! We´re hoping that it will open the general public's eyes to the fact that there is so much more dogs can do.

Well that meant getting up really early because it's about an hour drive or so depending on the weather and as we expected there was ice on the roads on the mountain, the truck was driving in the other direction with salt as we were almost over the worst of it. We don't have winter tires on so were a little bit nervous but we made it safe and sound. It was a good day and luckily no ice on the way back home. Rúnar was there watching with the camera in his pocket but didn't take any photos for me of the dogs competing...grrrrr. Typical. Hehe Nine dogs had been eligible to take part in two different classes and they showed different work, some were obviously not up to competing so early in the morning in a horse riding hall while others were just awesome and got perfect scores on some exercises and I don't usually give perfect scores. So I'd say some did better than the other trials I've judged them in while others did worse, even some of the winners didn't do the exercises as well as I've seen them do them before. That is the fun of dogs they are not machines so they can always surprise us. Hehe There were quite a few people there watching including another obedience judge so it was a bit of pressure on me as well as the handlers and their dogs. :-) The TV station came as well but unfortunately they didn't show any of it on the news after all, I know they were having some trouble with the microphone so I guess the interview they took with the president of the club didn't turn out. Here are some photos of the event, first photos are of a fellow trainer who trains search and rescue and the follow up training for dogs for the blind here. She also worked training police dogs in Sweden for a few years. She had suggested me as a helper and co-trainer for the seeing eye dog project (the dogs and original trainers come from Norway and she knew I spoke Norwegian) and I was so excited about that but I was too sick to take part. Still regret that but couldn't be helped and given all the walking they have to do with the dogs and their owners in all the environmental training I know I wouldn't have been able to keep it up anyway. I really wish she would have taken part in the obedience competition, it would have been great to see a professional trainer take part. None of us are perfect and I know for a fact my own dogs couldn't compete with some of the best ones there this weekend but I think if more of us trainers take part just to take part then we might be able to get more interest in the sport in general.

As so often happens when I stand for more than an hour or so my back seized up which is painful and it was freezing cold which didn't help but I made it through the trial and had fun doing it. I was glad to get home to the couch though and could lay down, it seems as soon as I sit down for a half hour or so my back gets back to normal (I was fine by the time we got home) but if I sit down for too short a time it's hard to get back up. It's frustrating, it means I don't think I'll be working as a ringsteward again until I can figure out a way to stand for 8 hours without my back giving out on me. Luckily these trials are only about 3-4 hours at the most.

The winner of both classes was the same lady with a Labrador and a Doberman, she is due to have a baby in six weeks so it was a bit of a "family effort". :-) Great teams and well deserved. The second place winner in the lower class was a Husky and WOW I love that dog. It is so nice to see a Husky who can finish the exercises so well, the third place was a Doberman. In the higher class the second place winner was a clicker trainer with her Malinois, it was like poetry to watch them and I wish I had it on video. It was so nice to hear the clapping from the audience when I caved in and gave her a 10 for teamwork! The recall was just amazing and that was the second exercise they got a 10 for. I can't believe how generous I was but I couldn't help but be inspired by watching them. I had thought that maybe I shouldn't give a 10 because she broke a stay when the dog beside her jumped up and rushed at her to play, she jumped up and told him off in no uncertain terms and unfortunately it happened so quickly that the owner couldn't even give her an extra command before she jumped up, not that I think that would have helped as the other dog was very intent on getting her up. She had naturally got a 0 on that particular exercise and I figured the teamwork and overall execution of and between exercises was great and it would have been very strange if any dog in that situation didn't break it's stay so I felt satisfied that particular exercise did not drag down the teamwork score. So I was of course very happy to hear the cheers from the audience. The third place winner was a Doberman that has placed first in a trial before and the combined score earned her the title of the Obedience high score dog of the year in the club. So that was quite fun for her, unfortunately the owner had to go to work and we needed to get home so I don't have a photo of them together, someone else held the dog for the photos so I could at least get a photo of myself with all the winners, well the dogs at least! Congratulations to all the winners and to all those who took part, it takes courage to get out there and just do it! It's hard to have to judge people and give scores but at the same time it is alot of fun to be able to see the different teams. Congratulations to the club on a great achievement of having the first Obedience competition of this magnitude in Iceland and the working dog exhibition they were able to set up in conjunction with it. I enjoyed judging all the matches and the finals and I hope I will be honoured with a job like that again in future. A great group of people and boy they all remind me of myself when I was younger and enthusiastic. ;-)

I was so inspired and it seems Rúnar was as well that we decided to try and get our dogs familiarized with the exercises that are used in the competition trials. :-) So we used today in part for a training session with Hofi and Klói! I SO wish we had Rally obedience here, who knows maybe we can try to campaign for that since I think it's probably more fun for both owner and dog and no doubt we might be better prepared for that than we are for an obedience trial. Oh yes I almost forgot we are lucky enough to be able to use Rúnar's mother's house for another month before it's rented out so we figured we are definitely going to use it while we can and train our own dogs too. We are so kicking ourselves for not figuring it out sooner that the house was empty for so long and we could have been spending time there getting quality time in training. Here are a few photos of me and Klói walking loose at heel and Rúnar clicking Klói on a piece of cloth as a target, it was funny each time Klói would go to it it would slide on the floor but he had fun. The two dogs decided that when we said that was enough and took a break that they didn't need a break and would just show Rúnar how much they "adore" him or should I say, tried to figure out how to get him to keep on clicking. ;-)

Woke up this morning feeling like crap, as I often do if I've overdone it with stress or walking/standing too much but we had made an appointment with one of the dog owners from our classes that couldn't make it last Friday. She lives in Reykjavík so we set off just after lunchtime to go over the lessons for this week. Rúnar had also found an ad in the paper last night, someone was giving away tires on the rims that fit our jeep so he was lucky enough to be the first one to phone about them (first come first serve always goes in ads like that). We stopped on the way to pick those up and it seems two of the tires are in decent condition, Rúnar didn't expect them to be he was just excited to get the rims for nothing because they cost a pretty penny as well as does getting tires put onto rims when they are changed each year, so that's money saved and although we still have to buy tires then we can have them on the rims for easy changing. Good trip in to Reykjavík for sure.

As for the training, I am totally in love with this dog. A German Shepherd male brought in from a working line and he is just so beautiful too. I find it so sad to see what has happened to the breed in the show ring so when I see a beautiful GSD, which isn't too often these days, I swear I almost want another one. He is training in Search and Rescue too so a little "hero".

Rúnar has to go back into Reykjavík again tomorrow right after work to pick up dog food. I tell you sometimes I wonder if it just wouldn't be cheaper and easier to live in Reykjavík but now Rúnar's job is right by the mountain road so I wouldn't want him having to drive over the mountain to work. He's been asked to start work an hour earlier in the mornings to turn on the equipment every second week. He is happy for the responsibility especially since he just started working there but at the same time that means he has to leave here even earlier in the morning so I guess that means going to bed earlier too and that leaves it a little bit iffy that we can take students in the evenings if he is working longer days he'll be too tired, I hope he isn't worn out on the weekends too. I think he's going to take the offer though, he says it means more money. That ever important buck! I guess we can't complain.

Wow, so much going on here it's hard to remember everything. The former Prime Minister and former Central Bank chairman David Oddson was hired as a co-editor for the newspaper Morgunbladid which is the country best news source. At the same time he was hired 30 workers at the paper were fired. Needless to say because it's him there is controversy around the hiring. I'm quite happy about him getting the job, he was editor there many many years ago I heard. It's horrible they had to fire all those people though. When we got home on Saturday and turned on the news they had live coverage of the historical building Höfdi which had caught on fire. That is the building were Reagan and Gorbachev met for a meeting in 1986. My Dad and Donna were here for a visit when that meeting was held.

We heard on the news today that there are some changes coming in terms of mortgages and home loans, that they are lowering the loans back to where they were in May 2008 which will lower monthly payments. Yay, maybe we will have more money for food since the prices have gone up so much that we are paying double or triple for food. Anyway, it seems every little bit will help and people are wondering if this is being done now as an answer to a "threat" that the consumers organization had made. They had been organizing and asking people to go on a "payment strike" on the 1st of October. It seems this new proposal from the government will be taken into effect the 1st of November and it's already been a year since the banks crashed so many find it quite strange that nothing has been done up until now when the strike is just about to be started. That will be so awesome if they have actually taken advice from all the specialists from other countries and are going to help the people a bit finally! I'll be excited to see what happens in the next little while.

A very sad story in the news tonight, apparently a 22 yr old woman knocked on a door to a house in Keflavík this morning and when a little five yr old girl answered the door the woman stabbed her. The little girl was taken to hospital by her mother and under went surgery in critical condition, the knife just missed the girls heart by millimetres. It just brings feelings of shock when something like that can happen anywhere in the world but in Iceland of all places where we were so free of crime and cruelty. All the new crimes that we see happening get worse and worse. It appears many of the crimes are being committed by immigrants or foreigners who are here legally which is just so sad that it may bring about racism and it hurts the wonderful hard working people who live here and have for many years who contribute to society. The jails here are so full of foreigners that the Joke Room (yes, that show has started again...yay) actually did a skit about it and of how the Icelandic offenders need dictionaries to be able to understand their fellow inmates. At the same time there are not enough rooms for those Icelanders who still have time to do in prison so they are on waiting lists to get into jail and walking free in society. That is not a joke...it's actually TRUE. On a similar note, the government decided to do a few inspections to see how many were on unemployment that are actually working or rightfully deserve the benefits. Last month they found out when they called in 600 foreign workers on benefits with very short notice and requested to see ID on arrival that 30% of them didn't show up. When they investigated they found out that somehow these foreigners had gotten other foreigners who live here to pretend to be them and stamp them in, thus they received unemployment checks even though they don't live here anymore or are not in the country. The unemployment fund is drying up because of all the benefits they have been paying since the bank crash, and that is why they are cracking down on people. They have gotten so many tips about people working the black market and being on unemployment but this development was a bit of a shock so it will help a little that 200 beneficiaries lost their rights to unemployment due to this one investigation. What a world we live in, sometimes I wish we could just turn back the clock to the "good old days".

Well, I can't think of anything else and it's really late already so I better get off to bed. I cheated today and had KFC chicken so no doubt I'll be a bit stiff in my joints in the morning from the gluten. Oh yes...a BIG news story, my nieces are finally on Facebook!!!! Yippee maybe I might be able to hear a bit more about them and Mandy now and keep in touch.

Happy Birthday Skella! Til hamingju með afmælið tengdamamma og Helga A!

The course went pretty well on Saturday, forgot a few things but we´ll make that up next time. Two had only limited time because they had to leave to be at work in Reykjavík and so Rúnar tried to get as much done in the time we had as he could. A couple couldn't make it after all, one was sick so not as many as we thought but it just means the ones that are attending will get alot of attention and more out of it so that's always a good thing. It seems we need to give private lessons to the other ones since they are too busy to come regularly to a course. Looking forward to being able to help as many people as are interested, always love seeing new dogs and different breeds. Next lesson is on Friday and then on Saturday after the Club championship in obedience that I'm judging we have one of the private lessons. Going to be a busy weekend again.

Poor little Skella has her 6th birthday today and her little toe is still bothering her. Now the nail is growing back and so she is licking and chewing on her foot alot, no doubt it itches quite a bit. So far so good, it doesn't seem to have gotten any swelling or infection so fingers crossed it will be fine.

I added a new video of Klói getting me my phone when it rings. As I explain on the video info it's not trained well enough, my fault for letting him just develop the behaviour pretty much on his own instead of actually breaking it down and teaching him properly. Obviously he is too smart for me so I'll have to take the time when I get around to it to go back and train it better. He is just so cute and we got him on video so wanted to share. I always need to be two steps ahead of him or he figures out new chores and perfects them on his own which isn't always the way I would have liked the finished behaviour. On the other hand pretty much anything he comes up with is useful and so cute.

It's getting cold now and last night there were some areas with frost, no doubt there will be frost again tonight since it is quite cold this evening. Funny thing is though that since I went to the reflexology and massage therapy my feet have been so hot and I don't feel the cold as much. She talked about my thyroid so maybe it's working better now than it used to since I used to have ice sickles for feet, just ask Rúnar. He said the other day that he almost misses my cold feet. Hehehe

Hehe, well don't want to jinx it but yesterday Rúnar came home and said that he'd be coming home early today so we´ll be going to the store today, and he isn't working on Saturday. So he called all the people and the clicker course is set for 10 am Saturday morning for a few hours. I believe we'll be working with the dogs on Sunday as well so now the fun starts. It's been so long since we've held a course because of my health, that it is a bit stressful thinking that we'll be starting again but this time Rúnar told me I'm not supposed to stress since I won't have to do the talking. :-) Funny thing is that it kind of stresses me more not talking or having control of the course for some reason, I guess I'm nervous for Rúnar this time. LOL Well, that's me in a nutshell, I always have to find something to stress over. I'll have to learn to calm down and enjoy! We´ll be using some of the same stuff but also changing a bit so that we can get more training in with the dogs and owners themselves. That way we know if they have understood the concept before the course is over and can help with any problems. We will be spreading it over a few weeks so gives people time to do homework as well and show us what they've done. It no doubt gives us feedback as well if we can see people working with their dogs on their own. Our other courses were weekend seminars with mostly show and tell and you really never know when people go home if they have actually understood what they heard or not. We know many just add the clicker to other methods and don't understand that their dogs shutting down, overly stressing or not offering behaviours is often a by-product of confusion and poisoned cues.

Our seminar really used to go into the science aspect which is what I am most interested in but for normal dog owners could be just a bit too much when all they want to do is learn how to train their dog with a clicker. We have always gotten very good comments about the courses we've held and people seemed happy but it can of course be quite tiring and overwhelming to take it all in in one or two very long days so we will be trying this new set up as we know most courses go over many weeks and people also seem to expect that which is fine. It is always exciting to witness aha moments in both dogs and owners so I'm looking forward to that! One owner has a St. Bernard so that is a first for us, I've had them in traditional training in the past but not clicker, can't wait to see how it goes. We are also expecting a puppy and I just LOVE to start them young although of course age doesn't matter. :-)

We are lucky enough to have a place to train this weekend and possibly next right around the corner from us but unfortunately we´ll have to try to find a new training place after that. Our rotten luck the place we will be training is being rented out at the end of the month after being empty now for the longest time, just typical! But one of the reasons we wanted to get started right away to utilize it while we can.

So that was the good news for the day and it means a busy weekend. I'll try to take some photos at least, that'll give me something to do. Hehe

Just realized it's a few days since I updated and well now I have to try to remember what's gone on. I am wondering if I should keep the news going as a "journal/blog" for my family and friends abroad or not since it seems there are quite a few other people who look at the website now as well especially since Rúnar will be using it as his site too and I get a bit "personal" at times. I know the drama gets a bit much if you just came to read about dogs. :-) I just thought people needed their daily helping of "Monika the soap opera" hehehe I'll try to tone it down but I will say that I am glad that I do get some comments because of my news that actually help me in respects to my own health etc. Some give me tips or suggestions and that is always nice to see that people care.

Anyway, we had a busy weekend maybe Rúnar more so than me but none the less. I stayed home when he went for the birthday party on Saturday and shortly after he called to tell me he was on his way home and was going to stop with Skella on the mountain for a run (he had taken her so I could rest a bit since I wasn't feeling good), he phoned to ask me the number to the emergency vet. JIKES! My heart jumped in my chest. I don't know if I should say "luckily she ONLY" had jumped out of the truck and caught her nail on the wire cage and a nail on her back foot just popped off from the root. Of course that is not good but my mind went to all different scenarios when he asked for the vets number so a nail was not such a bad thing. He said it didn't bleed much at all so he stopped on the way home at our friends house to see if she could help him and assess if he needed to go to the vets. Well, it wasn't as bad as he thought, no bleeding and she wasn't even limping BUT the quick is sticking out needless to say and that has happened once to Freyja except hers bled like crazy. We'll see how it progresses. Here's a photo of the nail.

Sunday we got up early and got ready to drive to Reykjavík for the obedience trial. When we got up on the mountain what met us but a blinding thick wall of fog. We ended up having to drive a snail's pace and then of course when the fog lifted on the other side there was a long train of cars because of the slow driving. I felt bad having to call when we got over the mountain and say I'd be late. We got there and Rúnar in his nice suit had to drop me off and then head off to his uncle's daughter's Christening. Seven dogs showed up and it was a bit colder than I expected as the hours went by it seemed to get colder but luckily I had taken an extra sweater with me instead of leaving it in the car.

It was a great group of people as always and I can honestly say that I was pleasantly surprised that one dog was SO outstanding that he actually got some 10's and 9.5's. I tend to give lower scores because I have a picture of the "perfect score" in my mind of what I like to see in terms of teamwork and how much the dogs enjoy what they are doing. That being said (without prejudice) it is a clicker trained dog and I can attest to the wonderful relationship I saw in the exercises between dog and owner and could clearly see they were working as a team and not the dog just working for the owner because he felt he had to. Not to mention the way they did the exercises was in most cases without errors. It was fun to watch and I really wish I had a video or photos but no such luck. I heard that this dog has been very sick the past few months, needed 3 different operations because of blockage in the intestines. So I knew this person was entered in some of the other trials but the dog was operated on and she couldn't make it and to see them together knowing how little training they must have gotten in it was even more impressive and inspiring. Beautiful work from a great team. Now to be fair I had the pleasure of actually giving higher scores than usual to most if not all the dogs in certain exercises and that was great to see so much progress over the weeks. Can't wait to judge the Club finals in about 2 weeks I believe it is, there all the dogs who qualified (by getting a score in every exercise, no 0's) will take part. It is going to be I've been told a nice day with all kinds of other goings on as well sponsored by the same people who sponsor the trials for Doberman Island, or Pro Pac in Iceland. Should be fun only problem is that Rúnar might have courses running at the same time so won't be able to be there. We´ll know soon I guess, he's waiting for the clients to let him know when they can start.

Here are a couple photos of the winners in the two different levels of obedience, you'll notice a couple of the same people.

One girl took a photo of Rúnar and I together when he came back to pick me up, we looked like the odd couple me in my dog gear and him in his nice Sunday suit with tie. A great day although I did murder my back as I usually do standing for any amount of time. I think it's safe to say that I can't stand for more than an hour or so without coming home like a cripple and I mean that literally. The pain is awful I have trouble standing up, bending down, getting in and out of the car. I really have to see what that's all about. Now you know why I've been training Klói to pick up stuff for me! Just thinking ahead. :-)

We stopped with a group of them on the way home and had something to eat and when we got home all the dogs were fine including Skella who I'd been a bit worried about with her foot. Monday was a strange day, Frigg woke up puking and with diarrhoea a couple times throughout the day, Hofi wouldn't eat anything all day, Skella started limping around off and on. Just a Monday I guess!

It's official, I don't like Rúnar's new job! :-( Ok, it is great to have the extra pay but he never knows from one day to the next if he'll be working later or not. That means I can't make doctor's appointments or anything. My doctor wanted me to see a nerve specialist and possibly go for an MRI and they are all in Reykjavík. He always takes the car so I'm at home without a car too and he isn't in a job that he can run out when he gets a phone call like he used to be able to do if something came up. He came home on Friday and told me they said they'd only be working until 4 all this week. I was so happy with that. Mostly because the dogs always get antsy and start running around the living room to the window looking for him about 3:30 they expect him home and every car that happens by excites them, that stresses Skella to bark like crazy. He'd made plans to hold the clicker courses starting next weekend and thought he'd use the evenings to get prepared then yesterday he comes home and says he has to work until 6 all week and they are talking about working on Saturday too. Grrrrrr There go all the plans and well so much for any ideas I had of going to a store or anything during the week since they close at or before 6. The evenings seem to go by much too fast when he works that late and nothing gets done with the homework or the dogs. I know I shouldn't complain he used to work even later before the recession BUT he did get off early on Fridays so we had time to go to stores and could always plan to use Friday as a day for appointments if neededand he knew well in advance if he'd have to work on weekends which they hardly ever did. Oh well, have to look at the bright side. He has a job, it's indoors so he's out of the wind and rain and cold and bills are being paid! Huh.

Still trying to figure out how to teach Skella to calm herself down once she gets started barking. I'm thinking of doing "sleepy" bio training like I did with Klói, teach her to slow down her breathing and get calm physically on the outside because it also makes it happen on the inside. Only trouble is I have no peace or quiet during the day to teach it to her since all the dogs want to be trained if they hear the clicker and our place is so small that I can't take her off somewhere on her own to train. I'll have to wait until Rúnar has some time to rid me of the other dogs so I can train her, it's a hard thing to train if there is stress around because you have to slow your own breathing and calm yourself while you train it.

First of all my thoughts are with the families of the victims of 9/11, 8 years already. I remember we had just come home from Norway a month or so earlier and come through Canada with a stopover in Boston. Remember how I thought we were blessed to have come home when we did those few weeks before. I was working at a pet store downtown Reykjavík and was feeding the hamsters when I heard the news on the radio. I thought it was a joke. It wasn't until I saw the news later that night that I realized it was true. Shocking!

So all the dogs are shedding like crazy, Frigg is pretty much out of coat but isn't getting it back in so I think it's probably the cancer. Klói is finished losing his undercoat and is growing it back now slowly but surely. But Birta and Skella are really leaving tumbleweeds around the house and I'm going over with the dust mop many times a day. I'll be so happy when they are finished. This is the only time of year we brush our dogs and then we try to get as much coat out as quickly as we can so the house isn't a total disaster for long. It looked like it had snowed when Rúnar was finished with Birta. The birds and mice often take the hair and use it in their nests so we leave some of it to blow away but of course the amount they lose we do collect most of it and throw out. I used to collect it to make into wool but with all the moving I did bags and bags of it got thrown away and I haven't really gotten around to starting a new collection.

Have had very strange feeling in my head, not quite headache but more like my head (or sections of skin) is asleep, like there is something wet running down my head and some pressure. I feel like I'm not really in my body somehow, get dizzy and feel faint off and on, felt really sick to my stomach with a strange tingling in my head as I was trying to get to sleep last night. So that along with the spasms I had not too long ago and the vision problems and some numbness in my face that has been bothering me for awhile I think I should go see a doctor but couldn't get an appt. until the end of Sept. and then just a phone appt. Rúnar assures me my face is fine but I feel like it's numb just around my mouth and cheek on the left side, it's been like that for bit already. I'm judging obedience on Sunday, we have to go to a birthday on Saturday, there is a christening on Sunday in the family as well. Not sure if I will get to all of them being I feel so awful. I'm thinking of going to the on call doctor today because Rúnar is coming home early. I feel like Klói laying by my head so often lately and putting his little head on mine means I should listen to him. I haven't been writing because I have been feeling so strange and have no patience, memory or concentration. Hope I can get back to the book soon though, I feel like I am starting to forget and to lose my focus and I don't want the second half of the book to be worse than the first half.

*Got back from the hospital and was lucky enough that it was my own family doctor that was on call, how funny is that. Can't get an appt. to see him but he just happens to be on call when I decide to give up and go see the on-call instead. :-) Well as usual he couldn't tell me anything, said maybe I have migraines since vision problems and the feeling like my head is wet are symptoms of that, I don't get headaches that much though. Oh well, what do I know about this stuff? He suggested I should see a nerve specialist since I haven't seen one for years, he said he didn't think there was anything major going on in my head or eyes since it's been two weeks since I had the spasms and the loss of vision for a few minutes. Humm, well how many times have I heard that there is nothing wrong? So I guess I'll just have to wait and see. He did however want me to keep my phone appointment with him and he wants to know how I've been between now and then (22 Sept.). So that's at least something. It's not as if I haven't had the spasms before just not as strong and didn't last as long. I'm convinced it's remnants of stress and I'll get back to normal if I get enough rest and stop stressing over stuff. I'm gonna leave the stress to Rúnar...ya right, as if I could do that?! Hehe

Had alot of enquiries the past couple days about clicker training so Rúnar is going to be busy! That is when he gets started teaching. As of tonight we have a bunch of people wanting a course as soon as possible and that will be fun, no doubt. He's hopefully going to be working shorter days for awhile, he's coming home early today and came a little bit earlier yesterday so we've been quite happy with that. :-)

Added a new video of Klói taking off Rúnar's sock. He's so determined in his job and doesn't give up easily and Rúnar thinks he's amazing. The sock is so tight that he was sure Klói wouldn't be able to get it off so when he succeeded with the first sock I said hang on I'm gonna take a video of him with the next one.

Gonna try and update again to see if it will go though without a lot of problems this time. Caught one of the cutes things on film the other day. Frigg fell asleep amidst the toys and I just had to share, she is so cute. My OLD girl Frigg.

Nothing much new I can think of, I've had a really bad back the past few days so I am hoping that will be better by the weekend. Birta did the funniest thing this morning to wake me up, she really had to go out and I was taking my time getting up. I'd been up earlier and let them all out so I thought she had done what she needed to do then. She had "forgotten" I guess. Hehe Now I know where Klói gets his brains from!!! She jumped up onto the bed ran to the light switch and turned it on and then off again then jumped back down and ran to the door. I got the point and let her out and it's a good thing I did because she really did have to go! It was just too amusing and funny that she would figure it out on her own, I've never taught her to turn on the light although Klói does, I guess she's seen him do it once or twice.

Weekend again and I´ve been having trouble updating again, the server always times out so I don't know what that is about. I usually have to keep trying until it will finally go through and I've been trying all day and all evening. No luck so far but I don't give up easily. Hehe If it doesn't work before I go to bed I'll try again tomorrow but I have a sneaky feeling that I have to remove a bunch of photos and old news from the page. I was told we have a huge amount of space available but I do post ALOT of photos and it just might be that we are getting to the limit. I'll have to research it a bit and ask Rúnar tomorrow, he has already gone to bed. I decided to split the news page down so April-July can be read by going to the link at the bottom of the page. Hopefully that will help both with uploading to the server and for those with dial up.

Rúnar was fixing the car today, it has been pretty much losing break power for a while now and not good to be driving it around without breaks! Since the parts he ordered finally arrived on Thursday the weekend is a great time to get it fixed. I didn't get to Reykjavík to watch the obedience trial but no skin off my nose it's better to have the car in good condition. As far as I know I'll be judging next weekend anyway so Rúnar talked to his client and they have postponed the lesson until next weekend as well.

Took Klói out to the field the other day and was trying to train him a bit walking loose at heel in a new environment. Unfortunately the photos are all blurry so I have none to share. I was trying a toy as a reward for the first time and I see that he is a bit too rambunctious for that so I have to work on calming him even when a toy is around but I'm fine using food rewards with him if that's better. My "maid" helped me with the washing and the bed again like he always does and I got a couple SECONDS on video but then he had to see what I was doing with the camera and well you'll see if you watch it. Goof ball ;-) Hófi and Frigg went to the field to run today and Skella went with Rúnar to fix the car. Runar said she was good and it was a bit relaxing to only have 4 dogs at home for a change. Hehe I'm hoping we get the day to relax together tomorrow and maybe Rúnar will be working less hours next week, we'll see.

I don't have a photo to share of a grandpuppy of mine out of Töfra Dofra Brosi named Hektorulven but I noticed on the NKK website that he became a Norwegian Champion at the last big NKK show. I did get one a while ago of Töfra Dalla Hektorsdóttir's daughter Greenstone Fire an Ice. WOW, I always said she reminded me of Frigg as a puppy but as she grows up she is more and more the carbon copy of her grandmother (I believe she's a linebreed to her). See for yourself, now picture Frigg a few years younger. :-) I really have to try and find some old photos of Frigg to share, I will say that I do like Fire an Ice's head a little bit better since Frigg has a flatter skull.

It's hard to keep up with all the grandpuppies and greatgrandpuppies that are doing well at shows all over the world, even great great grandpuppies now so I've really lost track over the years. However as promised here are a few photos of some great grandpuppies (Töfra Ljósálfur (little Hofi's uncle) is their grandfather)! Anyway, first we have a new Champion that lives in Canada bred by and owned by Greenstone kennels named Rudolph Valentino. He is a good looking boy! If I remember correctly he is 18 months here so he'll be quite handsome when he matures.

Then his litter sister Greenstone Blackmore Night who did really well at the shows a couple weeks ago, was BOB a few times and racked up some champion points for herself as well as she was the first ISD to place in group in 2009. She was shown by her owner so that is awesome. One photo of the two of them together. Very sweet faces with smiley expression. I can't help but think that Valentino reminds me of my first ISD male dog Snubbur (out of Hofi Sr) and a little bit like Klói too.

Lastly a couple photos of a grandpuppy (out of Töfra Hekla) Isrima Snædis who lives with Dawne Deeley on the other side of Canada. :-) I love her triangular head shape, beautiful almond eyes and dark red coat colouring. She is only about 5 1/2 months on the photos so quite a baby still but promising for sure.

I got a lovely photo of Ch Töfra Lagsi a little while ago, it is so nice to see him growing old gracefully with a little friend to keep him company. Strange how time flies he'll be 9 in January and was out of the litter that Frigg had in Norway. He only has a couple offspring in USA but already has some grandpuppies as well and I always like to watch how they all develop.

I found out that updating the website with photos uses alot of download time that of course we only have a limited amount per month then we have to pay extra so we ended up going way over our limit and I figured I better wait until the end of the month to update again. Hehe Used the phone and the internet way too much last month AND the month before. Anyway, we had a quiet Saturday if I can recall and then on Sunday we went to visit my brother David. I was supposed to judge an obedience trial but it was postponed until the middle of September because there was too much going on in the kennel club with a birthday celebration the night before etc. So lucky for us we just went to Reykjavík and Rúnar got his belated birthday present of a new cell phone that he didn't manage to get last time we went to town, and then we stopped at my brother's and it was so nice to see him. See him way to seldom, he's apparently been home with a bad back but is back to work this week. Didn't take any dogs with us since he has a cat now, it's a little guy who was born with a deformed leg (a missing knuckle or something in his front leg). Here's his photo, he's pretty cute but of course I don't get too close to cats because of my allergies. David has a neat thing in his house that cleans the air so I didn't feel the allergies so much, just a slight itchy hand so that is good.

There is an obedience trial at the HRFI next weekend and I wouldn't mind going to see some of it since Rúnar has to go into Reykjavík next weekend to give a clicker lesson. Too bad my dogs are not trained enough in the obedience trial exercises I would have loved to take part. We visited Brynhildur on our way home from Reykjavík on Sunday and got the book she had brought back with her, couldn't wait to look through it. It is AWESOME, the photos are just works of art and all the models as well. It's called Gone to the Dogs and is by her and Þorsteinn. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to see beautiful photos of dogs in nature. Oh, doesn't hurt that some of my dogs are in there as well. :-)

Speaking of grandpuppies I got some wonderful photos of little Snædis who lives with Dawne in Canada, she is just growing into a gorgeous little girl and being her grandfather is from the rare O line it's great to see that she is turning into a real looker as well as a genetic gem. I'll have to post a couple soon. Also a couple of great looking grandpuppies bred by Greenstone that I've gotten photos of lately who have kicked butt at shows over there. Lots of beautiful dogs I'll share when I get the chance.

Got a couple cute photos of Hofi on Saturday. The weather was awesome and I sat on the porch with Hofi and Frigg to get some much needed sun, they are both so quiet, love to be outside and follow me every step when allowed to but seldom get alone time with me without the other dogs getting all the attention. Rúnar was working on his clicker stuff in the other room so had the three others in there with him. Hofi is just such a little lady sometimes, I love the way she crosses her paws, she's always done that. :-)

Oh my goodness how typical I put ALL the dog toys in the wash on Friday and spent all evening after they were dry sewing up little holes in them, I hate to throw away good toys. They were nice and clean and DRY so what do you think Skella did? She climbed into the turtle pool with Klói's Skineez racoon and rolled around with it so both of them were totally soaked and dripping. It looked like road kill. :-) Then she'd shake it around to make sure it was really dead, she is so much different than the other dogs I tell you but funny to watch. It wasn't so funny to sit beside the turtle pool though suffice it to say it's good it was warm outside the shower was refreshing. Hofi found the racoon very strange like that and she grabbed it and ran into the house then dragged it around trying to dry it off. I don't know if you can see on the photo but my floor didn't need much of a cleaning after that. Gotta love dogs that help with the housework. :-)

Skella is totally blowing her coat these days and she is so hard to brush, she hates to stand still so I let Rúnar brush her. She would let him brush her for a little bit then "escape" run around in circles, jump up on him, bark, play bow and chase her tail then back up close enough so he'd grab her to brush some more. The loose hair is endless so needless to say it's going to be a bit hairy around the house for a while yet. I took a video of her being a goof.

Frigg is doing okay although she has had some stomach problems the last couple days and is sleeping very soundly, doesn't even get up to follow me around all the time like she always did. It does seem to remind me a bit of how Freyja was when her cancer started to spread. But to be fair all the dogs have been keeping me up all night for the past few days and one after the other will wake me about every hour to let them out with loose stools. Poor Klói tried to tell me the other morning just after Rúnar left that he needed to go out and I didn't listen I just thought he was antsy because Rúnar was gone and I knew I'd just let him out a couple hours earlier and he'd been out a few minutes earlier before Rúnar left. He even jumped up to the window, pulled back the curtains so I got the blinding sun in my eyes and then jumped down off the bed and ran to the door but couldn't hold it anymore. Needless to say I jumped up just as I figured out what he was about to do and opened the door and let him out but a little too late. The poor guy I could see he was a bit embarrassed, he has never messed in the house. I don't even remember him doing it as a puppy, that is what amazed me about him, I'd never had a puppy that was so clean in regards to that. Note to self: Klói doesn't go antsy like that for no reason.

I'm thinking that since Rúnar is going to be using the website in future for his clicker courses and has already put up a link to it that I better start adding a few things about our training for those who have already started peeking at the site. Just for fun. I know I love seeing photos of dogs doing stuff. :-) As far as I know Rúnar is intending to make a new link at the side for his own clicker page but it will be a while yet. I'll try to get him to put up a little bit about himself on the "about us" page too when he has the time. So much going on at work etc. He's got a private lesson starting next week already. Got a few photos of Klói removing my socks yesterday. He is just so enthusiastic when he gets to to a "chore" and he is really giving "sock pulling" his all. I'm thinking of trying a long sleeve shirt as well and see if he can do that to the same cue with an environmental cue of seeing the sleeve at the same time he gets the cue like he does with the sock. I'm so proud of him, he is such a sweetie. Of course some of my socks have holes in them but I just wear them around the house. You can't expect him to be perfect while he is learning the ropes but overall he is very careful and he has never bitten my toes so I'm happy. Started out with them just loosely around my toes and now I just have them totally on without any help for him, he really has to pull with some force at times especially with Rúnar's socks because they are often tighter. Funny photo, the first one. I hadn't given him the cue (to pull) so the cue of me showing him my foot alone means he is supposed to touch it. He did use the wrong foot to touch (left to left/right to right) but to be fair I was crossing my leg over so he thought I was giving him my left foot. GOOD BOY! Then I gave him the cue and you see how serious he is about following it through. ;-) Just a little bit of polishing to do, he does seem to wait for the cue to give it to me after he takes it off so if I don't give the cue he just throws it on the floor. My bad! I forget to give the cue soon enough.

As for the VCR he still insists on doing it off cue so he gets frustrated sometimes when I don't reward him. We're working on getting it under stimulus control (putting it on cue so he never does it without being asked) but there is a trick to it, sometimes he pushes it too hard and it closes and opens again on it's own and I don't reward him for that only when he pushes it soft enough that it closes completely. He is so happy when he pushes it "perfectly" and it closes from a totally open state and all he has to do it give it a simple push with his nose and stand there. Oh he did work it out on his own in the beginning that he needed to open with his paw (there is a magnet that holds it in place so he has to push it so it opens and then pull it with his paw right after) and he decided to use his nose to close it. He always comes up with pretty good solutions on his own when left to his devices. ;-) However he gets a bit depressed when he doesn't get rewarded for pushing it when he KNOWS he did! :-) Which in turn often makes him push it even harder so I have to work out in my own mind what would work better for him in terms of reward for the cue "close", any close, an inch, half way, close and spring open on it's own or just when it closes all the way. The chain is usually such that when he opens I give him the down cue while I put in a DVD and then I give him the close cue. I think Hofi wants to learn this trick, she feels a bit left out! She is starting to run to the door when I ask for the mail to get there before him and when he picks up the mail and starts running to me she will take it away from him to give it to me, he isn't happy with that. Hehe I usually reward the cooperation so that they won't have any issues with each other helping but of course by doing that I'm rewarding Hofi for misbehaving. Lalalala, oh it's just so cute!

Frigg is still eating well and seems quite normal except for the tumour to the touch we probably wouldn't know anything is wrong (oh and Klói's constant reminder sniff each morning when she wakes up). Unfortunately Klói seems to be getting a bit of a tummy ache or something, he doesn't have diarrhoea but he is needing to do his business quite often during the day and is having some trouble with a bit of loose stools and then as if he can't finish. He's been waking me up at night and then going often during the day with big mounds of poop. It is not normal for him so I don't know what he's eaten. He does chew on some dog toys and has been playing tug games with Hofi and Skella so could have swallowed something but it wouldn't be a big piece of anything because I keep an eagle eye on him in terms of chewing stuff. I checked his temp today and he is normal.

The same cue has been incorporated into a few other chores. He has an environmental cue of a black loop on the cupboard door to open. Frigg and Hofi love to watch what he is doing and I just know they all want to try it too but it's too hard to train more than one dog especially when I'm alone at home. Skella still has a problem of barking when she isn't the center of attention so I put her away in another room but her barking often bothers the dogs "in training" not to mention it's hard for me to concentrate when she is barking. Why didn't we take a dog with an easier problem to fix. Lalala I've been given advice to use bark collars and thank you all for your concern. It definitely is a problem that is nerve wracking. However there will be no such devices in this home, I tried those maybe 15-20 years ago when I was using other training methods and apart from them not working on anxiety barking they really are not something I want to have to resort to. I'm rewarding silence when it happens and waiting for Rúnar to have some extra time to do some barking training with her for me or to at least help me with her. There has been some improvement. Control unleashed and calming from the inside out worked on Birta so I'm counting on it working with Skella too, just need the time to invest in training.

I have to admit that I'm feeling much more grounded as my friend said I would, my feet are warm instead of cold as ice as they always have been, it's very strange. I feel a bit more able to do things around the house. The dizziness is much less than it was before and I am so happy that I went on the weekend. Now whether it's mind over matter or not at least my mind is working a bit better and that's all that matters. Hehehe Taking my supplements and trying to get myself back to writing, might take a little while I have to be in the mood to write or my mind is blank.

Klói was helping me with the laundry yesterday and I realized that I've made two mistakes in his training. The biggest mistake was I didn't practice the end behaviour well enough so it's not strong, he doesn't put the clothes in the basket all the time so I have to go back to the beginning and train that better before he gets to help me again. The second mistake I made was I have rewarded him (most the time by letting him continue to work) for jumping in and working from the inside of the dryer. It was just too cute when he accidently did it once and I got it on video, we laughed and laughed but oops I should have just ignored it right at the start. He appears to be quite proud of himself when he helps out and is extra happy with himself when he's INSIDE the dryer. Such a goof. He does the job but it takes longer than it would take for me to just do it on my own but the joy of watching him do something he likes is so much better. :-)

What else is new? I heard from my mom that David's mother died about a week ago, she saw it in the paper. I only met her a couple times but she seemed like a nice lady and she has a great son that I love as if he was a blood brother. I'll have to try to visit him next time we go into town. Sunday I'm supposed to be judging the obedience trial but that will mean a very long day away from the dogs. We´ll see how it goes. David is often working out in the countryside and it's hard to catch him at home anyway. I have to be thankful that my parents are still around and I wish I could visit them more often while they are. When people close to you lose their loved ones it makes you think about the positive things you have in your life and at least I get to talk to my mom on the phone regularly. I wish I heard from my sister more, I really miss her.

Rúnar is liking his new job, no doubt it's easier for him physically but he is working 10 hour days now. Don't know about next week but he might have to work on Saturday as well hopefully only until lunchtime though. :-) It will all help. There is so much going on here in terms of the economy still and it is unbelievable how many people have moved abroad. Speaking of abroad my friend Brynhildur was visiting Nova Scotia and took a whole slew of photos. Wow, what an awesome looking place, I have to admit I'd never seen photos of Nova Scotia before.

I have to mention and wish the owners Congratulations on my GSP grandpuppy Zetu Krapi (out of Töfra Duck out of Luck Nero) who was the BOB and 2nd in Group last weekend. Just heard about that a couple days ago. I'm happy to say that this particular dog also has prizes at field trials. True to myself when I mention shows I can't help but see the negative as well, will I ever change. Hehe (Hope not!) I will add a link to an interesting article I was sent about how dog shows have ruined terrier breeds and other working dogs. The photos of the skulls are shocking. At the same time I will say that SO FAR the GSP is in pretty good shape as a dual breed (show/field) in Iceland. Sadly the IKC/FCI has added a new title that allows for show champions that don't have to have prizes in working tests no matter what breed. The breeders here are quite convinced we should keep the working ability in the German Pointer so I'm hoping that doesn't change although I have seen some moving away from the open friendly temperament for the good looks.

The first vaccines for the Swine flu arrive in September. No way I'd get it though, I never go for flu shots most people I know who go for the shots actually get sicker than they would have with the flu! It still bothers me that the country would spend so much money on drugs that are not proven to help given the financial problems the country is having at the moment. Just under 700 Icelanders have already had (been diagnosed with) the Swine flu so it is spreading like wild fire of that there is no doubt but knock on wood no deaths in Iceland. They have stopped testing everyone who shows the signs so the info is most likely not correct anymore. It's such a funny place Iceland you know, one of the biggest stories at the moment is a video going around showing one of the Politicians drunk while speaking in Parliament a couple days ago. Totally don't believe it's acceptable but you have to chuckle at the fact that it made the news when there are more serious things going on like the actual matter he was arguing (Icesave) and the amount of people leaving the country especially well educated people (the rest of us can't afford to leave... :( ) like doctors and nurses. Even more cut backs in healthcare on the agenda as if we needed that! They don't even know how the biggest hospital in the country will work out, they can't afford to cut back anymore than they already have. You'd think they would want to try to keep as many people in Iceland as they can to build the country again and take better care of those who actually are stuck here. It's scary when you don't know if you will be cared for if you get sick.

I've been training the dogs a bit and I can see that if she was in the right hands Skella could no doubt be an awesome obedience competition dog. I really should capture her lie down on video and post it. I was so pleasantly surprised at how she used SPEED right from the start. I've just been working on clicking her for it and decided to add a cue so I'm going to keep the speed if I can. She is a bit intense and in an obedience dog that can be a good thing, but of course for a couch potato it's a bit much! Hence the barking from being bored. LOL Too bad I'm not up to competing anymore. I'm trying to get Rúnar interested in it but we´ll see, he is a bit of a shy guy ;-)

There is a huge celebration at the IKC (HRFI) tonight with all kinds of things including obedience, freestyle, dogs pulling a car and lots of other stuff. My friend Stefanía is holding a speech about the history of the Icelandic sheepdog. I would have liked to see that. Unfortunately since Rúnar gets home so late we won't be able to go because the evening is over before it starts. I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing some photos from it. We had a free ticket to get professional photos of a dog taken because our dogs are insured at the company that gave the free photo session. I so wanted to go and use that maybe with Birta, Klói or Hófi because such photo sessions are expensive and it would have been nice to have a nice photo taken but we can't have everything. It's too bad the IKC didn't have the celebration on the weekend so that more people could actually come, there are so many members that live out in the countryside and have to travel to take part. Oh well, not the first time they have bad timing for events.

Oh well, no sooner I was feeling better and now I've let Skella get on my nerves again with her barking. She is going nuts again like usual and getting the others going...she was so calm and good yesterday and earlier this morning. I guess the drops are not working that she got or maybe they are not the right ones to fix the barking. I don't want to let the negative in to take over again but it is sneaking in and I'm getting a headache. I was going to write a whole great explanation of the appointment I was at yesterday because I had felt so much better last night and this morning. I was in awe of how good I felt afterwards, the dizziness and ringing of my ears had stopped that I've had for many years (10 years probably) and I found myself thinking so much clearer and wanting to avoid the negative feelings but now with the barking I'm back to square one of my nerves and I'm back in a bad mood. I hope Rúnar comes home soon so they stop barking at every little thing they hear or see out the window. The car is out front (he got a ride with his brother-in-law today) and they seem to think that means he is home! They know he should be home by now and they always get antsy around the time they expect him. Rúnar still isn't home and it's almost 6:30 p.m, he is supposed to be finished at 4 p.m. He did talk about the fact that there was a possibility they would be working later some of the time and today it's until 6, his very first day and already working late. Oh hopefully it won't overtime all the time! Yes, it means more money but I like having time together. I'll be curious to hear how his day went, must be strange to be working in a factory after working creatively with his hands in carpentry. No doubt he will be exhausted from all the stress of starting a new job so I guess I should start supper so he can go to bed early too.

My great grandpuppy Arnarstada Rektor won best of breed both days on the weekend and was 3rd Best in Show and then 2nd Best in Show. He's Klói's half brother but out of a mating that is no longer registerable in the IKC, a father daughter mating. So it seems he has taken over for his late father Hektor in the show ring, he wins almost every show he is at. He is a 3 way linebreed to Töfra Stjarna so I'm a bit proud although I'm not a big fan of inbreeding. So far no photos or info about how everyone else did and who was there. No doubt it will soon be assessable on the DIF website. I was quite surprised at how little I missed not being there, this is the second show in a row that I have not worked and I will admit I like not having to stress myself. I will admit that a small part of me thinks it would have been nice to take part just because it's the 40th anniversary but such is life and I feel my interests changing so much away from the show venue.

Very strange thing happened, the night before last I was trying to get to sleep and all of a sudden (my mind always goes a mile a minute while I try to fall asleep) I thought about a woman I used to know who breeds Icelandic sheepdogs. I haven't seen or heard from her for so many years and I remember her having the same ideas of saving bloodlines back then as I have today. I remember she was always trying to get people to listen to the importance of preservation of lines but no one would listen (including me at the time...although I remember not being totally against her ideas and opinions, just at the time I was more intent on breeding show dogs like everyone else). The thought entered my mind while I lay in bed that I wonder what she is doing these days and how she is. She doesn't live that far from us actually, I guess an hour or something like that. Well, as usually happens with me I have some kind of ability to predict things I woke up yesterday to the phone ringing. I didn't recognize the number but when I answered who is it but the woman I had thought of before I went to bed. I told her I'd thought about her the day before and she said how strange is that I just thought I should call you because you might be able to help me with some info about dogs and I got your number from a mutual friend.

We started talking and talking like old friends do and got lost in conversations. She is a spiritual woman and she heard my story of Klói's special abilities and me "thinking of her before her call" and she believes there are some special abilities at work in our little family with both me and the dogs. Perhaps I'm just too emotionally sensitive and the dogs mirror me, well I've thought that for years. She has a business called "The Peace Center" and produces the organic milk we buy (I didn't know that) as well as has been practicing different natural cures for 14 years. I didn't know that but always found her a very interesting woman. Long story short...I talked to her about Skella and her problem with barking and anxiety (yes she is mirroring me quite a bit I guess I'm not the best owner for her!), her dogs are behind Skella's line and she did recognize the problem from some of the relatives but feels that if she had known what she knows now back then maybe the dogs would have not had the same problems. I do know that some ISD's are extremely sensitive to their owners and they are often misunderstood by those who want to have total control and use harsher methods. Many have been put to sleep through the years because the owners give up on them. Klói for example in different hands might not show the sensitivity for sniffing out infections and disease he shows here because the "behaviour" might be stifled by the owner.

Since she has been using flower essences and uses some special massage therapy on animals (I'm not sure if it's TTouch but something similar) she said she might be able to take a look at her for me. As we talked she did say that she would actually rather take at look at me and Skella together. She is a Reiki healer and also knows some techniques from the American Indians (not sure what that is exactly but I'm curious to find out), she reads the irises as well as aromatherapy and other methods. I told her a bit about myself and she asked me if I had MS (I've often wondered that myself). I did mention that so far no diagnosis because the doctors always say the same thing, it's all in my mind although I try to get them to dig deeper they never send me for any tests. I refuse to take drugs or medications so I guess they don't want to waste their time on me as a patient! So after trying almost everything including hypnosis during the years to try to figure out what's wrong with me and get some relief from the continuous dizziness, head and hand shaking, backaches, headaches, vision problems and anxiety I made an appointment with this friend for a Reiki session tomorrow.

If it helps it will be well worth the money spent as it is just around the same as it would have cost to take a dog to the shows on the weekend. How funny is that the person I "summoned" can actually possibly help me and I decided a while back NOT to go to the show this weekend. It's as if I knew I would be doing something more important. Obviously there is a reason for everything and now I think Skella ended up in our home so that I might find a way to deal with my own health problems through her. I'm a bit nervous about it but at the same time I've wanted to try it for awhile. My shoulders and neck are so swollen at the moment so I'm sure it won't hurt to get a bit of a massage at least.

Oddly enough after talking to me she is now also interested in seeing Klói and possibly using him as stud on a bitch she recently took herself as the owners were leaving the country and needed to find a new home for her. We are not sure yet if we'll do it but it sounds ok on paper in terms of bloodlines. The bitch still has to have some tests done but it would be neat to see some puppies from him since it didn't work with Skella this time.

Don't know much about the show today, from what I understand grandpuppies and greatgrandpuppies won as usual. Today Sigríður was judging. The male was 3 Best in Show from what I heard but no doubt all the placings will be posted on the DIF website after the show tomorrow. Guðrún is judging tomorrow so it will be interesting to see if the same dogs place or not.

I've been training Klói a bit the past few days, he's learning to hold a metal dumbbell and from there we will do retrieve training. We have never really done the real retrieve as used in obedience. He will look for, pick up and bring me things when asked (socks, the mail, things I drop) but we don't have the polished obedience behaviour with a dumbbell, sit in front, hold and only release when asked etc and I decided to work on it and put a cue on it for future. He's also been continuing his removing my socks job, he is now pulling for dear life when my socks are completely on instead of loosely on my toes and foot as they were when I started training it. He takes them completely off and then gives them to me. He is up to occasional two for's (has to remove both before a click/treat). What else has he been doing lately? Humm, I know there is more. Oh of course I have been practicing a perfect sit, not crooked, at heel and his dancing moves between my legs, backwards, sideways and touch my fingers from a distance with distraction. He loves to work. I'm hoping to take his heel on the road soon and practice in a parking lot or something.

It's already Thursday again, wow. I can't help but wonder why time flies now and when I was at home for a month alone it seemed to totally stand still. Rúnar got an offer for a new job at the water bottling factory Icelandic Glacial where his brother-in-law works. Since there has been so little work at his carpentry job he has been a bit scared that they would have no work to do soon and be laid off so he decided to take the new job. He told his boss yesterday that he will be leaving. He said his boss seemed a little bit relieved because they have had trouble finding things to do. I could tell Rúnar was a little bit sad to leave the job he's been at for a few years and his boss has been so good in terms of doing all he could to keep his workers in a job, they had shortened the hours a long time ago but he kept them on when most companies were firing people left right and center. He always could get time off when he's needed it and he's got wonderful xmas gifts from them even when the economy crashed they took good care of their workers. But at the same time he is a bit excited that he will be indoors during the winter now instead of working in the sleet, snow and cold. His pay is slightly higher too so that will help with the bills, the hours are about the same and his brother-in-law works there too so they can drive together to work so should save a bit on gas too.

It is unbelievable how expensive it is to buy groceries these days, there have been articles in Scandinavian newspapers lately about how so many people have left Iceland and they liken it to escaping from a sinking ship. Well, I can certainly see that as a good description. On the news yesterday they talked about the fact that food prices have on average gone up 40-50% since the beginning of the year. On many things as high as 160% rise in prices. We wondered why each time we went to the store to buy one or two items we ended up having to pay as much as a week's groceries used to cost! Speaking of money and economy the Icelandic national TV station finally aired the movie Zeitgeist Addendum last night. They had it on so late that most people had gone to bed including Rúnar and he wanted to see it, but at least they showed it. I along with a bunch of other people had signed a petition a while ago to get them to show it and we finally got our wish. It's too bad the government officials in Iceland didn't see it before they went and gave Iceland to the IMF (International Monetary Fund), there were many who warned them and even one of the commentators in the movie (he used to work for the IMF) had come here to hold a seminar but people are just so stuck on the status quo and scared to make independent decisions. I would love to be able to have a totally self sufficient house with solar, wind and geothermal power but of course while the world uses money that will not be possible, too expensive. I think the rich are the only ones who can be self sufficient in the state of the world at the moment, so sad. Anyway, I'm happy that we use geothermal power anyway but as feared a foreign company has already bought shares into the company that sells us personally our hot water and energy. It's a Canadian company called Magma and they bought their shares in a real round about way through a daughter company in Sweden or something because our laws state that only Icelandic companies can own Icelandic natural resources (there is a clause about countries which are in the EES though) so now our Energy supplier is not an Icelandic company anymore. And so the same stupid games with money start again, debts, debts debts. Iceland has lost part of it's natural resources and I'm sure it's just a matter of time until the country will be totally foreign owned. They could have used Iceland as a model for the "new world" with geothermal energy, they could have changed all our cars to electric, they could have totally organic crops and livestock, wind power could be very collectable in Iceland with our extreme conditions, just need the technology and with all the educated people Iceland has there is no doubt in my mind that Iceland could have been a great place to live and a good model for a cleaner future. Too bad Icelanders like everyone else are materialistic and greedy for money.

On to a more positive note. We´re working on a new clicker course and look forward to being able to start fresh with new ideas for a weekly course instead of the weekend seminars we have held before. No doubt we will still hold seminars if people want to learn alot in a very short time. Rúnar will be working a bit more than he used to for the first little while I think at least that's what he was told and he will start on Monday so no doubt he´ll need a little time to adjust to the new job before we do too much in the training part. We will have weekends and evenings though so we'll see.

Gosh missed updating for a couple important happenings. Happy Birthday Rúnar! (14th), thought I'd spend time with him instead of at the computer. :-) And Happy Birthday Donna! (16th). We've been eating gluten free chocolate cake all weekend, finally it's finished. Hehe Really wish we could have been in Canada to give Donna a birthday hug but our thoughts were with her today.

Yesterday we went for a nice walk on the beach with the dogs but the weather was far from nice. Cold, rainy and we came home all soaked feeling like it was already winter. As usual the dogs were thankful for the time they got to run and didn't care what the weather was like. Today was a little bit better and we sat out on the porch for a few minutes off and on in a short sleeved shirt for one of the few times this summer. The dogs played in the turtle pool, mostly Skella as Rúnar decided to catch a fun behaviour of hers and put it on cue. I took a video of them playing. Here is a link to Skella blowing bubbles.

A bunch of photos from yesterday I put a few here and the rest on the photos page for those who don't have a hard time with download. Klói ran out chasing the waves and didn't turn back as a big one was about to hit. Rúnar called him and he turned just in time for the wave to wash him onto shore. All we could see was his little head bobbing and I was so relieved when I saw him shaking himself off and running around as if nothing happened. I don't think any of us realized how powerful the wind was and how big the waves were. But he shook himself off and starting playing with the others out in the shallow water again.

Here´s Klói playing with mom, then running out full speed into the waves and standing up after the wave washed him back and left him all soaked. Poor little drowned rat. He shook off and I took a photo of him all nice and puffy and dry. I think he looks awesome here and you wouldn't be able to tell he was just soaked to the bone a few minutes earlier. They are all so out of coat at the moment and especially Klói he really doesn't have much undercoat left but he seemed to dry off pretty quickly none the less.

Rúnar headed for a big hill that was alot steeper than it looked, he looks like the pied piper with all the dogs following him. They really had to try hard to get all the way up and I tried to call Frigg to come with me instead. I walked around it and was huffing and puffing away. She wanted to do it just like everybody else but I thought it was too much for her (more about why in a second).

We walked around the other side and she got to climb up there, it was steep too but not as bad and she was so happy when she got to the top. I had to have Rúnar pull me up.

I tried many times to get a photo of Hófi and well let's just say that she was having too much fun to stay still long enough! Hehe

I will admit that this time we DID rinse them off when we got home because they had been in the ocean so didn't want them getting itchy from the salt and sand. And well, like mother like son...Klói and Birta just had a great time with the garden hose. Others had to be persuaded to be be rinsed off and were much more happy to be in the turtle pool. The pool was one big sand pit on the bottom when they were done!

I heard that a breeder I knew in Norway passed away in June, she had the kennel name Slettvola's and used to own Frigg's brother Úlfur. Always sad to get news like that but I'm happy to say that Úlfur had found a new home many years ago so I know he is still part of a loving family. You often wonder what happens to breeder's dogs when they pass away, especially people who have been on their own and have alot of dogs.

I talked to my Mom last night and she is doing fine. A couple of Rúnar's family have the swine flu (so many people in Reykjavík have it) so we are trying to avoid it. I´m just glad they didn't have it yet when Rúnar came home since it was his brother who picked him up at the airport. It seems his grandparents are not getting it even though they live in the same house because the doctor said that most elderly people have already had it when it was around the first time. Knew it was just a matter of time until someone closer to us got it. We have heard of many people in the dog community with it and so like I say I´m pretty much keeping to myself as best I can. Of course Rúnar has to work so he might catch it and bring it home but I really hope not. Many say it's better to get it now while it's mild, I don't know I'm just scared of everything like that because you never know how the body will react, might be mild to everyone else. A few days ago they did say it has reached epidemic levels no doubt because of the big celebrations on the long weekend, where people were drinking and camping in record numbers. Many people went even though they were sick and should have stayed home. Of course most people just want to believe it's the regular flu they have and luckily so far from those I've heard from it's not very bad. Rúnar and I have both had some headaches over the past few days and feeling a bit stiff in the joints I'm wondering if it is something to do with the flu but I'm sure we would have more symptoms if it were. They have said they are not closing down any public gatherings or schools as of yet. However the first school in Iceland to have it diagnosed in was announced on the news tonight. A soccer game was postponed on the weekend due to one of the teams having I think it was 11 players sick, a couple had been diagnosed with the swine flu so they were granted permission from the soccer association to postpone this final until the players are better. I doubt a simple swine flu would ever be enough to close down a dog show (yes I'm being a bit sarcastic) so that's next weekend. They postponed the obedience trial I was supposed to judge last Saturday due to a mental test being held the same day so it will be on the 30th instead. I guess I'll be going into the lion's den then most the people will have been at the show the weekend before and I know a couple people who compete in obedience who have the swine flu at the moment (it takes a few weeks to run it's course doesn't it). I have to admit I was glad to be able to stay home with Rúnar and go for a walk instead, cook him a couple nice meals and eat cake all weekend. It feels like weekends always go way too fast!

We had a few other "surprises" this weekend. We have thought for awhile that Klói was just being a bit of a nuisance to Frigg because he's bored. We were sure he was just telling us about Frigg's teeth (which we already know about) and the spot on her back where she has the little fat pimple that has gotten infected before. We´ve checked the spot regularly and haven't seen anything wrong with it. He will lick and lick and sniff the spot with so much enthusiasm that Frigg gets upset and tries to get rid of him. I usually just try and get his attention away from her so he'll stop bothering her but I caught him sniffing and licking a different spot on Friday. I watched him for awhile and decided to check the EXACT spot he was sniffing and low and behold I found a big soft lump right behind Frigg's right front leg on her chest. So I showed it to Rúnar and he agrees it reminds us of Freyja's tumour and I'm sad to say it seems to have grown very fast since I haven't felt it before. I stroke Frigg daily when she is near me and she always sleeps right beside me and haven't felt it until now. Klói also decided that spot needed alot more licking lately so no doubt it is growing and he knows it. We won't be doing surgery so she will be given as full a life as we can give her until we see any signs of her having discomfort or pain. I don't want to think about it and will hope beyond hope that Klói is wrong this time! He does also let us know of infections or just things out of the ordinary in general like the time he warned me before a small vein in my foot popped. He never ceases to amaze me at his ability. He found a little spot on Rúnar's finger on Friday that he thought needed some attention. Rúnar had apparently gotten a small glass splinter in his finger and hadn't managed to get it out until a day or two later and Klói found the spot and started licking it, mind you Rúnar had removed the splinter a earlier that evening but Klói found the "hole" that the splinter had left, a tiny minute little hole. I told my Mom when I was talking to her that I wished I lived in a different country where I could actually get him a "job" sniffing out cancer or other therapy work.

I keep forgetting things and I'll have to say I'm sorry if I forget to answer emails from some of you, no doubt I also forget to talk about things here that many feel that I should mention. I'm terrible at keeping track of stuff, I might read the emails and then forget I read them, they get lost in the inboxes and I totally don't remember I had yet to answer them. At times I remember them quite a while later when I'm cleaning out the inbox but sometimes so much time is passed that I feel a bit embarrassed to send a reply. I will say that if you think I've forgotten you then please send another email. There have been a few dogs shows lately where our grandpuppies or great grandpuppies have been doing well. A couple in Canada, a couple in Norway and I wish all their owners Congratulations if I've forgotten to mention anyone by name. I'm taking my vitamins when I remember them :-) so hopefully the forgetfulness is somehow related to the vitamin deficiency. Hehe

The GSP grandpuppies have all found great new homes so we managed to fight off the urge to take the gorgeous little puppy. Thank goodness for that.

Well, the update worked but it took quite a while and I ended up staying up until around 4. I just kept trying until it worked.

However quite a dramatic night to say the least. I lay down in bed with a very stiff neck and feeling sick to my stomach, I've been like that a couple days now. Then I got chills so bad I felt like I was freezing and Rúnar was sweating it was so warm in the bedroom because he forgot to open the window before he went to bed. As I lay there and tried to sleep I started shaking, just slightly at first and then it got worse and worse until I was shaking violently. It's scary when your whole body has a mind of it's own and you can't control your movements. I ended up waking Rúnar up I was sure he'd have to call an ambulance I felt like I was having some kind of seizure it was so bad. I was SO cold but Rúnar said I wasn't cold to the touch, I guess I should have taken my temperature but was too busy worrying to bother. I have had slight shaking incidents before but this was not stopping for some reason even though he tried to comfort me and calm me down which usually works. He got up and came back with a calcium/magnesium chew tablet for me, I take those if I get let cramps. I think he just thought it can't hurt, he said he thought it was a calcium deficiency. Klói jumped up into the bed came straight over to me and lay with his little head on my chest and sprawled over me so I had no choice but to pet him and calm down. I could feel his little heartbeat and it was so comforting. He always knows what to do, when I have a headache he will lay with his head on my head, a toothache he puts his little nose on my cheek. Smart boy. I think he knew I was having a bit of trouble breathing and I'm sure that was just anxiety causing that. I ate the tablet and petted Klói and low and behold it stopped. Horrible night and I was so scared. Poor Rúnar didn't get much sleep so I hope he is okay at work today. I called the emergency today and spoke to someone and they thought the same, most likely a calcium deficiency, me with my gluten intolerance and then not eating well enough on top of that. I told her I'd missed a bit of weight and when she asked how much and what I weighed she said that I was borderline danger zone so I'm glad Rúnar has fattened me up a bit the last little while. Hehe Now I have to take some supplements and try to make sure I eat enough during the day.

This morning I got up feeling quite heavy on my feet and I went to the bathroom and came back into the bedroom to lie down and I noticed Frigg was totally motionless on the bed beside my pillow in a strange sleeping position with head hanging. I tried to call her but didn't think she was breathing so I called Rúnar to try to wake her and thank goodness she was just in a very deep sleep so no doubt I kept her awake too. She's not a young chicken anymore so she sleeps deeper than she used to and with her bad hearing she didn't hear me trying to wake her. Rúnar had to physically touch her and shake her a bit. What a night!!! Just thought I'd share the DRAMA for those who don't get enough in their lives. hehe

Awesome weather today, I´m inside waiting until Rúnar gets home. I don't have a fever but I have a higher temp than I usually have so I'm just being a little cautious, I was silly enough to be outside with a wet and cold head yesterday. We´ll have BBQ chicken tonight, yumm. :-)

I've been having a lot of trouble with the computer in terms of updating, for some reason the server keeps timing out so I've not been able to put in news for a few days. I'm gonna try again and have the news I've written during those days below as well so feel free to scroll down. I did a little rant as usual with a link to a study. ;-) Nothing personal just my opinions as always. Today wasn't an eventful day for me or the dogs but Rúnar went to work this morning, came home mowed the lawn and we took a bunch of stuff, grass clippings etc to the dump together. The dogs were NOT happy that he wasn't at home, they were busy looking for him all day. I'm thinking tomorrow I should sit in the other room if I write since that way they won't be barking at the guys working at the neighbour´s house. The neighbour right across the road from us is looking after a beagle (she has a dog our dogs know already) who barks and howls quite a bit so they feel they have to answer him every now and again. On the other hand maybe I should take a total break from the computer tomorrow since I really am dealing with bad pain in my neck and back, my head gets stuck and I can't turn it without lots of pain. We thought the walk yesterday might help my back and I guess it helped a little to get some exercise, it really can never hurt to exercise I guess. I woke up with a sore throat and really stiff neck and lower back today but that's nothing new. The doctors are always the same, the one I talked to on the phone this morning couldn't help so I just have to grin and bear it. My doctor is on holidays and won't be back until September he always seems to be on holidays when I need to talk to him, huh I wonder if he's avoiding me. Hehe I have to be in good shape on Saturday to judge the obedience trial, it's a whole day standing outside which is really hard for me and it's already getting quite cold. I really hope it doesn't rain buckets like last time!

Since I've been talking about my pet peeve of grooming and washing of the coat of the Icelandic sheepdog on a chat list lately I thought I'd take a before and after photo to share here. Why is it a pet peeve? Now feel free to believe it or not. For those who don't know the ISD it is supposed to be bred with a self-cleaning coat that repels dirt and if left alone they retain that ability, NEVER smell doggy and never feel greasy even when soaking wet. Some speak of how their dogs get tangles etc and I wonder if it's due to continued bathing and grooming for show or through bad breeding and so I like to have mine natural to at least get an idea of what they will pass on to their offspring. I never bathed or groomed my multi champions for shows and I never will, if it costs me wins in future so be it I'm not going to fall into the trap of changing the breed to acquire ribbons that get put in a box in the attic or thrown away. I don't own the breed even though I may stamp my kennel name on some of them, I'm just a caretaker for future generations! No doubt you've all heard me talk about grooming and show dogs before and are saying "oh brother here she goes AGAIN" hehehe I promise I'm done now just wanted to post the photos for fun. Nothing personal, to each his own but my opinions are strong and I care so much about the breed that I have a tendency to be passionate about my beliefs and opinions. Just me, get used to it...hehehe ;-)

I heard an awesome comment the other day from a friend who owns a grandpuppy of mine and I asked if I could quote her. She does say she has yet to get to know the ISD coat better since hers is so young but she will be keeping it natural like ALL her dogs. She breeds similar breeds, the Icelandic's cousins the Norwegian Buhund and Carelian Bear dog and has over 100 BIS placements with her dogs (combined wins including Drevers (hunting dogs)) with "natrual" dogs. So in the words of Dawne Deeley; "If a product doesn't help them hunt/herd/guard better, it doesn't belong in the ring either." Another one that is just great that she uses to describe the Buhund that could SO describe the ISD as well. "They are perfectly honest little dogs - not parade floats!"

The first photo is taken before Skella got in the car after rolling around in the mud and the creek (she always does that, there is no stopping her from rolling in stuff!) then a photo taken a couple hours later at home. NO bathing no rinsing even, we just left her totally alone to try to get a photo of the difference for proof. She just fell asleep after we got home and woke up again clean...we won't talk about the pile of sand on the floor beside her but it was easy to sweep up. Then she got to sleep up on our bed as always, no smell, no dirt just a nice soft white coat. Too bad the lighting is a bit different in the photos but hopefully the dirt is obvious as well as the clean white coat.

I was going to update yesterday but the computer has been acting up so I'm putting this out there now instead if it works. We took all the dogs on a great long walk today. Rúnar was just awesome today again, we had half decent weather so BBQ lamb chops with baked potatoes and he even made a gluten free carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Yummy. :-)

We went on a mountain hike with all the dogs and they had a great time pretending to be mountain goats, eating crow berries and wild flowers. Frigg was so happy as always and she climbed to the top of the mountain along with Rúnar and the others. She kept looking down at me (I sat down half way up and rested) but kept on going, almost falling down a few times it was so steep and the rocks would roll out underneath her but she still has great balance it would seem. I was proud of her and then when she got back down she took a little rest and then away we went all the way to the car. I put some photos on the photos page and here are a couple of the best ones. I tell you these dogs are mountain goats in dog's clothing.

Klói found a cool place to play hide and seek. Happy boy! Then the two mountain goats decided to peek over the edge at Birta. Frigg was busy eating crow berries.

Speaking of crows, there is one on the top of the mountain watching us (just right of the middle on the top of the ridge), big boy. It was hilarious when Skella started barking she heard her own echo and they were looking all over for the other dog. :-)

They found some water after crossing a section of mountain the two of us couldn't cross, really steep. The creek was almost empty because it's been quite dry all of July.

There were crow berries already and a few wild blueberries, maybe we should take another walk before the season is over and actually pick some. I didn't bother today, usually I collect some in a bag but not today, forgot to bring a bag with me. It's on walks like these that I can't help but love living in Iceland and I can appreciate how gentle yet strong our nature is. No nasty wild animals (the occasional mink or fox but we haven't met any on our walks, no doubt they'd run off), no snakes, hardly any bugs, no mosquitoes hardly any ticks or fleas. I think they have mostly been observed in imported dogs otherwise we never hear of them and have never found any on our dogs all these years in Iceland. Yes we are missing alot of great things like sunshine, heat, trees, fruit trees and bushes and I do from time to time wish I lived somewhere else where there is no wind but with this harsh weather and barren landscape comes the ability to let the dogs run in nature without restrictions. It means that they can be out in all kinds of weather, it rarely if ever gets too hot for them to be in a car (I say rarely but we had a couple warmer days in July). Mother nature shows her strength but makes you feel so alive if you let yourself enjoy the power of it and what it brings with it in terms of clean fresh air, free open spaces and clean non poisonous vegetation and spring water that is perfectly safe to drink. We heard on the news tonight that hey are now starting a study to see if some of the special mountain grasses Iceland produces can be used to make cancer drugs and drugs to help Alzheimer's sufferers. They already use many grasses and moss for health products and creams. The dogs always have a nibble on vegetation on walks I wonder if they know something about it that we don't.

This photo is awesome, it's not hard to see that Freyja is still with us and always will be as long as Klói is around! He just naturally plopped himself down in a photogenic pose on the hill while the others were sniffing around in the mud below him.

It has been a long time since they got to run so much and lots of up and down climbing so when we got home they all fell fast asleep. Someone had a real smile of contentment on their face when he curled up by Rúnar in the sofa. Hehehe

Now it's about time to get off to bed since Rúnar has to work in the morning and I know the dogs will not let me get back to sleep when he leaves and I'm expecting a phone call from my doctor quite early too.

Just had to add a couple photos of Klói being CUTE today. Rúnar decided to try on the bandana he received as a gift from Karen Pryor and Klói was the first "gineau pig". It seems he didn't mind it at all and looked so handsome with it and he KNEW it! Hehe

Got to see Beggi on Friday, it's been quite a while since I've seen him. He's in Iceland just for the weekend and then goes back to Norway. He's judging a field trial for the German Shorthaired Pointer club with a few different breeds taking part. There was a record of entries so that is great for him that so many wanted to be judged by him it must make him feel appreciated. We took Frigg and Hofi with us so he could say hello to Frigg and she wagged her little tail and remembered him. I loved the comment he gave me about Hofi, he took one look at her and said she looks like a Thorvaldsstadir dog. I said yes I know she looks just like her great great grandmother Freyja. You see Hofi was linebred to that line on purpose through two half sisters way back to help save the line. It was a low co-efficient so I didn't expect too much to be passed on so I was happy to see that there was such a resemblance to me it meant that those genes were definitely there and I've always said she looks like the dogs from that farm (of course with a few other influences as well) so it was great to have confrmation from someone else who knew the dogs from there. Beggi and I travelled to Thorvaldsstadir together, I guess it's already 15 years ago to mate Stjarna, nothing resulted from that unfortunately but we had a wonderful life experience and got to meet the dogs in the famous Thorvaldsstadir that Mark Watson talked about as they "used to be". I have noticed so many other dogs with this line in today have changed quite a bit, some becoming more "showy" some much bigger with thick bone and resembling the other influences more so than the dogs from Thorvaldsstadir themselves. There are things I'd like to improve on in Hofi of course like any dog and some things that seem to be influenced a bit more from the other line like Frigg's side but her size, head, overall type is very much like her great great grandmother (the little red dog second from the right and on the photo by herself seen as a veteran). On the photo below is of from left: Skessu Skolli (as a puppy), Skotta (his mother), Freyja (fra Thorvaldsstödum, Skotta's mother), Snælukku Bjartur (Skolli and Snjór's father) and at the back Skessu Snjór (as a puppy). I've posted these photos before when Raggi and Rún were small.

Speaking of rare lines there was a new research paper just published by Pieter Oliehoek and two others. Pieter received his doctors degree in Genetic Conservation of Endangered Animal Populations in April of this year. As people know who have read my blog and articles I am totally for the preservation of rare bloodlines and as much genetic diversity as possible and it was Pieter who talked me out of breeding like the "norm" many years ago when I met him in Denmark at the start of his study. Although I did have my doubts about some bloodlines and the way those lines were originally inbred or "found" I have also said that as long as the traits are kept intact that make the Icelandic sheepdog the breed it always has been then we have to try to work with what we have now and the diversity (and "new blood") is a good thing. I was one of the people who felt that way back when we were starting out that we should have mixed one of the "related" breeds with our dogs to add new blood but they opted to use dogs they "found" in the countryside in Germany and Iceland and we can't turn back the clock.

So because we can't change the past and go back and use all the dogs that should have been used instead of just one or two "chosen" dogs the best way to keep diversity today and for the future is to have low co-efficients and use as many of the progeny as possible to keep the lines intact. Since each will be an individual in their genetic makeup even though the genetic difference in siblings may not be alot there is still more of a chance of passing on more diversity than when too few dogs are used. Highly linebred or inbred dogs of course the best should be chosen and only a small percentage of the offspring because the whole litter will have more similar makeup (in my understanding of genetics and breeding) and the use of more will just give more of the same genetics. Since writing my article many years ago and at the time wondering if all the diseases were coming about because of the low inbreeding I've communicated with a very wise elderly geneticist who assures me that the diseases are temporary because we've had such a bottleneck in the past and that continued outcrossing and low co-efficients WILL mean that the dogs will be healthier in the future. He says that inbreeding can be likened to a disease and effects the immune system whether we are aware of the changes going on or not. Sadly although the paper I've linked to is new some of the data is old but I'm sure that we are not in too much better a position today although in some countries I know they have been doing really good things with preservation and bringing in rare or less used bloodlines for breeding the past 10 years or so, places like Finland and Holland. Some countries might for that reason be in better shape than others in terms of diversity and a healthy population or a population that is on it's way back to a healthy one. I would however love to see if and how much the use of the rare bloodlines has contributed and hopefully in future Pieter can do another family line study. I've heard for quite a few years that a new calculation is expected but so far not seen anything.

In Iceland (with exception of a few "bloodline breeders") as well as other countries given how much overuse we have had of certain common lines during the past 10 years it is most likely overriding any progress that was made since the common families just keep growing meaning we need to use the rare lines more to catch up but that is even being frowned upon with "one rule fits all" stud rules and recommendations. In my mind we've had in some cases more intense inbreeding and overuse of common studs (bloodlines as well as particular males) and bloodlines than we had before the study was done. With all the new rules for hips and eye tests and registration restrictions and the fact that so many more people are starting out in the breed and breeding for shows without knowledge or interest in the importance of breeding for diversity. We have so many good old fashioned bloodlines that may still have some of the genetic diversity we need but because they are considered by some to be less "typical", they don't belong to the right clubs or don't have all the tests done (some owners just can't afford to have them done) they are not allowed to go into breeding in some countries and they were not included in the study either! The sad thing is these dogs are purebred and often from lines that have all but disappeared or have much too low a representation in the gene pool and IF powers that be cared about the wellbeing of the genetic population of the breed they would recognize that there are ways to bring those dogs back into the gene pool and they would see the possibilities of turning this around "slightly" and fight with tooth and nail to get those dogs into the breeding programs. Losing all these dogs is doing a great injustice to the breed that might not be seen in the immediate future or in our lifetimes. As I've said before, the more similar our dogs become to each other (which many strive to do because the believe dog breeds should be carbon copies of themselves) the more obvious the loss of diversity and we have to make sure we include all types, all colours, all sizes if we want the breed to remain genetically healthy.

Another great lazy day at home, I'm starting to recuperate a bit. Still not well enough to work at the dog show this month so that will be strange to miss yet another dog show this year although the truth be known I'm a bit scared of going into such a crowded area while the swine flu is on the rise here. Yet another record was broken for entries to the shows so truth be told it's such a crap shoot to show an ISD with all the competition and in my mind not worth taking the chance of possibly catching the flu at the same time. So far just over 100 cases have been diagnosed in Iceland since May and I find it shocking to hear that people (many dog owners included) are actually talking about deliberately catching it so they will be immune. Some of us are allergic to antibiotics and have other health problems that may complicate a simple flu, no deaths here yet but just a matter of time no doubt. Health wise I feel slightly less anxious and my nerves are a bit better than they were a couple weeks ago although I must stay off the computer more than I do, a hard habit to break I spend way too much time online. My shoulders, neck, back and head are bothering me and head is shaking quite a bit again. I just know it's the computer and the keyboard to blame now that it's back on the dining room table (it's a bit too high).

With my ever loving Rúnar to make me breakfast, supper, care for dogs, clean the house and do dishes while he orders me to relax he is just spoiling me and totally making up for the month away. :-) I feel guilty watching him do everything. I've had gluten free pancakes with maple syrup a couple times since he got home, eggs with bacon and so many other yummy treats and I've definitely put on some weight again, which is a good thing. I'm gonna make sure I make him a nice gluten free chocolate cake for his birthday on the 14th, definitely not an even trade for all he does for me. :-) I'm going to try to utilize the day today well with him since he's going back to work on Monday, that is going to be so strange for both him and me let alone the dogs. He has been studying quite a bit though and is trying to put together an agenda for a future course so he hasn't been slacking even though he's been at home. We've grown quite accustomed to having him at home the last couple weeks. It's been raining so much the past few days that we haven't had much time to BBQ or anything "summery" so it hasn't felt like a summer holiday, I'm sure as soon as he goes back to work the summer weather will be back. Hehe My friend Brynhildur is in Canada at the moment for the next three weeks and I think she took our nice weather with her when she left, it literally started to rain and hasn't stopped off and on since.

Spent pretty much all day in Reykjavík yesterday, looking at a new mobile phone for Rúnar, couldn't find one cheap enough and our main reason for the trip to town was to see the puppies since they will be leaving for their new homes tomorrow or on the weekend. Oh my goodness they are awesome. I so miss having GSP's, they are the cutest puppies. There is one left "maybe" and I've been fighting to not add HIM to our house. If I get another I really want a female to be able to breed from but we´ll see what the future holds, like I said before can't keep adding dogs we have to care for them too! Here are a few pictures of "my puppy" hehehe. He is so beautiful I'm sure he wil be a great representative in future. We hid a ptarmigan wing and watched each puppies reaction and they all showed great nose and took a loose stand on the wing. Given time and more exposure to the scent under controlled conditions I know they will have great abilities, both parents are great hunters and retrievers.

Here is the breeder's bitch puppy (the only female in the litter) looking great on point! They are 7 weeks old.

We stopped on the way with Klói and Skella in the car and let them run on the beach. A great time for both "water babies", Skella would run out into the water and lay down to get as wet as possible without going far enough out to swim. Added more photos on the photo page.

Wonders will never cease I actually remembered to take the camera when we took out Frigg and Hofi today. It looks like Frigg is showing signs of getting old in her eyes as it looks like she is squinting in all the photos, it wasn't too bright out but maybe it was the wind. The two of them are quite similar I sometimes forget that Hofi is her granddaughter and not her daughter. :-) I've always liked Hofi's ears as apposed to Frigg's slightly larger ears. Looks like these too are happy to have "Daddy" home too!

I thought the second photo was so cute and typical Hófi. Look at her expression as she is wondering and watching what Rúnar and Frigg are doing away in the distance, but she still stayed for her photo shoot because I asked her to. :-) Hey, what are you guys doing without me?! I added a bunch more photos to a photo page, some of these and others from the same walk. Alot more of Frigg that I think are quite cute, she doesn't really show her age that much except slightly around the eyes. She is 12 years old since February, Hófi unbelievably is already going on 4 years old in November. Time flies.

It's been raining off and on and pretty cloudy all day, I suppose the summer is over now I knew it wouldn't last too long after Rúnar got home given the time of year. Here in Iceland it usually doesn't last too long and the long weekend at the beginning of August is more often than not our last good weekend for camping or being outside alot.

Now we have to make sure we go into Reykjavík in the next couple days to visit the German Shorthaired Pointer "grandpuppies" and take photos! I'm so fighting myself I want another GSP but since there are only boys available it's a bit easier to say no but still really hard since it's Hera´s only and last litter (given her age). I'm a bit partial to the first litter because they are out of Casper who I really love since we fostered him for a little while as a puppy and then again when he was a bit older. I don't expect any of the other females out of our litters will have puppies in future since they are all getting up there and those who are of breeding age are with people who are not overly excited about breeding. Hera has been a great mother, better than we ever imagined she could be at her age, guess she inherited parenting skills and the love of her puppies from her mother Valdís. I'm a bit partial to this litter as well because the father is bred by and out of a bitch a dear departed friend of ours that we also picked from a litter in Norway at the time we lived there. So this litter has ALL three of the dogs we were instrumental in importing for breeding, Hera is out of Valdís and our favourite little guy Casper and the father Uxi is out of Fröya and a dog that was born in Iceland out of Swedish lines. All great dogs with good temperament and extremely strong hunting abilities and love of retrieving as well as strong point and use their nose well. I am very picky when it comes to temperament and I wouldn't want to buy a GSP from a litter that I don't personally know the parents and their lines, I know I bred for temperament so I would have wanted one of my own dogs but alas we can't keep adding dogs into the household, they all need their care and attention and I am not one to collect dogs just for the sake of collecting them. I hope all the puppies get great homes and I might be able to get a puppy in future, it wouldn't be too bad to get a greatgrandpuppy.

I'm still hoping we can move to Canada for a little while in future so timing for another dog is definitely not good at the moment. Have to keep chanting that to myself. hehehe

I have to put a couple photos of Klói with his new toy, we tried to keep it from him for as long as we could because he tends to chew up toys like crazy. However he saw his toy in Rúnar's suitcase and has kept a close eye on it since trying to get us to give in and let him play with it. As soon as Rúnar got home he showed it to me to tell me that it was for Klói from his brother Kelikátur. Well, don't have to tell Klói twice, he had a new toy and finally was allowed to have it a few days ago, it's a great little thing with no stuffing, called a skinneez I think it was. Shaped like a racoon. He loves it and so far it's still intact, great toy! Thank you Scotti and Kelikátur with hugs from Klói. :-) Oh and he does let Hofi play with it but he definitely knows it's HIS. I like the photo with Hofi's little nose poking the toy, she is such a character.

Busy day yesterday we weren't home most of the day. We took Klói with us and went to buy some organic veggies I guess 3/4 to an hour away, we spent some time there because the weather was beautiful and we took Klói in to the only maze in the country made out of bushes. It was really a neat thing and we enjoyed it, the sign as you go in reads "Don't worry, we check for lost people in the fall". It wasn't very high but high enough that I was a little scared we'd get lost, once we started out and I realized that it was indeed a MAZE, there were dead ends that you didn't know were dead ends until you'd walked a little bit turned corners and everything. I felt like a little mouse and well I could see where I wouldn't have minded getting clicked while I was going the right way. hehe Rúnar got ahead of me at one point and I decided that he might be going the wrong way so I started to follow a couple ladies that were in front of me. It was great to see the goal finally through the trees we saw chairs, a table and the guestbook. Well, the ladies and I ended up going the wrong way and I had to double back and find the way to Rúnar. Should have known that he and Klói wouldn't be wrong. :-) When we made it to the guestbook Rúnar made sure that even Klói's name was recorded...we got our click, a moment of rest in the sunshine in the middle of a maze. It was great fun because the weather was so nice, it was good to get a day out of the house and to do something totally spontaneous and it always makes me appreciate Klói so much more when we take him anywhere on his own, he is such a good dog, we don't know he's there in the car and he is so easy going and calm when he doesn't have the others to play with. He met a couple other dogs that were out for the day as well, a Labrador and a Standard Schnauzer. He got to be petted by a few kids who just couldn't pass by him without asking if they were allowed to pet him and we welcome any positive opportunity for some training. So he got some treats I had in my pocket fom the kids and we left feeling really good about the day.

Entering the maze. Starting the journey.

Turning a corner, but would it be a dead end? Oh no, Rúnar is leaving me to fend for myself. :-)

Following the wrong crowd. lol Yay, I can see the goal but it's a long way off still and a very confusing route, we had to go away from it to be able to get back to it.

Finally we made it. Yay, the champions waiting for me to get there. Ah, a well deserved rest.

On the way home we decided instead of turning right that we would call to see if our friend Þorsteinn was home since we visit him way too seldom it was only about 15 km away and sure enough he was so we turned left and kept going for a nice Sunday drive through the countryside. We had a great visit with Steini and his dogs and Klói got to go take a look at the greenhouses where they grow cherry tomatoes. When we passed over a bridge on the way back home we saw a wonderful sight of a train of horses being led through the water. A rider at the front and a few in the rear, I didn't see any dogs with this group and there were quite a few horses, I couldn't count them. They were in a few "groups" it seems I guess some like to be close to certain other ones. When on riding tours in Iceland they always take extra horses along and you can always see horses owners exercising a bunch of horses at the same time but only riding one or two, it's quite nice to watch. I tried to explain to a friend the other day how the horses are loose here and follow the leader. They found that very strange and didn't believe it was possible, there must be leads or ropes holding them in place or someone to make sure the horses don't run away. It is awesome to watch Icelandic horses with their wonderful temperaments, how they love people and when out in the pastures in the wintertime with their furry coats come running to the fence just to say hi to people who stop. Some are out in the pastures all year round while some are taken in to be ridden now and then. The other day a whole parade of horses went down the street in front of my house and this is what I was trying to describe to my friend, there were a couple riders dispersed but the rest of the horses were just being exercised and ran along without any restraints. They tend to stay pretty close to each other and almost cuddle. You gotta love being so close to nature when you see such co-operation between animals and people. I've always thought Icelandic horses are the cutest horses ever, no wonder Sting (one of my favourite singers) had one.

We stopped lastly at Rúnar's sisters house and took her in some veggies we had gotten for her, Klói got to come in and say hi. Overall a great day!

The day ended with fireworks because of the special Færoe Island days our town was celebrating and the long weekend. The dogs came out to watch except for Frigg who is getting a little bit scared of the huge bangs as she gets older. They fireworks are on the next street but they always sound like they are right on top of us because there is no extra noise in our town, no pollution. I could hear the conversations of people walking down the street in the middle of the night last night and it surprised me how little the dogs care about the noise on the street outside the window when Rúnar is home but barked at the same noises when I was alone. I guess they know I'm in good hands. Frigg is getting hard of hearing and the bangs are SO loud and with all the flashing lights maybe it's confusing for her, she used to be fine with fireworks. Skella was shaking like a leaf at times but she wanted to be with us. There were some really nice ones last night that I've never seen before, beautiful now that the nights are getting slightly darker as well.

Today we took Klói and Birta with us to the store and luckily the traffic wasn't quite started yet. Everyone will be travelling home later on tonight after supper no doubt, however there was enough traffic to notice it was a travel weekend. Rúnar needed some office supplies and we could get them at the one grocery store that was open today, most stores were closed for the holidays. We realized that Birta hadn't been with us for the longest time, lately we've taken Frigg and Hofi, Skella on her own or Klói. Of course Klói had to come with his mom so she would have someone to run with in the field, no fun running around by yourself afterall and boys need to get out and about What a goon Klói is, always has to be the life of the party, he looks like a cow getting out of the barn for the first run of the spring. :-) Birta so much like her mother, she loves flowers and what better to do than to roll around in them after you've checked out if they smell nice enough. When she stood up she had little pieces of purple flowers all over her, of course she just shook them off but I'm sure she was proud of her prettiness.

I love this photo, of course it's "Daddy's girl" Birta so happy the first evening he was at home after the month away.

It's a long weekend here in Iceland and the biggest travel weekend of the year, this year the weather is unbelievable and I would have loved to lay out in the sun haven't had one day to do that so far this year. We´ll see what tomorrow brings Rúnar will be home then. The forecast isn't as good the next few days but it might be nice enough to take the dogs for a run on the beach. We are hoping to go see the German Pointer puppies before they leave next weekend but don't really want to travel much this weekend because the roads are full so maybe next week since Rúnar will be off next week as well. Rúnar spent yesterday painting the fence so that's done and he also mowed the lawn so the place looks great now, no more machete needed to walk through the yard and it's actually easy to find the dog poop to pick up. Hehe. He even put the agility tunnels out in the yard with tent spikes and did some training with Klói and the tunnels. They had a great time. :-)

We got to be outside yesterday and it wasn't too cold. I'm always chilly when there is a wind but I could be out a few minutes at a time yesterday in a short sleeved shirt. I feel like I have a fever today though so maybe it was colder than I thought. We went to get a new pool for the dogs since Klói had played so much with the old one that he popped the top part of it and the air escaped, that meant he couldn't have too much water in it anymore just enough to get his little toes wet, that's not as fun. Skella all of a sudden yesterday (because Rúnar is home I think) decided that playing in the water is a great thing, she started rolling around in the water and was totally drenched. She hasn't done that before so we felt bad that we needed to through away the old pool just as she had some interest in playing in it and now that we are getting a little bit of summer weather.

We went to the store and saw a turtle that wasn't as expensive as Rúnar thought it would be and so we bought it. It's actually a sandbox but the dogs don't care, it will be easier to clean too. The new pool is practically unbreakable and it has a lid on it so we can close it when we don't want them to splash around in it. Boy, were they excited while it was being filled. It's all full of hairs now, Skella and Klói are losing coat.

Last night we had an earthquake over 3 on Richter at the place it had been predicted on the 27th, it's on the way from the airport we don't feel it so much here too far away. It was a few days late but still almost exactly at the time of day (one minute to half hour difference from the prediction). They say we have a volcano coming very soon so it will be interesting to see if that prediction holds true.