Winter

By estonian national calendar, 2 weeks ago the backbone of winter was broken and now every day brings us closer to spring. So it's definately too late to have "merry Christmast" posting up here :o). We don't have very exciting news to tell you, but some things need to be told and so it comes a summary again - of what we have done lately.
Starting with the good news that we finally have the winter outside I was dreaming about since October 1st :o).  Dogs don't need to be washed several times every day and all streets are covered with motivation for Lucky - snow :o). There's absolutely no need to put "candies" for dogs to my pocket, Rocco is very obedient anyway and there's no food in the world that would motivate Lucky better then snow balls:o). Not that he's eating them, just chasing :o). I have tested him in the situation where he was out of leach and there were 2 small babe's ( = nice little bitches) walking in front of us. We passed them playing together without him even looking at them :o). And if he run's free and sees something interesting I only need to mention I have a ball and he turns back in a second. So life is easy for me :o)
Then -  there's one more very special gift Lucky and I got from elves:

 Now I have it on the office wall so Lucky is with me at work too. Biiig thanks to Karin.

What's not so good about winter is that Rocco doesn't much like to join us on our walks. Weather seems to have big impact to his joints and cold or wet weather isn't good for him. So sooner or later I need back-bag to still have him with us on our walks (if any of you have seen such thing, I'm really thinking about it, please let me know too). Additionally Rocco had a strange thing under his skin in the end of last year. We showed it to vet and luckyly it's only a lipoma, nothing bad. I tried to get advantage out of that - told to Rocco, that this is what happens if you steal from puppy's (= Lucky, he always remains puppy in our home :o) ) bowl. But obviously he doesn't care at all :o), if nobody sees, he can't pass Lucky's bowl without emptying it :o). Well, let him enjoy the last opportunities, because in case he want's to travel in back bag in the future, he goes to diet :o). Only carrots and cabbage :o)

And then a good way to entertain your dogs - skiing. I bought ski's year ago -  after about 25  years brake . And my trying to learn to ski again is sooooo funny for Lucky. Last weekend we tried to choose the trail with less people getting part of the fun :o) and let Lucky run free. He ran next to me barking all the time, then went to chase daddy and then back to me again. I had my fancy sport watch, and looking Lucky running free, I thought to test it on Lucky too. So next day we took the same route and Lucky weared the watch. Result was, that when I skied 8.5 km with speed 8.65(now you know why Lucky is barking and laughing next to me, I'm snail slow:o) ), Lucky covered 12.13 km and his average speed was 9.67.  Lucky's speed maybe isn't very accurate, because we met a friend and of course had to chat, which is no good for statistics. But we can test again and I'll tell you, if we improve our results :o). Here's a photo made last weekend:

And this photo is made year ago, on 25.03. This was definately the best skiing trip I have ever had. Days were warm and sunny but nights very cold. Snow was melting at day time and freezing at night time, so it was strong surface to ski on and skis run very fast. We skied on shore of the river, where it's impossible to access in any other time of year and there was nobody else then us. Well, we didn't see, only the footprints - of wolf. Many times bigger then our Jossu's foot prints. And beavers "building" higher then me. This really was great experience.