We are back again

Greetings from Lucky and Rocco after the long brake in our blog. It seems I'm very capable to keep myself very busy and as I definately won't steal time from my daughter and dogs there's just computer left to steal that time from :o). But all my big projects are over for now, so I hope there will be more life here again in the future.
To write here all the things we have done in between would make this posting too long, so I'll try to make it short:
Starting last autumn - we started agility trainings with Lucky.
Our trainer is Kristina, my friend and ovner of Lucky's friend Joker and Rocco's friend Kendzi. Years ago, when we run agility with Rocco, I admired cooperation between Kristina and Kendzi and Kristina's handler skills. Though Kendzi is retired now, they still are my favourite agility couple and probably always will be. Thank you, Kristina, for teaching us!!! And I just have to mention that Kendzi is Estonia's first International Agility Champion and this far the only one . Talking about our training - Lucky loves agility. He loves all the training, but running he loves even more then treats and toys I offer him on the agility field. We competed up to highest class with Rocco, before he had to retire because of his arthritis, but with Lucky I feel like I hadn't ever run agility before - Lucky is just so fast. But he is fast in everything, even barking 10 x faster then Rocco :o). And Rocco is agility tourist now, waiting in the crate and eating candies for that. Here's couple of pictures and I'll keep you updated with our progress



About winter there is a few postings already, but just to summarize : it was wonderful . With so much snow, that most roads to our beloved walkingplaces stayed closed almost until the middle of April and everywhere else you could think about walking the dogs were skiing trails and walking and dogs were prohibited. Well, still I hope that Rocco & Lucky don't have reason to complain, here's some photo evidence for you. Starting from the most beautiful I have - here is a slide show of photos made by Karin Põiklägu and bigger pictures you can see here.

Then a new experience for me - driving on the ice road. I'm not sure if dogs appreciated the new experience, but it was interesting for us. And dogs got a walk on island.


Then spring. Again I have many beautiful pictures made by Karin to show to you

And now it's summer. The weather has been amazing, sunny and very, very hot . Dogs enjoy their summer freedom at our country home. At the evening, when I get home they greet me well rested and waiting for me to entertain them :o). Lucky has most sweetest "back-molar-hi" for me :o) It means he jumps up on me and if I give him my hand to lean on (because he want's to be taller to say hi properly) he'll chew my hand and kiss me alternately :o) . There's so many things he would like to do (all those things include speed :o). ) and he is confused to choose which one to ask. Rocco, just the opposite, knows exactly what he would like - to go swimming. He is real Shetland beaver - first one to go to water and last one to come out. Swimming 30 minutes without resting is no problem for him and considering it's good for his joints + it makes him happy, I haven't really limited him. Lucky doesn't see any point in just swimming, he complains when we go in and only sometimes joins us, if it seems to him we have too much fun without him. BUT... he could chase water splaches endlessly. If I stop the splach-game and turn my attention on something else, he'll look my leg in water for some time, beeing very concentrated and then scrapes me very pollitely to remind about discontinued game:o). And if we go out of the water too early (well, it's always too early for him) he just stands there and won't go out :o). He can go swimming too if we throw something valuable there - like wooden stick :o), but then he still first tries to walk on water :o). I haven't understood why retrieving from water is so fun for him. He very seldom retrieves on land. His favourite game at home is football. Me and Kelli play with his soft ball and he chases it back and forth and barks all the time :o).
Now, link to summer album and that's all for summary. If I have forgotten something important , I'll tell about it later and I'll post some "new" news too and try to keep the track in future ;o)

It's Lucky's 2 years birthday today!

My dear Lucky is 2 years old. No, young :o). Still our happy, active, fun, sweet, little puppy, bringing joy to every single day.

Happy birthday dear little friend, happy birthday Foxy, Isac, Max and Shadow.

Here are pictures of Lucky's birthday parties with friends:


Walk with Kendzi and Joker And puppy birthday for Lucky and Fancy, pictures by Karin Põiklägu

Merry Christmas

I hope you had wonderful Christmas. We had. With a Christmas tree that we has grown big and beautiful on our land, Christmas traditions (on the pictures below), cooking and eating. But most important, with real Christmas feeling living in our home - our little daughter. And most wonderful winter outside. There's sooooo much snow and snowing more and more. We are blocked at our country home :o) We definately can't get our car out of here before snow plough comes and opens the road, also trains are very out of chedule and I have to be at work on 8:00 on monday. But I'll worry about it tomorrow and it's still wonderful in this snowstorm. Wonderful, wonderful winter, just like when I was small :o)

Here's some pictures of our Christmas:

Taking hay and carrots and apples for wild animals.

Christmas criminal Pätu sleeping to rest and start again playing with Christmastree decorations :o)

Full moon has made nights so bright

And here are Christmas cards from our friends:

On this card is Lucky's daughter White Coastal Little Blue Avatar "Peppi" who is living in Shet Up kennel in Finland

Winter wonderland

It's amazing how wonderful winter we have. Soooooo much snow outside. Just like last winter, only this year the snow came earlier. And there's a lot of it. And snowing more and more every day. A lot of snow seems to create a lot of problems - to those who have to clean it. We don't, we enjoy it very much. As extra bonus to everything you can do when it's so wonderful snow outside, dogs stay clean and they can't escape, only walk on road with us :o)

It was easy to promise, that I take winter pictures for you, in reality it's not so easy to get good photos when it's snowing. But at least you get the idea what we have here:

Summer summary (better late then never :o) )

Shame on me, it's veeerrrry late to post summer news. But life sometimes has it's own plans for us. For me it was a week in hospital and 2 weeks recovering at home in July :o(. Don't worry, this blog hasn't turned to medical one :o), but there's one thing I would tell you anyway - there isn't any better medication, then 2 wonderful furry friends (and family of course and country home, but it's Sheltie blog here). I felt good again on the minute I was back at home with them.
Now to the summary.

To start from beginning, we were seriously attacked at our country home at spring - by snails :o). There was so many of them, that for help we turned to real professionals:

Well, later it turned out, that professionals are a bit lazy in their job, but it was a lot of fun with them on summer. Rocco changed his "Cats eating" soap opera to reality show performed by ducks:

And Lucky was happy to get 4 new playmates to play "herding dog and duck's" game
with

Don't worry, it was fair play, time to time roles changed and duck's were herding Lucky. And Lucky was sooo happy for the attention he got :o)

And as I was talking about Lucky's friends, here's some more of them
Tiger the cat you know already from last year. Do you believe me if I tell that Lucky is singing lullaby to his friend :o) ?

Tiger too thinks he needs a walk on evenings. At least he joins us every time he sees us going to walk. Walks with us all the way, if we stop he lies down and follows if we continue.

Pätu is Tigers son and almost same age as Lucky. And as crazy as Lucky. The picture below is not posed, just a catched moment. They are involved with science I think, entomology :o)

Jossu you know too. He isn't actually thrilled of babysitting, but Lucky doesn't take no for answer :o)

And here a little 6 months old dachshund Annu is playing fox hunt with Lucky :o)

Luna, Annu and Lucky just happy about running free

But back to the summary.Here are the dogs with rat tulips. Rat tulips is real sign that it's summer soon. We didn't plant them and they are not the flowers that grow in our wild nature. So probably they started to grow from rat's underground kitchen and now there's more and more of them every spring.

Then a picture from a walk we had with Karin and Inna and their dog's on rainy day. All the good pictures made by Karin you have seen already. Here's one of my dear fun flying Lucky

Then I already told you about this, but still once again - my dear good boy Rocco with his winners class win awards

Our Sheltie-photo-day with Karin and her Shelties

Field on cotton-grass in forest, it was first time for me to see it, so we had to go back many times with camera to save what I saw

Living just one week without me was possible to smell from Rocco's coat (swimming every evening without drying later). Here's his payback time :o) - little sheepdog catchers washing him.

Lucky I washed myself, not that he too would have enjoyed swimming too much, but as I had heard that it would speed up change of coat. (Well, Lucky has his own plans. Maybe now he is shedding a little, but not remarkably.) Here are the pictures of my clean and groomed dogs

Then a beautiful evening on a beautiful place on west coast of Estonia

And our this years trip, to South Estonia only. Summer ended so unexpectedly, that we had to use the last chance and it came out a great trip. With our bus again. Must say, that's it bigger then it looks - wonderful travelhome for 3 people and 3 dogs :o). This year we improved our equipment by a gas stove and, as sun was not allowed for me, when Kelli and daddy were playing on the beach and swimming, I was sitting under the trees and cooking pancakes . And mushrooms we found as a supper.


Here on the picture is Kelli with dogs and bear we built, hope you see him :o)

I hope the dogs enjoyed the view too, as it's quite a good training to carry dogs up to observation tower :o)

It was a wonderful summer this year. + 30 C every day in July and half of August. Water was so warm, so we went swimming at every possibility. Lucky is suspicious about swimming but if we all go, he can't trust us having fun without him. He still hopes, that if he jumps, he can walk on the water :o)
And it's almost all. Summer definitely is too short. Just a few more pictures where signs of autumn are already possible to see.

And now it's winter outside. -24 is the coldest night this far and there's sooo much snow. It has been snowing and snowing every day, just wonderful. I have only night time pictures this far, but if the snow stays until weekend, I'll promise I make day time pictures too and post them here for you.