Belgians, ants and pants

You know how they say that lively, fidgety dogs have ants in the pants? Well, I said a while ago that I would refor that statement a bit, because as far as I'm concerned the really lively ants have Belgians in their pants.
You probably read how I kept Sambo entertained last week. But he still didn't have enough, I think I can honestly say that Sambo spent the last week more time as a biped than a quadruped. Half of the time he was hopping around me, bouncing from me, the furniture, the floor, the walls and the ceiling, not to mention the fact that he was showing off his set of teeth the whole time. With Belgians the thing goes something like this: a look toward your handler – you check if she's watching you and sees you – you move closer, just in case, so that your handler can have an 'up, close & personal' experience – if necessary, you let out a Woof or two to draw her attention to you – when you see that your handler is looking at you it's action time: ears back to your shoulder blades, head a bit down, set of teeth out and then, with such a wonderful personification of the Chupacabra you leap upon your handler's face. The course of events that follow can be different; you can crash into your handler's nose with your teeth, you can experience a head-on collision or, in the best of cases, you handler gets away with just a juicy Belgian kiss (the French don't get even close to the Belgians, yuck – if you are really lucky and have good reflexes you may get away with a Belgian kiss to the nose or the eye). The chance of avoiding the toothed torpedo is equal to zero so to speak, so I won't even mention it between the realistic options.

And how does the moment before the attack look like? Check it out:



Yes, it's true, it's difficult to escape a hyper Belgian and you can consider yourselves lucky if you manage to get away without any injuries most of the time. to be honest, I rarely do. The last such case was two days ago when we took a frisbee to our doggie walk after a long while. Because there's no real action and adrenalin in only throwing the frisbee I wanted to expand our repertoire with a jump over my leg. Big mistake. When the black monster was about 5 m away I called him, put my right foot into position and waved the frisbee at him. I could have known by now that if I show him the frisbee (or anything else that I can throw and he can catch), he will see the frisbee. And only the frisbee. He threw himself at it as the best rugby players there are, without remembering, of course, that it might be a good idea ti lift his legs. So he didn't. Now I have a nice bruise the size of a baseball over my right knee… But I'm sure it'll get better, maybe someday I get to the point that I'll be aware at least most of the time that I have a Belgian and what that means. If nothing else, I'm never bored :). Oh, and while youtubing a few days ago I found out that Bryan Adams is probably never bored either! I knew the guy had a good taste…

ps: and here's the link to Saturday's hikeing : http://myspace.agility-slo.net/

It's a well-known fact that technology clearly doesn't like me. But that's ok, I don't care much about it either. But what's been going on the last week has really been too much. First the internet resigned its cooperation with me for two days; the next to break down was the webcam, through which Sambek and I waved to Gregor, who went skiing for a week. To top it all, the keyboard failed on me too. Ok, actually… well, this time the keyboard itself wasn't really the one to blame, truth me told it was sabotaged. How and by whom you can read in my previous post.

Besides technology my main interest these days is sweating. Since Gregor is not around I have a considerable surplus of time and energy (which I otherwise spend with different artistic, acting, Ukranian-singing and other acts) and what better than sport activities to spend this energy. So Sambo and I went running 5 times this week, I did weight-lifting every day and to finish myself off I went on a hike with some agility buddies yesterday. And the result? Well, I did burn some energy, but most of all I gained myself a superiorly strained latissimus (the upper back muscle) and the muscle on my, well, behind. You can imagine by its dimensions that the pain cannot possibly be negligible. But it's slowly wearing off so it shouldn't take long before I can sit on the whole surface of my, khm, toosh again. And Sambo? I don't even know what to say. I think that growing up near a nuclear power station left some longrange consequences on him that will obviously mark him for life. Maybe I can lay some of the blame to the full moon, but the fact is that this week he has been totally hyper. In spite of all the running, walking, tricks and obedience he came to me every day, putting his head on my lap and looked me with a 'mom-why-aren't-you-doing-anything-with-me' look, brought me toys, woofed towards the door to show me how it is absolutely urgent and necessary for us to go outside and butn some energy… Anyways, on Saturday we had a 10 min break after two hours of hiking (the last hour of which was through relatively deep snow); two dogs started wrestling with each other, Sambo started herding them and in the moment we moved forward he galloped uphill (through whole snow, of course), saw the little snowballs that started rolling downhill after him, chased them for about 200m, set out uphill again, repeated the chasing action… If anyone has a clue how a geriatric dog can go on a hike, walk for two hours and still find the energy to chase around snowballs after a whole week of running and action, please let me know. For the time being let's say that I still have the energy, I'm in enough good shape myself and I most of all can afford to take the time and run around like this, but I fear that the years will catch up on me sooner than Sambo… The other option is that I'll simply be the fittest 100-year-old the world has ever seen :).

We wish you happy and active days!

Runs with wolves (dances with birds, studies with rabbits)

Lucky I don't belong to any indian tribe because all the parents would envy mine and all the kids would think I'm a show-off. But that's how it goes when people remember you by so many things. To my primary school classmates I'm still (and probably always will be) 'the one with the bird'. To my vet I'll probably always be 'the one that's allergic to rabbits but has now saved the second one from his culinary destiny and has been happily poking her eyes and sneezing the last 12 years'. And the last few days I'm best know as Dances with wolves.

People around me find it quite peculiar that such a running mania has obsessed me in the middle of December and that I'm continuing with it in January. So it shouldn't be hard to believe that I can't find a partner to go running together. The other day I told a friend of mine that I'll have to stop the chat with him cause the Death and I are going running (at 7 p.m.) – and he said 'What??? Now? But it's dark outside!' Yeah, so? So I should move my 'evening' doggie walks to 2 p.m. from November to March or what…? I got accustomed to night walks a long time ago, when I had Latin in my first year in the University on Mondays from 18.40 to 21.00, which means that I had to take Sambo for a walk at 21.30 when I got back if I didn't want Sambo to miss his evening walk. So I got used to walk in the dark and since then I have no trouble at all with it.

'But… It's cold now!' And we won't go on any doggie walks because of the cold? Well, I myself have been a bit worried about breething the cold air while running, but the first time I went (at minus 6 degrees) I saw there was no problem. But still, even though I refuted any doubts anyone has served me I stil haven't found a jogging partner. Lucky I've got Sambo. For him it's never too cold, too dark or too wet; the moment he sees me in my running equipment he starts roaring and walking on air from the excitement. That's what I'm talking about!

And now a quick explanation of the second and third part of my hypothetical indian name – before you go any further and start imagining something really weird I have to say that our bird (the Amazon warrior) has a very expressed artistic side, especially when it comes to music. Whenever he hears something he likes, he gets in the mood right away and starts singing, whistling… So it happened a few times that I was in the garden listening to the radio and when the bird heard a song he liked he started singing, which of course lead to a super duo, dancing and singing our behinds off (me with my must-have Ukrainian accent, what else).

And the third part – the other day I was copying my notes from my Swedish class and since I had some problems I decided to enrol a local to help me out. So I went to get Olaf. He came to my room after quite a while and was really excited about it – he hopped around merrily, poked me with his nose and jumped on the table from the top of his cage and helped me find the right words in the dictionary. We studied together in such a manner for a few days (passing over to Chomsky's generative and transformational grammar), whereupon I got a bit bored without music and I moved our study group to this room, which has a computer. Thus we studied together in perfect harmony with the accompaniment of my favourite radio through the internet, when after about three days I thought to myself how lucky I am since Olaf is the only rodent (from mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs) that I know of that has never in his life decided to have a nice cable snack, which is quite on the top list of the favourite menus of the above mentioned furry critters. Meanwhile he jumped into my lap and stretched comfortably over my legs and I studied for about 10 more minutes, after which I decided to have a little break to reply to a few e-mails. I turned on the screen, started writing – and nothing happened. I tapped on the letters, nothing. I started cursing myself, thinking I pressed something that disabled my keyboard. Anyways, after about two minutes I got a bad hunch… I decided to check, juuuuuust in case, if my saint decided to leap into action for the first time in my honour. Of course he did. The cable of the keyboard was professionally cut into so that he just cut through the inside wire, leaving the plastic on the other side intact. Truly a masterful work. The furry monster is now on a forced leave and in the meantime the problem with the keyboard has been solved, so that I can type this message. And the moral of the story is – yeah, I know. Next time I'll think twice before praising publicly any representative of the opposite sex cause these kind of things usually explode right into my face with great pleasure. I hope I learned my lesson…

Ok, time to go now, it's almost 19.00.

I have spoken, howgh!

On having something with the neighbour

Having something with the neighbour can be very tricky. We have to be aware that by doing it we can hurt the ones we love most and often even ourselves. People do it from different reasons – some feel they simply need that in their life; others think that the grass is always greener on the other side; and then there are some that may even have some profit out of it, material profit, to make things worse. I confess, I'm one of them. The last couple of weeks I've been sneeking to the neighbours in the safe embrace of the night. But the other day I was caught red handed. I can still see the despair in his eyes and feel his broken heart…

It's true, I thought I could make it this time too, but things went wrong. Sambo came running from around the corner in the very moment I was riding the fence. A few more seconds and I would be in the safety of the porch were he wouldn't see me at all, but he caught me right in the act. He spent the next hour and a half howling and wailing on our garden while I was trying to concentrate on the english lessons with the neighbour. And believe me, it's mighty difficult to explain the difference in the use of Present simple and continuous if you have a wolf with a broken heart singing you serenades outside the window… However, it was worth it. The neighbour successfully passed the exam. And I almost plumped onto our lettuce harvest when I bumped my leg against the pillar of the fence in the dark on my way home. Life can be difficult if your legs are so short they barely reach to the ground…
And that is leaving aside the great irony and bizarrity of the fact that I'm too lazy to walk 15m along our street to get to the neighbour's door, so I prefer to climbe over the fence from our garden to their backyard, but after our lessons I go running with the Black Death for half an hour. Well, the most important thing is that the neighbour passed the exam and won't fail the subject, that I earn some money and afterwards go get fit. You have to know that if you have something with the neighbour and jump over fences to do so it can't hurt if you can run really fast (even more so if your intentions aren't as noble as mine and the neighbours have an ill-tempered heacy-weight dog…).

Anyhow – I wish you have as few messing around with the neighbours as possible. And if you do, make sure you don't get caught…

Magic touch

This weekend I finally convinced myself that I have a special gift, some kind of magic touch. Not only I can make a dog so much younger in 6 months that he progresses (or regresses?) from the European champion title to the title of the European junior champion (which is even more amazing when you consider the fact that he was born in 1999), but I can also make a dog loose weight in only one day, so that in the morning it is said to be 'noticeably overweight' while in the afternoon that same dog is apparently completely normal. That's exactly what happened yesterday when I showed the Border collie bitch of an agility friend. In the morning she was entered in the international show in Ljubljana and there were three bitches in intermediate class. The judge said that Ula was her absolute favourite of the three of them, but still she put her in third (last) place because she is too fat. To be honest Ula is really in 'winter' shape, but as I once said to the judge that was facing a tough decision when choosing among two Golden retrievers, one of which was obviously too fat and the other one too long - the first one can loose weight, but the second one will never be shorter.

Anyhow, Ula was said to be too fat in the morning and because of that lost the title of the prettiest, but on the afternoon specialty show there was a completely different story - Ula was alone in intermediate class and got everything she could, but that still counts for something because the judge (not the same as in the morning) gave quite some very good grades, with or without competition. However, the real treat came later on when after a few minutes Ula and I went into battle with the other winning bitches and won! Without any remark regarding her figure, my I add. see, that's what you can call a 'fast diet'.

Today I worked on the show - as a 'multipractic'. I was the ring steward, the apprentice and for the first few minutes also the one who writes the dogs' notes down, because I entered an empty ring with the judge and I got an improvised note-taker only after a few minutes. Nevertheless, we resolved the problem(s), the judge and I got along perfectly and so I had a very nice day, even though it was also quite tiring. And you know what's the greatest part of all? I spent the whole weekend looking at hundreds of dogs, touching and judging them - but I always come home to the best and most beautiful of all :).

Revelations

Has it ever happened to you that you came to an interesting cognition while doing something monotonous and repetitive? Last year I became aware of this when I was going swimming a few times a week regularly. At first I was very 'spectical' ;) because I expected to feel like a hamster in a wheel and that I would get bored pretty quickly. But I realized it wasn't like that at all. I mean, I'm still a bigger fan of the more diverse kind of action, however, I see I can enjoy in a more monotonous kind of recreation too as you can meditate all you want in the process. Well, what I did last year while swimming I'm doing this year while running – last year the weather didn't allow me to run, so I found a water alternative, but this year I decided that nothing would stop me in re-establishing the programme 'Happy feet' and so the Black Death and I have been running around our neighbourhood for a while now. Thus last time I came to two different revelations. Firstly, I realized that Sambo is probably the first and only dog in the world that managed to get the title of European champion first and then (after six months, mind you!) also the title of European junior champion, all in the same year, and to top it all, at an age that already qualifies him as a veteran. If that's not cool… But how can that be, you probably wonder? I advise you to take a look at my older posts; there I already bragged about Sambo winning the European champion title on last year's Eurodogshow in Zagreb. A bit under half a year later, in November, we went on a Belgian roadtrip; there we went to the Kortrijk dogshow that is also a 'Eurodogshow' (don't ask me why and how, but their show is also a 'European' one) and there my geriatric Waffle, thanks to the unskilful ring steward, managed to (unintentionally) infiltrate himself in the selection for the junior winner and even won! Now, tell me if you know of any other dog that managed to do that! I think there isn't one ;).
And so we came to the second revelation – the progress of technology. Once uppon a time, we used to write letters to each other, then we started e-mailing and nowadays I can already wave to my friends and relatives all around the world via the webcam live. But it's not only us, the common mortal people that advance together with time and progress. It happens with the Church too. I tell no lie, the Church doesn't recrute their little sheep on the street or by oral tradition anymore but started using cellular phones or better said short text messages in order to do that. No kidding, the other day I was sitting in the living room, relaxing while watching something very intellectual, when suddenly my phone rings (actually honks) and the SMS said something like 'I urgently need animators for the winter holidays, please get back to me, R. Marjan.' While trying to figure out who the hell could R. Marjan be and what kind of animators he need for what kind of winter holiday, the phone starts ringing (actually laughing) in my hand and the conversation that followed went something like this:
U: Hello?
M: Hi, it's Reverend Marjan!
(the following thoughts went through my head at that moment – who's kidding me, who is Reverend Marjan and most of all, what does he want from me???)
U: Hi?
M: I've sent you a message, but I decided to call you anyway. Listen, I urgently need animators for our winter holidays of the Christian youth and I wonder if you have any time and could help me out? U: Darn, this weekend I have to finish a translation I'm working on and next week I have an exam, so I won't be able to help you, sorry. M: What a pitty… Well, thanks anyway, maybe some other time, right? Bye, have a nice day! U: You too, thank you!
Now let me explain a bit the background and utmost bizarrity of this anecdote: music has always been a big part of my life. In third grade of primary school I started singing in the children's choir, continued in the youth choir and later on in the women's choir. After 8 years of singing in 3 different choirs with the same choirmaster (which is still in my nicest memories) I quit because of certain circumstances. After a bit under two years of pause I started missing singing really bad and let myself be talked intoa test visit of the youth church choir by my friend and neighbour. Being an ardent Catholic (don't take me seriously, I'm a complete atheist) I told myself that it doesn't hurt to try. So I went and to my greatest surprise I liked it, so I stayed for two years. And yes, that's when I met Reverend Marjan :). It's been two years now since I'm no longer part of the flock, but he obviously still has my number and every now and then he sends me a message – and to be honest, he always makes me smile :). In the meantime my poor significant other and my significantly hairy other feel the consequences of my musical deprivation; even though I sing quite well (as it should be after 11 years of singing in choirs) that's not even nearly as fun as singing 'my way', which means that I sing (at the top of my voice, what else) with a nice, authentic Ukrainian accent, providin the songs are in English, of course. Luckily Sambo isn't showing any mental/emotional trauma yet, but Gregor, on the other hand, is already showing signs of despair and I won't be too surprised if he enters me into a choir – maybe some Hare Krishna since I have the Catholics already covered…
And to finish… no, don't worry, enough philosophizing for today. I managed to edit and shorten the clip of our ATV adventure , you're welcome to have a look.

Cool runnings!

First let me wish all of you who read our adventures and misadventures a happy new one! The Waffle and I spent the last days of 2007 in Bovec in the company of Gregor and his family, where we had a marvellous time. We planned each day carefully: we arrived there on Wednesday evening, when we mostly chatted and relaxed, on Thursday I was sick, on Friday we went skiing, on Saturday we went on a hike and on Sunday we went on an adrenalin ride with the ATV (All Terrain Vehicle). On Thursday I really wasn't feeling good, so the others borrowed the Black Death alternately while I was rehabilitating in bed, so he had activities during the whole day – wasn't that bad for him, all in all. On Friday they also borrowed him while we went skiing for the first time this year and on Saturday his turn finally came big time as we went on a hike near Bovec for about two hours and a half. Sunday was the most adrenalin-filled of all days because we finally got to test the combination ATV + the Black Death. Gregor and I set up a wooden board on the carrier on the left, put Sambo on and.. and off we went. The beginning wasn't that promissing, Sambo tried to jump off the second Gregor started the engine, but I managed to hold him by the harness. Then he moved around so much that he managed to move himself from my left side to a nice cosy spot between Gregor and I – thank God, cause this new position was incomparably more corresponding to him than the one we originally meant for him, but he thought was much too exposed. That would be all fine if he decided to sit calmly all the way to the field where we wanted to let him loose. But he of course didn't - on the crossways he got up to check where we are heading to (as he does in the car) and banged me in the chin-protector of the helmet with his back and nearly broke my neck. So, the two minutes we had left to get to the field I danced the limbo with Sambo in my lap, bent backwards like 12-year-old chinese acrobats, but I survived that too. We finally got to the field where Sambo stepped on firm ground… and detached from it immediately, in other words, we made a big round of about 3-4 km and if I exaggerate a bit (but really only a bit) I can say that we barely managed to keep up with the flying nigger. After a brief warm-up the Death got into sixth gear and ran 45-50km/h for quite a while, so we really had to step on it… I won't even begin to describe the faces of passing-by grannies, ladies with leashed doggies and joggers . Anyhow, after a few minutes I said that it was enough for the first time and suggested that the two of them went a round to cool down by themselves; Sambo obviously didn't agree with my idea, it all went too slowly for him so he started herding Gregor and the ATV. I can say that our first attempt was a total success, we only have to polish the tactics of Sambo's transport as I won't be able to perform such a limbo dance every time…

The new-year/holiday fever has calmed down meanwhile and life is getting back on its usual track. I passed over from December's bright ideas about running ventures at -6 degress to even more brilliant plans about running on January's frozen paths… Without any falls, for now, but I have the feeling that my days are numbered… But until then – cool runnings!

My guys





A brief stop on the path



Making new friends...



Mission accomplished!



The Adrenalin team...





Tired doggy after a straining sports day...