The rules are to upload 7 photos of your summer and to explain them with only one word. Then, you challenge 7 bloggers to do the same. We were challenged actually twice, by Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever Pablo (I love to learn new English words!!) and by Lancashire Heelers Vili & Juti. In addition to learning new words, I love blog challenges! I usually plan my posts in advance and try to stick with the theme I have chosen. It is really liberating to receive a theme to stick with - there is just something about boundaries that is really relaxing.
To kill two birds with one stone, I decided to write this post in English to let you all know what our summer 2013 has been like. I have been neglecting our English-speaking readers the entire summer (there might have been a single post on a dog show in June, if I recall right...), and I do apologize for that! I do my best to pull myself together in the upcoming months, that's a promise.
When it comes to the challenge! I find it really hard to pick seven themes that describe our summer. Even harder for me is to describe the photos with only one word. One difference between Finnish and English is that Finnish creates lots of compounds. For example Staffordshire Bull Terrier is a concept that is one dog/breed, but consists in English of three individual words. In the Finnish language, I tend to think that we are more logical to describe one dog with only one word: staffordshirenbullterrieri. Having said that, as a native Finnish speaker all my one-word summer themes are actually multiple-word themes in English. Bear with me with this, pretty please :)
Our Summer 2013 was made of:
I am adding these summer photos of ours in order of frequency. We did spend countless of hours training obedience, and the objective still is to get to compete during the autumn. We are struggling with laying down as a group (sorry for the terminology, I am now a very lazy translator and haven't got the energy to do the terminological research...). In the first (easiest) class of the obedience trials, the dog needs to lay down in a row of dogs for two minutes as the owner is standing 20 metres away from the dog. This is the hardest thing for Luumu, as I don't think he considers this a task at all. This is so boring for him that he tends to stand up and sometimes come to me like "hey mommy, what'll we do next?".
Luumu has had some friends over this summer, as always. Here, he is playing with his pal Noa (Australian Kelpie). Luumu likes all bitches equally - the bigger the better. He tends to show off a little, when it comes to smaller males, but with males that are bigger than him and with those he has been playing for ages before (like Noa here), they are like best friends forever.
Luumu is a huge ball addict. He likes to chase them, carry them, herd them and chew them up. This ball was a new, almost flawless ball until Luumu got his teeth through it. And I say addict, as that really is an obsession for him. I believe if he could sleep with the ball in his paws, he'd be a happy little Stafford.
We have participated in several dog shows during this summer, and I am actually getting pretty tired of them. Luumu achieved reserve cacib from a show in May, and that was the highest achievement for this summer. I actually didn't plan to make Luumu a show dog at all, but as we Finns say, "the more you eat, the hungrier you'll get". The last outdoor-show for this year is actually tomorrow in Porvoo. We'll see how that is working out for us. My hopes are not high, but we'll just have to see.
This theme has everything to do with the "Shows" theme. In the shows, we usually left when our time in the show ring was over, and concentrated on seeing the various sights of various cities! Of course, Luumu was always with us as a tourist seeing all the dog-friendly sights. This photo is taken in Pori in the end of July.
The water gets warm here very slowly in spring, but luckily we managed to go swimming a few times during the summer. Luumu loves swimming, and he has some sort of an obsession with fetching the toys, as well. This photo is taken in Pori, too. What a nice beach they have for dogs there!
Our summer has been filled with all sorts of events. Here, we are in Helsinki at Staffies' Activity Day (or what ever you'd like to call it). Luumu got to try different kinds of sports, like Treibball (?? pallopaimennus). Lure coursing (?? viehejuoksu) was definitely one of Luumu's favourites!
This summer, I have been sewing a lot. Luumu, as staffies always, is very keen on what I do and always likes to participate. I actually started my very own dog gear business this summer, called Vau Mumu, and that is something I will concentrate my energy on in the future. Of course, that is a kind of a hobby to me at this point, but who'll know what the future has planned for us? ;)
We have been gardening this summer, and I managed to grow my very first strawberries, onions, zucchinis etc. this year! In the scariest shovel, there are some onions and thyme (my absolute favourite herb!). One might wonder if we actually have been gardening during the summer, as Luumu is still afraid of the shovel, wheelbarrow and the broom. Bad shovel, bad bad bad shovel!
Last but not least, Luumu went camping this summer for the very first time. Here, he is sentenced to calm down a little. Camping with a 1.5-year-old staffy is not the most relaxing thing you can think of, but maybe next time some time next year will be a bit easier. The first thing in the morning he tried to dig his way out of the tent. Silly dog!
Some of you might have noticed, but there were more than 7 photos of our summer. But hey, only one word/photo! The boundaries of this challenge were almost too liberating, as I ended up uploading 10 photos. But summer was so full of events that it was too difficult for me to narrow the photos down to seven.
And the challenge goes on... I would like to see 7 summer photos from the following 7 bloggers:
Oh no, that's six! Well boundaries are meant to be broken, right?
Voi apua! :D
VastaaPoistaKoita kestää :DDD
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