Nurhan's take:
(Kin is the one on the left). Kin is getting big... He's not even seven months old yet and already he's got his adult coat on his back and it is a gorgeous rich texture.
Yesterday he met Odin, Mona & Pete's one year old boy, who came up to him and hugged him repeatedly and he was the picture of calmness. An adult Newfie you know will be fine with kids, but a Newfie puppy always wants to play, but somehow he seemed to know that he had to be really careful.
Unlike at Bråstein today... Now Newfie's are know to walk with a nautical gait (i.e. they always weave as though they are on a ship moving in a seaway), but carrying on the nautical theme Kin can broach as well (broaching is when the vessel is turned beam onto the wind / seas and she normally rolls over close to her 'beam ends'). Kin charging flat out, and then his paws take on a new direction, roughly 080 degrees to his current heading, inertia carries him forwards but his paws are now perpendicular to the direction of travel, causing him to trip and go skidding on his side, until his momentum is overcome by ground friction... He can do this quite well without help, although a couple of times, Shadow, an adult St Bernard's was only too happy to 'assist'...
Today we went a slightly different route in Bråstein; and the last time I went this route I had Karma with me, which got me thinking of Karma, which led me into thinking about my father (sadly, I lost both of them in a short time span, so it's hard for me to think of one without thinking of the other). One of the 'family legends' is how my father came to be in the UK. It was 1956 and he and a friend decided to come to the UK... from Cyprus. At the time the island wasn't partitioned. Dad, although Turkish, spoke (and did until his dying day) Greek fluently, as the two communities lived side by side and the kids all played together (there are many a book written on the Cyprus situation so I won't elaborate here). Well the obvious way to get from Cyprus to the UK was by, ummmm, errrr, ummmm, cycle! As in pedal cycle. Dad & his friend caught the ferry to Syria and then cycled through Turkey, and up through Europe until he came to London. Interestingly enough when he came to London, dad had enough money to book a room for a month and then he had to try and find work... The first day in London he bumped into a man from his village who sorted Dad a job and the rest as they say, "is history!" But if you knew how large Dad's village was, you'd be amazed at this stroke of fortune. Someone attempting this journey now, would organise sponsorship and get National Geographic to film them... not then. Dad never mentioned about the hardship of the journey, although he did say that people were very kind to them when they met them. Many nights were spent in the open, but folk offered them a roof over their heads at other times. This was as much of the story as Dad ever tended to tell. For some reason over the last few days I've been thinking about this and I would love to know more about the details. My father could never be called modest when it came to the land of his birth or how proud he was of his family, but when it came to himself, he was self effacing. My Father was generous to a fault, and like the emergency services, I suspect that many folk who knew him didn't notice my Father until he wasn't there any more.
Changing the subject slightly... as Kin is such a good swimmer I tried starting life saving training with him yesterday... I can't say this was a huge success. He swam out and recovered a float several times, but he was most unhappy when I also swam out... he ignored the float and made it abundantly clear that in, 'his world' my place is on shore... He looked genuinely shocked when I went in to my knees, and after coming up from a surface dive, he was quite vocal and physical in his objections. The idea is that you swim out with a float/toy/ball; he swims towards you. You wave the float so he becomes fixated on it and as he swims to the float you rotate in the water until he's facing the land, you then give him the float, grab the hair on his shoulders or bum and then he tows you back to land... Kin ignored the float and went straight for me... fortunately I can swim faster than him... which he didn't like either... Some work needed here... but then again he's not even seven months and already a good swimmer... it's very early to start him on such 'work'.
Kin has his mad moments (as puppies are want to):
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