First Birthday, Party, Optermism, Domestic Chores:-Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's Take:

Kin is now one year old (as you can see all the partying has tired him out).

Gone are the days when he could sleep under the sofa:

Now he can barely get his nose under there!

He's a bit over 65 kgs (144 lbs). Scale is kind of hard to see from this pic, but when folk see us out they generally say, 'look at that big dog' (most of the time they are referring to Kin).

As with Karma, when he reached one year old he had his first dominance argument. Rudolf was sitting on his head and Rudolf is an Irish Terrier < 20 kgs (44 lbs). Kin decided that he really should stand up, and sort this out... and so started his first dominance 'fight'. No harm done on either side. Rudolf is 11 years old and is used to Kin knowing his place (and surprisingly this was the first time Rudolf has staked this claim!). Karma's first time was defending his pal Xo when Xo provoked a fight with a Huskie/German Shepard mix in Bergen; Karma for the first time of many stepped in as a 'policeman' to stop any further shanangins. Now I'm really hoping that this is how Kin will develop. Having a huge dog who has a tendency towards dominance is not conducive to a relaxing life, so now he's in his 'teens' I'm going to have to watch his development carefully.

On his birthday he was allowed to go in any water he wanted to, which meant that a trip via the local lake was  required to rinse the muck off again!

And obviously now he's sooooooo grown up, he wants a say in where we go on our trips:

Here he's quite happy as he has the illusion of control. (Who's taking who for a walk?!)

 Kin wasn't so convinced with the idea of a party. He did come in and wonder about a bit, but was happiest when the back door was open and he could watch the goings on from this location:

You can just about make out his tongue framed in the door. Party had a theme, which was castaways. Idea is that this theme is easy to do and it breaks the ice between different groups of friends. Some did, many didn't.

Back stories were deemed important. One of the best back stories was by someone who definitely wasn't dressed as a castaway, her's was, "yes, we've just moored the yacht offshore and I had James, bring me across in the launch!"

Now Karma was four years old when I had the last party. He's in most of the pics an he didn't stop socialising until the last person had left (okay Svein slept over, but Karma was used to Svein). When the door closed Karma's job was done, and he went straight to sleep!

It's surprising how different Karma and Kin are. Then again Karma & I lived together for nine years, and Karma had obviously calmed right down in his old age. How much of what he did when he was younger have I forgotten and how much will Kin change as he reaches maturity. He seemed a bit spooked by having so many folk in the house, and really not comfortable; Karma in the same circumstances was completely comfortable but Karma was three years older than Kin and doubtlessly more secure because of those years. Still it's hard not to compare the two.

But like Karma before him,  Kin remains very interested in wood, and this picture demonstrates how optimistic I can be (when I have no choice as the places out of his reach are now filled to capacity). You can probably tell from his expression that he's unlikely to leave this wood alone and so far he hasn't. I need to add substantial amounts of wood (birch) here if I am to have enough for next winter, also need to build a roof over it, if it is to dry out.

Now Karma was highly skeptical of the hoover - and how you see Kin above would not have happened with Karma. Retrospectively thinking I may be partly to blame for this. One day I was hoovering, and my thoughts went along these lines:
-I need to hoover so often because of Karma,
-why don't I just hoover Karma, and save hoovering the rest of the house...
and thus a phobia was born! When the hoover came out, Karma was straight to the back door (I spent many-er hour trying to reverse that bit of high jinx with Karma, pigs ears on the running hoover, all to no avail!).

Kin I have been much more careful of and I'm not sure which is better, as with Kin hoovering can be quite a challenge:

Indeed, he's so blase regarding the hoover that you can even do this:

Sadly you still have to hoover the floors so this didn't prove the labour saving device that I'd dreamt of!

And don't even get me started on how difficult it is to shake out a rug when he's about:

Idiosyncrasies:-Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

Picture is from an aborted paragliding trip - too much wind to fly. Kin is lying in the corner of the room whilst I type this and he's snoring soooooooo loudly that I've had to turn the stereo up or I can't hear it! How come when dogs snore it's cute, but the same doesn't apply to humans!

The large hounds (Great Danes, Irish Wolf Hounds, Scottish Deer Hounds,...) lean. They come up to you and then kind of flop sideways onto you; as they have a high center of gravity and can be up in the 70 kgs region this can have quite an effect on your balance if you're not expecting it. Maybe lots of dogs lean, but you wouldn't really notice it with a terrier! Kin pushes his bum into you, this is owing to the fact that he wants you to scratch it and this seems to be the most direct way to get humans to do his tidings! This facet he shared with Karma.

What he doesn't share is nose butting!

When he wants something he butts it with his nose. He's taken to getting your attention by butting you in the leg/bum and then going up to his leads and butting them. He repeats this cycle until you either tell him to stop or take him out. Now if you think about this a bit, he's 65 kgs (145 lbs) and his nose is in line with his body, so he can get a lot of weight behind it (think police using a battering ram down at waist height, and you are on the right lines!). Lots of folk think that the bigger the dog the harder the job of looking after them. This is mainly a myth but one area where this is undoubtedly true is ignoring them! If a terrier did this to you, you'd just  lift your legs, but it's not so easy with a giant breed with attitude (Kin really does know his own mind but he's a big softy and getting more and more obedient - strange the more we train the more obedient he gets, it's almost like there is a connection here!).

The back door gets this treatment when he wants to go out, s does the front door when he wants to go for a trip. His food bowl gets the same treatment! If it's been left on the floor then he chases it around the floor with his nose, if it's in the rack then the rack gets a 'good' nose butting! And treats in your pockets are by no means exempt from this behaviour!

Doubtless I could get him to stop this if I tried, but it's endearing so I don't want to.

And whilst on the subject of idiosyncrasies, here's a picture of Mel, Rob (of the Eagle flying with Jostein's HG, fame - see earlier post), & Kin. We were checking out the conditions to see if it was possible to fly, notice the large amount of gortex in this picture, wind is oscillating over 7 m/s and the temperature is a balmy 4 degrees C (23 feet/second, 39 deg F). Now Norwegians are famous for wearing sandals and socks... (Mel's Canadian).


Post script note:
To be fair to Rob, it's not unusual in Norway to wear socks and sandals (especially in the office) as it's more comfortable and often you think that you are just nipping out the car for twenty metres or so an find yourself  an hour later still walking through boggy ground... But the full on gortex look, with sandals was just too good an invite not to make fun of!!!

Stair-Master, More Wood, Winter? - Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

Winter paid a visit. Temperature down below freezing, frost on the ground, puddles frozen over, lakes above 100 m (over sea level) with a layer of thin ice, some of the ski centers were looking at starting the snow machines (they did on the other side of the country and three of the centers are opening this weekend). Today the temperature went up by seven degrees centigrade, the wind kicked in and the rain returned. As most of our electricity in this area is generated by hydro-electric power, it means that the electricity should be cheap when there is a lot of rain, sadly this isn't the case as Norway is part of a European energy agreement which means that they sell the electricity abroad, and then when the lakes are  low (mid winter) they then buy back electricity at a high price that is then passed onto the consumers, added to that they increased the 'base rate' for having electricity dramatically.

Thus:

Wood for the winter (next winter, needs one year to dry and has to be cut before Easter, to be used that winter). This and the wood piled alongside the garage is what one ten meter high ash tree looks like when split the traditional way (with an axe). And did my forearms, and shoulders realise something was different! But there is something very satisfying about splitting wood the old fashioned way.

Now ideally Kin should have been sitting out of the way:

But being a Newfie, he likes to be helpful:

And he had his own special way of 'assisting' with the wood stacking:

I think his theory is that if he spreads the wood over the largest area possible then surely it will dry quicker!

All this shifting wood makes him tired, especially when returning to the house, so he likes to have  lie down, and it's quite difficult getting a 65 kg pup moving again. Here you get to see his reflexive jacket, and one of the two bicycle lights (red to port, & green to starboard). He managed to go swimming with them on last night and they still worked afterwards! They were completely immersed in water and have suffered no ill effects... Just to put this in perspective these lights cost 79 NOK for two, my Petzl head torch cost 890 NOK and it would not have survived that treatment!

This is the high point reached on the stairs; Kin's got quite good at getting to this point. He then performs a 37 point turn on the narrowest part of the stairs.

before heading back down the stairs (incidentally if you look at the stairs, the brown strip is sealant, after varnishing the stairs, I made a groove in them, put masking tape either side of the grove, put sealant in the grove, scraped the sealant flat, and then removed the masking tape, this gives a resistance strip so you don't slip on the varnished stairs and was originally done so Karma (my last Newfie) would have purchase when going down the stairs).

Today Kin got further:

And with a treat on the upstairs landing:

He then spent the next fifteen minutes in this position (as obviously turning around on the landing is scary, where as doing a 37 point turn on the stairs is easy...).

Finally he came all the way up. I have clothes drying in one room, a paragliding drying in another, so these doors were closed, so he only had the bathroom and my bedroom to inspect... oh how I've missed muddy face prints on my white sheets! Apparently my bed smells of me!

I tried to show him how to come down the stairs by 'walking' down on hands and knees. Try this, in this orientation the stairs really do seem steep, and blimey is it sore on the knees! I waited 30 minutes before he attempted the arduous journey down... but he did eventually come down! We were on the way out on a walk before this all happened, but I had to go upstairs again before leaving; not only did he follow me up, but he followed me down as well, with hardly any hesitation. Progress :-)

Damn moles... Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

This is a pic of Kin marking his latest 'bone'. This traditionally lasts for about five minutes before he will leave or bury it in the garden.

Now to get the size of a mole in proportion to the size of Kin, an entire family of moles is about the size of Kin's left paw. This being the case, these holes in the garden:

are unlikely to be caused by moles... (Three, pits visible, one bottom left, one top left (by the ball), one just below Kin, there is one more just out of the picture, bottom right, and just for good measures, the wood chips aroun the plum tree have also been excavated...) Strangely on the other side of the fenced enclosure there are no  such holes... what can this mean?!

Food - Kin's take

Kin's take:

I like sitting here, and often lie here, although my human doesn't seem to like it when he's cooking, and often he gets so annoying that I'm forced to move. Surprisingly so far this position has not proved successful for opportunistic eating...

Again this position hasn't merited much opportunistic eating. It's almost like my human doesn't want to share his food with me.

Checking the table afterwards hasn't proved so successful.

And then my human goes and puts food inside a couple of cardboard boxes and gives them to me. Does he have no idea how long this takes to get the food out!

I'm going to have to come up with a better way of training my human.

Stairs, coincidence, bad paws... Nurhan's take

Nurhan's take:

Kin has started venturing up the stairs... sadly I haven't had a camera at the right place at the right time to take a photo, or preferably a video clip, as his efforts are really entertaining. So far his high point is about 3/4 of the way up the stairs, just enough so if he lifts his head up he can see up on the next floor... then he manages a precarious 'three point turn' and goes back down the stairs, it's very bizarre and slightly hilarious! Wonder if this evening he'll manage to do one of the things that I really miss that Karma did:

Karma slept downstairs but once a night he'd do his rounds. You'd hear his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, your body had been conditions to get in the center of the bed (clear of roaming tongues), the bedroom door would crash open, the big head would rest on the edge of the bed, then he'd walk around to the other side of the bed and check there. Once he'd decided that all was good, you'd hear him plodding back down the stairs and then a muted bang as he lay down for the rest of the night. The only change to this schedule was if I was upset (like when I lost my father), then he opened my bedroom door, and the bathroom door (probably to create a draught) and he slept with his head looking in towards me (and there is something so peaceful about a dog snoring).

In a smack in the face by irony, after writing this Kin started to howl in the garden!

Speaking of Karma, both he and I were operated on the same leg in the same year, him first. I'm hoping it's a coincidence but Kin has damage to his pads under his right (stbd) paw, then a week after he got the pad damage, I managed to knock a glass off the kitchen surfaces, went to grab it and broke it on the edge and now I have similar cuts on the palm of my hand (or my right 'paw'), i.e. same paw! I'm going to have a word with Kin to ensure he doesn't do anything else as I'd rather not check to see if this is just coincidence or not!

Wood, more wood, empty buses, computer problems, 65 kgs (confirmed) - Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

Kin helping with computer issues... not entirely true, there is a second box inside the one above and the second box has roast beef in it.

This blog is being written on a new laptop that is fantastically quick, and after two days of setting it up and getting it working just right, it's probably going back to the shop tomorrow. Story behind this laptop is that I went into various shops with a list of requirements, Startit came up with the best price and machine to meet those requirements, so I ordered the machine, before it arrived they rang me and told me that they'ed given me the wrong price, and it almost doubled in price. Not happy but that did bring it into line with similar machines and as I didn't want to have to go around searching again, and it was still within the price range that I'd set, I told them to go ahead with the order (I did check a second time that the machine had 'bluetooth'). Machine arrived on Friday, no DVD drive (as stated in the spec and when I'd asked specifically if it would have)- Now on a 13.6" machine a dvd drive is nice to have, but would not go up in size of machine just to have a dvd drive, not happy but they sold me one at cost for a low price (was thinking of insisting that they gave me one for free, but decided to save myself the aggravation). Just finished installing all sorts of odds and sods on the machine, have it working fine with all data from other machines on and sat down to write this blog. Transferred photos from camera and then tried to bluetooth pics from phone... and it all came to a crashing halt... No bluetooth...

Post script note: Turns out the machine does have bluetooth, it's just very well hidden. My mistake.

I've 'inherited' a Dell printer from an old job, when I lost the work e-mail, I lost the scanner on the printer. Today I spent almost an hour on the phone to Dell support and they were exceedingly helpful at getting the scanner to work; which it does now.

My two favner of wood has now arrived, 1/2 of Oak an 1 1/2 of birch. Kin wasn't so helpful in moving it off the four pallets that it arrived on and putting it in the woodshed. Still he wasn't as 'helpful' as Karma once was... Whilst piling up wood at one end, Karma was busy taking the wood from the other end and randomly stacking it in various parts of the garden. To move/stack the wood took me ~ 5 1/2 hours.

Kin's still mouthing, despite my best efforts to stop him. He doesn't do it to me much, as I'm firm with him, unfortunately as he's so gentle many folk are fine with it.

Still on wood, Jan (above) looks after Kin a lot. He has/had a tree in his garden that was getting too big and he wanted it removed, this tends to be quite expensive in Norway, and I'd mentioned that if I could convince a friend of mine (David) to bring his chainsaw we should be able to cut it down in six to eight hours... David brought his chainsaw, Jan took Kin for a trip and with ladders, ropes, and the chainsaw, ~6 1/2 hours later the 10 m high tree was reduced to a large number of limbs on the ground. David doesn't want to have the hassle of transporting the wood to the island that he lives on, Jan has more than enough wood, so I'm going to take it, split it, and stack it by the garage for next winter. Jan had Kin out for a short while, after that Kin was tied on the other side of the garden, well out of the way of operations, and if he could talk, I'm sure he'd be asking what foolishness I was up to now, up in a tree with some noisy device.

Now we have six months of traffic from the main road being fed into our residential streets, so Statens Vegvesen can build larger bus stops for the bendy buses, that have no one on them, I know this as they have to slow down to negotiate the corner where my house is and I can see how few people they are on the buses. There's plenty to object to with this, but it adds additional danger to Kin if he ever does manage to get lose.

This is Kin 'helping' fold a tarpaulin which was used to protect the wood before it was stacked.

Had Kin to the vet's on Monday as he's still limping on one paw. Vet believes that the limp is caused by a sore on two of his pads, she couldn't find any other problems. This is what I believed but there is always a worry with (especially) a giant breed that there is serious damage and as he was limping for a week, I thought it best to get him checked. He has some salve to put on his pads, but he just looks at the container, and one time he even tried to eat the container, so I've taken to putting it on for him. Weighed him at the vet's he's now 65 kgs (rather than the 67 kgs that I'd estimated).

He saw a new vet this time. Turns out that Kin and I have met her several times before with her dogs, she's very friendly, makes a fuss over him, seems through, and seems to know her stuff. Like this vet. (Take Kin to Stavanger Smådyre klinikk).

Hills, gloves, slow laptops, good authors, evil bitches, - Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

This is Kin in search mode. If you look over his head, you see a lake in the hills behind the large lake below and further back you see a flat area with white bits on it. The flat/white area is Stavanger, where Kin and I live. Folk who fly refer to this as Veraland North, but it's actual name is Kyllesknuten and it's a 40 minute drive from Stavanger. We've paddled kayaks and slept on the islands below, this is a great area and it's easily accessible (if you own a car). Jæren hang og paraglider klub, has an agreement to drive up a farm track , quite high up on the other end of the hill, and then the club built an extra 'road' up from the farm track so that the hanglider pilots could drive up to the South start. This is a ideal place to bring Kin on his first taste of hills, most of the sheep are off the hills now, there was very little climbing to get here, rough terrain and

When I was here earlier on in the year (see post regarding reserve packing), I dropped a glove, I noticed that I'd dropped it just as I was taking off with a paraglider. The black thing in front of Kin is the glove! Despite the ground being covered with snow when I dropped the glove, we managed to find it remarkably quickly. Birds/mice had nibbled at a couple of the fingers and the glove could hardly be termed as usable, but it's good not to leave a trace of where you have been when you've been out enjoying nature, so this bit of human mark has now been removed from the hill.


This could be the last ever post written on this laptop. This laptop has an 'atom' processor, laptop is a 10" Dell Inspiration machine, it can't be upgraded and I'm beginning to refer to it as a 10" Exasperation machine. I love the size, battery life is great, as is the monitor, but the more that I use it, the slower it has got; it's now gotten to the stage where to load a message from hotmail, it takes about 1 minute. Lots of the internet applications actually time out before it's got them up and running (I have a broadband internet connection and no problem with other/work machines). Thus I've been looking at new machines. I'd like to get one from a friend of mine, Colin who runs http://www.ruramet.co.uk/   Colin is a great chap and would set me up a good machine with what I need on it, however he lives in the UK and I live in Norway this causes some problems. Could ask Mads to sort me out another machine, but I haven't talked to him for several months, and he mainly does work systems. So I've been looking around and after sever trips out and trawling through websites, I've found an Acer machine that actually cheaper in Norway than it's equivalent in the UK, and I'm now waiting for one of the local company's to get one in for me to have a look at.

 These are two additional pics of Kin in the hills.

Matt, brought his kids around the other day. We were treated to Eira screaming in his dog house, after she'd gone in there and called Kin. Didn't manage to get a picture of Kin with only his back half sticking out of the dog house with his tail wagging. Every time he lost interest, Eira would wave a ball out of the entrance and call his name. I think Eira is five and about 1/4 of his size. This was rather entertaining; the girl has no fear (not that she needs any with a Newfie).


Isaac is heavier, but:

but still out massed!


Side note on authors, Iain (M) Banks, & Jasper Ffrode, have very different styles but both write wonderfully entertaining books (and I've read all the books that they have published), and I recommend them unreservedly. I would never normally buy a book called, "the last dragon slayer", but as Jasper F wrote it, I gave it a try and I was so glad I did. Another book of his, 'Shades of Gray', was hard work to get into, and I only persevered as I'd enjoyed the other stuff that he's written; but after you got 1/2 way through the book really picked up. The way I first got into reading him was that I was 'accosted' by one of his books at an airport,  "Lost in a Good Book", I bought it and I was, this did for books what the original Matrix film did for films. 


Iain Banks write's fiction under that name and then adds the "M" for sci fi. He has better and worse books. He's very entertaining to read, but he's very dark and you probably wouldn't want him as a neighbour. I'm still grinning after reading his latests Sci fi book!


Call me racist, but generally the language used by American's writing English, tends to be less rich than a British author; this is not so with Ernest Hemingway, who manages to paint a detailed picture with remarkably few words. My only reservation about EH writing is that no one ever taught him the art of, 'a happy ending'. 


Stig Larsson was a huge surprise, crime isn't a genre that I'm particularly interested but these three books really are page turners and once started I couldn't put them down. They are originally written in Swedish, I read them in English and the English translation in still fantastically rich in language, his Millennium trilogy is brilliant and as he's sadly passed away these are his only three books.


Now for a winje and wine: Bitches on heat. In areas where your dogs/bitches are allowed to run off the leads, folk with bitches on heat should not bring there dogs here. I had to point this out to a couple who had their dog on a lead and Kin chased 400 m after her and she took chunks out of his fur, the only way to prevent him going after her was to have him on the lead and the whole point in driving out to somewhere where he can run free is to let him go free. Having words with the owners of the bitch didn't make me feel good.


Yesterday met another one. A woman with three Pointers. She said that the bitch wasn't on heat, but Kin thought differently and I would take Kin's opinion over others (look at the size of his nose, I never knew Karma to be wrong and I doubt Kin is different). First she took her pointer on the lead, now bearing in mind if we use the equivalent of cars a Newfie would be like a heavily loaded Transit van and a Pointer would be like a Lotus Elise; if the dog was frightened then Kin would not have got near her had she left her off the lead. Then she walked away from me with Kin chasing her dog on the lead, then the evil woman pushed Kin sideways down a 1/2 m drop, three times. I take her point that she was trying to protect her dog; although having her dog on the lead was dumb, and walking away from me was doubly dumb- and doubt she meant to hurt Kin, but pushing a giant breed dog down a drop sideways is just evil. Kin has had a slight limp since so I am having to be careful and only go on short walks. This is the first time that he's limped and I'm hoping that the evil bitch (and I am referring to the two legged kind), hasn't caused him a permanent injury. Examined him and can't find anything he obviously reacts to but I think that he's got a slight limp on his front left  leg. Hopefully this will pass in a couple of days, if not I'll have to go to the vets and keep my fingers crossed that it's nothing lasting. a lot of the time I don't like people very much.


Lastly, this advert has appeared on bus shelters around Stavanger:

And I overheard the following conversation: "what's that an advert for?"
'Who cares!' Said with a big grin... couldn't agree more ;-P