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: