Expectations - Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

Now Newfies aren't the correct dog if you want to take long trips in the mountains, especially with snow... but as he's approaching the 18 month mark, and his bones should be strong enough to take short mountain trips, I decided yesterday to take him with me and get him to go well with folk on skis. This wasn't a complete success!


How we experience life has to do with expectations; often we experience wonderful things but because of our expectations we do not enjoy them as much as we should. I love skiing, and next to powder snow, Easter Snow (normally grainy balls, that really hurt when you fall in shorts), is great for top tours. My vision was getting Kin up to the top of a smallish hill and then having fantastic downhill blasting with smooth turns on lovely snow to play on... the reality was somewhat different...

As soon as we got on the snow, Kin took great delight in rolling around, tangling himself in the lead, which isn't so easy to untangle him from when you are on skis. - This wasn't that annoying, mainly owing to the first walk of the day Kin found the remains of a one time grill that some evil folk had left in a nature area near my house, and as it's a nature area they felt compelled to leave the grill and the fish heads, bones that they had grilled, Kin promptly rolled in these and did have a distinctly fishy smell for several hours.


 Also we have to ski through a hut area to get to the hill that I wanted to ski on; we have a running joke that the one time you see Norwegians on skis, is Easter, and yes folk were out in force. Added to that Kin wanted to sniff everything, having a 70 kg dog running behind you, whilst you are on skis, with the lead connected to you at waist level can have a rather destabilizing effect.

I had to keep him on the lead until we were clear of people as he was quite keen on meeting and greeting folk. Once clear of the tracks and with a hill to ourselves, I attached a running lead - this is basically a ~five meter long lead, that he trails behind him, theory being he's easier to catch if I have to and if he's about to go over anything that could affect his longevity, I can grab the lead and stop him.


Now last Saturday it turned out that he did get a cut on his front left leg, caused by getting in the way of the metal edges on the sides of the skis - sadly this didn't lead to any form of prudence:

and his preferred place was lying in front of you! Which was merely problematic when going up hill, but when coming downhill caused several wipe-outs so as not to hurt the little chap again.


Now if I had the idea of going up into the hills with my dog and enjoying the weather, yesterday would have been an awesome day.

But despite trying to teach him to go behind, even throwing meat behind me, and fending him off in front with the ski poles, I couldn't stop him from getting in the way, when he couldn't stop me by going in front, he ran behind me and tried to grab my legs with his mouth, he only mouthed, but the meaning/intent was clear.

Don't be fooled by this picture, food was involved in order to get him to stay there, and the skis are off! Behind him you can see some turns (we had the hill to ourselves which is quite gratifying when you look up and can trace your line by your ski tracks; and the locations where Kin managed to 'shoot me down').


When we descended onto less steep ground, I had to shed the skis altogether, or risk cutting his legs again as here I had to have him on the lead (owing to people), and he kept crossing in front of me, so we had to walk the last 1 1/2 km to the car on lovely skiable snow.


Now I had a glider in the car as well, and was wondering about taking a flight in Hunnedalen, before driving home. It would have taken me about an hour to walk up to the launch spot. I could keep Kin tied to the car, go up, fly for a bit and land in the car park next to the car (I've landed here before but that was in a Sea King SAR helicopter... but that's another story). But decied that I didn't want to leave him by himself, and elected to drive back via our (Jæren Hang og Paraglider klubben) main flying area Gjesdal as there were bound to be folk there, and I leave him at the clubhouse while I am flying and there are people around to keep him company - or at least that's the plan - on approaching I couldn't see anyone in the air. One HG (hanglider) derigging on the winter landing... streamer whipping around. 


Turned out that everyone had gone home or was done for the day. Geoff a HG pilot, kindly offered me a lift up top (so I could fly down and leave the car at the bottom), drove up; now Geoff has a 2007 ish Subaru Forester, and unlike my 2009 Outback, it does have a low range switch, which meant that he could drive me all the way to the take off without frying the clutch. The top streamer was whipping around. Wind was averaging around 7.5 m/s, and going up to 9 m/s. Great for HG, not good for PG. Could have waited for the sun to drop lower and then the wind would have come down into limits but then there would be no thermics and no wind lift so would end up being a five minute flight, after waiting 30 minutes to an hour... so Geoff kindly drove me back down to my car/clubhouse were Kin was quite happy to see me.


All in all it was a great day, but was out of kilter with my expectations.

Does have the side effect that today Kin is whacked:

In the last two hours he's moved from here, to 

here!


It's raining now, so the rest of my day is going to be spent cleaning (see black on wall above his bum-this is on all the walls) or continuing building a fence around the patio...

Start of Easter, Cabin Recon- Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

 Easter in Norway is a big event, in as folk take time off and official holidays are 1/2 day this coming Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, & the Monday off; many folk take the whole week off. David (see pic below), Kin, & I (above pic), got skiing on Saturday. The interesting thing here is how little snow there is this year compared with last year. Last year the road below this peak had ~ 1.6 m of snow at the same time (see posts, 

Keeping track of your human is a full time job - Kin

and see post:

Ferries & out doors life - Nurhan's take:

This year there is way less snow. Also interesting is that we normally ski in areas that areon high ground with high ground all around; you can clearly see from the photo that wereally are on the edge of the snow limit, the view over my right shoulder is a NW direction looking out to the sea and the land drops - and spring has arrived; looking the other way terrain is higher, and fighting it's rear-guard action against the arrival of spring.

Wasn't a long ski trip, but in places good fun as the snow was soft enough to blast down and turn - although the 'natural' dog hazard was a bit of a problem. Kin likes to run into you, now if the slope is steep enough (and you are going down) he doesn't have a hope of keeping up, otherwise he'll run sideways into you, or try to grab your ankles... now this tends to not only be annoying but can be quite dangerous, as the skis that we use are called 'fjell-ski' and they have metal edges - or to put it another way, think four long knives, so you have to be very careful not to cut the little chap's legs... he has no such worries as he tries 'T boning' you.

He also has a habit when you are going up hill of running in front of your skis and then stopping, which can be 'entertaining' as you try to herring bone up a slope.

No clue how to cure him of the above issues.

By the time we got back to the car he was very tired - and to put this in perspective, this was a really short ski, the snow was hard, so he didn't sink, and normally we would be skiing for not less than four hours, this trip was maybe an hour - this is one good reason for not taking him on the longer trips, another is that if anything happened, it would be really difficult to get him back to the road/car, and the third is that look at him this kind of trip is on ther right side of what he considers fun, I don't believe that he'd enjoy a longer trip with steeper downhills.

Below pic is of David.

Behind the highest ski tip in the photo is the sea.

Digging master classes, Chamonix, Grooming, and the results of Dog Yoga - Nurhan's take

Nurhan's take:

Don't they look innocent, neither one is paying any attention to the basket ball, that you can only see the top of, on what used to be a flat, green lawn! Zorro (in the foreground) has been conducting digging 'master classes' in the garden, what he lacks (by comparison to Kin) in size of digging apparatus (paws) he more than makes up for with enthusiasm. Kin merely moves the soil from the hole with his huge paws (and he likes to store plenty of it in his fur to deposit in areas where it won't be 'noticed' - such as the house...), but Zorro goes at the digging with wild abandonment; the soil arcing, gracefully up in the air, to the height of several Zorro's; this causes Kin to come over and watch as it's quite a spectacle! So when one happens to glance out of the window, it looks for all the world that Zorro is holding a Master Class and Kin is paying attention...


To give the grass a chance, I'm in the process of building a fence around the patio, so I can keep him on the patio for two weeks and let the grass grow!


Now 'every' year, we have a boy's trip to Chamonix; I've missed this trip twice since 1993, once as I was offshore, and once last year as Kin had just come to live with me and this was in his most formative age.

This year I was back. Now this is the only photo I took whilst I was there. This is a reasonably steep off piste section and my legs have melted. Over the years we've taken photos, we've taken video, and it never reflects what we actually ski, gradient, speed, feelings wise, so this year we mainly didn't bother to take pics... but we did come up with the Vole grading system; it's a well know phenomena with skiing, that when a person makes a jump they invariably think that their jump can be measured in meters, when realistic measuring the jump by the standard height of a Vole (or fraction there of) is a more realistic measure, and thus the vole grading system was invented! We had amazing weather. There was plenty of snow (which was good, as it didn't snow at all whilst we were there); but we had temperatures below freezing at night but by lunch time at 2000 m, temperature was up around 16 deg C with no wind, so t-shirts sitting outside in the sun having lunch :-) (and bragging about how many Vole's, Simon, Svein, and I were claiming).


Now Kin, although a boy, wasn't up for coming on this boy's trip. I had this conversation with per:


"Per, don't just answer this question, think about it and give me a ring back in a couple of days: You said that you wouldn't mind looking after Kin, if I go away, well I'm going to Chamonix in week 9 can you..."


'Yes'


"He's a lot of hassle, and he'll eat things."


'Yes'


"Are you sure."


'Yes'


It was with very mixed feelings that I dropped Kin off at Per's; not because I was worried about Per looking after Kin (he's had dogs before, he's known Kin from when I picked him up - Kin, not Per! And he cooked liver for Kin when I dropped him off!) But the longest I've left him before was overnight.


Per and Kin got on really well. When Svein, and I swung round on the way home from the airport, Per had moved the patio heater into the living room, so that he could have the patio door open so Kin could saunter in and out at will!


Kin had gone to bed when we dropped round:

Now Karma would jump up an be all over me when I came back from Chamonix, offshore, or elsewhere. Xo (another Newfie, that a friend, Pål had), would sulk and turn his back on Pål (which is only hilarious, if it's not your dog). Kin was somewhere in between, I think he had an internal battle over being peeved that I'd left him, but happy that I'd come back!


Really grateful to Per for looking after the little chap, and treating him so well - thanks again Per.




At the moment Kin is molting:

this pile is literary five minutes with a brush! Karma shed the whole year round. So far Kin's shed the whole year round but now he's having a major molt. He did lose his puppy coat way early (Karma got his adult coat at about the age Kin is now); so I'm wondering if this is a one off molt to do with the puppy coat coming so early, or if he will molt once or twice a year.


In February, with snow on the ground, and ice on the lakes, I took two ticks off him! Never found ticks before in such conditions. Took one off him today, so have put the tick drops on him today - this is several weeks earlier than normal.




We've also been looking at cabins, we actually bid on the one, who's roof I'm standing on - but didn't get it.

Kin has taken up dog yoga:

 Not sure if the furniture is required for this position, but judging by the snoring this is (surprisingly) a comfortable position - one he managed to hold, right up until I took this opportunity to try to groom his stomach and the inside of his back legs...




The weather has taken a turn for the better with several good weather days, which means flying. Some of the flying sites Kin can come to. This is coast hang at Reve.

 At the local clubs main flying place, Gjesdal, he's normally tied up next to the club house, most of the regular pilots know him and keep an eye on him, if not take him for walks. Here May is holding him (hat, with back to camera), Arvid (Mr President), is to her left, Dag is behind, and Per (who looked after him for a week, so he gets a special welcome, which they both enjoy) is behind Kin looking at his phone - and yes they are all standing in the middle of the road! 

Me, I'm packing my wing up... I landed close to the fence that's on the edge of the green behind them, lovely landing right next to the steps... lovely that is until Arvid took great delight in telling me how the fertilizer spreader (i.e. cow crap) had gone very slowly up the road yesterday, and that's what the lovely smell was! 

B-Person, & How to Make your Human Feel Useful - Kin's take:

Kin's take:

Now I'm definitely more of a 'B' type 'person'. Here I am trying to snooze whilst my human is trying to get me out on a trip, at some un-godly hour. Try as I might I can't convince him to go back to bed. I try strategically blocking the stairs. I snore contentedly, but all to no apparent avail, he seems dead set on this perverse activity of getting up whilst most living things are quite rightly sleeping.


However I have noticed that once I do get up, and go out, he seems to be in quite a hurry, and great entertainment can be had from randomly sniffing things every five meters. Now you might expect my human to get angry, but I've figured out a way to make him feel good. Get him to let you off the lead, and throw a ball. Run away with the ball, and hide it. He'll walk away expecting you to follow and give him the ball. Follow him and when about 200 m away from the ball, turn round, rush back to the ball's location as though your life depended on it. Now if you do this convincingly enough, your human should follow you. And now for the trick, make out that you can't find the ball and allow your human to find the ball. This not only extends the length/time of the walk, but will allow your human to feel useful, which will please them. Then when you get back you can go back to sleep un-molested by your human - unless food is being put out and then obviously one must go and investigate the offering.

Zorro with the squeaky bark, Kin's take:

Kin's take:

Hello, been playing in the snow, don't tell my human but have been digging in the garden as well... My human is spending time with Zorro's human, which means that Zorro and I get a lot of time to play together which is mostly fine by me...

Although sometimes it can get all a bit much:

And I just want to lie down for awhile and

roll in the snow.


Zorro had a trip somewhere, where he fell asleep and when he woke up he was barking in a higher octave and had a huge cone on his head, it was rather funny but I did feel a little bit sorry for him.


I had a trip to the vet, I had much merriment as they tried to get me onto the scales, in the end it took three of them to get most of me onto the scales, although I did manage to get my tail off, apparently I weigh 69.5 kgs, which apparently means that I've grown since this time last year.

Can't say that I've noticed the difference, feel the same to me!

Snow, strong winds, happy dog :-) Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

Kin, not too keen on skiing, but loves the snow. This can cause some issues when going for trips as he's quite likely just to lie down:

in the snow and even better is if he gets to roll round for a bit.


Not so useful when you are in a hurry before work. Nor when you are clearing snow and he leaps into the piles of snow with wild abandon and flailing paws!

Today, we had high winds, cold temperature, and snow, this is the worst condition for keeping roads open, as the snow tends only to be stirred up by a snow plough's passing. Kin & I went out to Hellestø beach, as we thought that we wouldn't encounter any closed roads or stuck cars (one problem with having a four wheel drive car with studded tyres is if there is a car stuck and blocking the road, you still get stuck!... which led to Friday's trip to work, by bike takes ~30 minutes, normally in rush hour the car takes roughly the same as the bike, but with fresh snow on Friday, with an underlying layer of ice in places that was then invisible, I stupidly took the car, 1 hr and 40 minutes later... ).


Today driving by a snow plough, up wind of us and suddenly the world becomes white... as the snow is stirred up by the snow plough only to form back across the road after it passes! As these are coast roads, they don't generally have snow markers and in places the snow had drifted across the road to over a meter deep, light snow, keep driving and the car should push through... assuming that you are still driving on the road! People actually stuck in the car park at the beach!

Walking in the dunes, in places the snow was thigh deep, in other places the snow was blown clear. {Above pic is taken on the beach on the way back to the car just at the tide mark, only a dusting of snow on the beach}.

And Kin loved it, running and rolling in the snow.


Car was drifted in when we got back to it, but managed to drive out without having to resort to the shovel in the ski box.


On passing the end of the runway at Sola (which has the distinction of being the World's first airport ever captured by paratroopers, when the German's invaded Norway in April 1940), viability cleared to show six of the huge runway clearing snow ploughs coming along the runway in a gallant effort to open the runway. On passing the other end of the runway (downwind end), the snow ploughs with the snow blowers were having a better time of it.

Kin's also taken to following me up the stairs in my house and sleeping upstairs when I am, which led to him waking me up by snoring loudly at the end of the bed!


Suspect Jan is taking him for a good lunch walk whilst I'm at work, as on returning one day, was wondering where he was when I came home, looked out the side in the kennel, looked out the back in the garden, and then heard him yawn, followed by getting to his paws and his heavy steps coming down the stairs!


Although he can be annoying being upstairs when he tries 'assisting' as I'm trying to go out, yes what's better than having a Newfie trying to assist as you try to iron a clean white shirt!

Snow, Ice, Cabins, (evil) bureaucrats- Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

Last weekend Kin and I went looking at cabins. Now there's several motivations for getting a cabin, a big one is that I love to ski and be out in nature, Kin (like almost all dogs) loves to be in the snow, but he really can't handle long ski trips, and to be honest I wouldn't want to take a dog on the trips that we like to do. But when not doing top tours or skiing into cabins it would be good to be able to take a ski trip for a couple of hours. Having Kin there is more organisation involved with going skiing in the winter. Having a cabin makes it easier to take ski trips. Also there is an economic consideration, in Norway you get a rebate on your income tax for the more money you owe, debt free, my income tax approaches 50%, with a huge loan this drops down into the thirties! Bizarre but true. So looking at a reasonable (low priced cabin) actually works out as a good investment for mind, body, and economics.


Last time Kin & I were at Gilja was March last year: http://kin-newfie.blogspot.com/2011/03/kins-first-ski-trip-nurhan.html at that Kin was coming up to being four months old. Now Gilja is a bit on the low side to get good snow for most of the season, but it's a no through road, and the cabins are not too far to walk from the road, which is a consideration with a young/old Newfie and also when there is deep snow. Conditions at Gilja on Sunday were amazing, ~ 40 cms of fresh, beautiful powder snow. I say beautiful if you are on skis, if you are a long haired, giant breed like a Newfie, you are not so keen on this.

 As the going does tend to get quite tough.

And then when you do get to the cabin, you're not even allowed inside!




My criteria for a cabin runs like this:
- snow in winter;
- no through road/little traffic; 
- close enough to the road that Kin can make it to the cabin especially in advancing years;
- not so close that he's likely to play with the traffic;
- something to do there in summer (climbing, paddling, flying, fjell running);
- short drive 1 1/2 hrs max, otherwise you limit the use that you'll make of the cabin;
- preferably no ferries to get there;
- close to water so Kin (and I ) can swim in the summer;
- proximity of neighbouring cabins;
- allocated parking-as this can be an issue with snow cover;
- time/duration of direct sunlight;
- cost is obviously an issue, I'm down at the affordable end as opposed to the GDP of a small to medium South American Country end;
- condition of cabin;
- development plan for the area;
- and for an owned cabin, water, sewage, and electricity could be nice.


Norway has a very 'liberal rule' when it comes to dogs, they have to be on the lead in all of Norway from April to September, and in some areas, this is extended to all year round, this is also a large consideration as the fewer folk around and the less sheep in the summer, the more option your dog has to be a dog (as opposed to a bored, animal limited by the owner).


Kin's run like this:
- food;
- sleep;
- play.

 The plan was to go and have a look at two cabins, however, Kin went on strike and we ended up returning to the car - talking of which, there were so many folk there that parking was an issue, the normal parking areas hadn't been ploughed (as this kind of snow here so early on in the season is quite rare), and lots of folk weren't too considerate, which did put a damper on the day before leaving the car.

 Thus the car was parked down the hill after forcing through an area that had been ploughed prior to the weekend's snow. Had been following the weather forecast and it was predicted to switch between snow and rain for the last four days, so the snow should have been compacted, however as all paraglider pilots will tell you in this part of the country, the weather forecast lies, and given the snow it's been below freezing for the last few days of snow fall and thus the great conditions for skiers, and the not so great for giant hairy breeds!

And I forgot the wax for his paws:

which given the conditions led to ice bits forming not just on his coat but in between his toes and pads, no harm done this time, but can't have been comfortable for the little chap.


So on the way back we stopped off at Bråstein so he could swim. Drop 400 meters and the paths become compacted ice, which was so great.

Still this is quite an effective way to remove ice from between the paws... however it does tend to lead to:

ice forming on the coat after the 30 minute walk/skid/fall, back to the car.

Talking of the car, being diabetic I have to get a form from the doctor to say that I am okay to drive, in order to renew my driving license; my last license was a 10 year license, my diabetes is unchanged, but a group of (evil) bureaucrats* have decided that the maximum license for diabetics is five years, so every five years I have to spend 1/2 a day between doctor, and going into Statensvegvesen, and spending 700 kr+ transport costs to renew my license, and despite having had an offshore medical for over ten years, never having had any problems with diabetes offshore, the (very evil) bureaucrats have decided to cause me all sorts of problems renewing my medical, this is causing me lots of time, stress, money, and aggravation and naturally 'it's no one's fault'; there are far too many folk in this country with time on their hands which they seem dedicated to making life hard for other people (and the really irritating thing is my tax money pays for them!), still as the concentration camp guards said during the second world war, 'just following the regulations, and doing my job.'




* is there any other kind of bureaucrat?


Reference one of the greatest lies in the world:


I'm from the government/Commune/... I'm here to make things better!