Yet Another Swedish Show Champion

Another one of us have become Swedish Show Champion today. It is Kenny, our dear and beautiful friend who was born and bred in Japan, who managed to take the Swedish Champion title. He was a Japanese Show Champion already and he was placed in group and show finals in Japan. You would think a dog with this background from the home country of the breed would be successful in Sweden. The truth is far from that. Swedish judges are used to the standard of Swedish Shiba Inus, which is not bad, but far from the Japanese standard. Well, now Kenny is a champion anyway. Nevertheless, he was beaten by Calvin and my brother Jiro in the competition for best male. This is not surprising, considering what I have stated above, and considering that both Calvin and Jiro are very handsome Shiba Inus too.

After a Short Break

I have granted myself some vacation from blogging the last couple of days. Daniel has been away for some days, so I and the other dogs have had to take a little more responsibility than usually for guarding the house and yard, especially those hours when Paula has been away too. We have been successful, nothing has happened. However, I thought I could take a break from blogging these days. Daniel is back home now and things are returning to normal. Among the normal things are my daily blog posts. Another normal thing during the summer is dog shows, some of us are going to yet another dog show tomorrow. This could be fun.

Tags

Blogger suggests that I have tags for my blog posts. I never have, though. Today, the suggestions were scooters, vacation, and autumn. I have no relation to scooters whatsoever, and as a pet dog, I never have vacations. Autumn is still far away. Thus, none of these tag suggestions were suitable for my blog. However, as the resourceful blogger that I am, I managed to write a short blog post about them anyway. Maybe there will be suggestions in the future which suits me better. If so, I may use them, we will have to see. So far, I have not seen the use of tags.

Going Home from the Show

I went home from the show in the same cage as Calvin, April was with us there as well. (We always go in cages on road trips, for traffic safety reasons.) Calvin's prizes were left on the door to the cage. It was the red and yellow prize for Best of Breed, blue and yellow for CC, red and green for the Champion title, and orange for Best of Group-Reserve. While I am happy for Calvin and the prizes he won, I felt a little awkward, hidden from my place in the limelight. Just look at the picture.

Consequences of Rain

We had a lot of rain on our way home from the dog show yesterday. However, I would never have guessed that it would be so much rain that the road we went by would be closed down this Sunday evening. We went by road 50, part of which goes directly between our home city of Örebro to the small community of Alfta where the show ground was. Between Grängesberg and Klenshyttan in Dalecarlia, the road is now closed off because of the rain. All the traffic is re-routed into smaller roads. The Swedish Road Administration believes that the road will open again tomorrow morning. The dog show was a two day show, we were lucky that our breed group was yesterday. I would not have wanted to go on a re-routed tour down smaller roads, especially since road 50 is not very big in the first place.

Until the next dog show in Alfta, I hope road 50 will be better. I know this is hardly going to happen. There is not enough tax money going to the roads in Sweden, and mending or rebuilding roads take a lot of time. I can still hope, though.

A New Show Champion

Calvin, father of my pups, has aquired proof today that he was worthy of becoming their father. He was showed at a national kennel club show in Alfta, Hälsingland, and became a show champion. This title will show up in new pedigrees of the pups to whom we are parents and any pups that they may get. I was a champion already when we got the pups. One of my requirements for a father was actually a champion title, but I consulted with Paula and Daniel and we agreed that Calvin would become a champion in the future. Today, he proved us right. He has made me and our pups proud.

Beautiful Roads

When you go to a lot of dog shows, you see many kilometres of roads. This is because most dog shows are far away from home and the most convenient way of getting there is by car. Roads can be of different standard, good standard is naturally the most comfortable to go by. There are also differences in how beautiful different roads and their surroundings are. A trip down a beautiful road is, of course, a more pleasant experience than a trip down an ugly road. We are therefore pleased that the Swedish Road Administration has an annual prize for the most beautiful road opened the last year. The 2009 nominees are now chosen. There are thirteen candidates from all across the country and of different kind. Judging from the pictures I have seen, my favourite is Road 87 (candidate no. 3 in the page I have linked to). We will have to see which road wins the prize.

A Fox?

Daniel claims he saw a fox running across our lawn this evening. I do not know if I believe him. None of us dogs where out in the yard at the time, witnessing the fox outside the fence. Would a fox not stay away from the scents of all of us close by, or would it not care? I hope it would care and would stay away. Foxes are not the same species as we, but they hunt for more or less the same prey. We want that prey to ourselves in our lot. I told Daniel that if I would have been outdoors and seen the fox, I would have barked at it to make it run away. Daniel just told me he thought it was lucky I was not outside. He is more concerned about not disturbing the human neighbours than protecting the lot. However, the human neighbours respect the borders to our lot, that fox obviously did not - if indeed it was there.

RIP Michael Jackson