This Year Is Soon Over

This year is soon over. Once again, I have to say that this blog has not been quite daily this year, despite its name. I always have the goal to blog at least once a day, and if I do not one day, there may be two blog entries another day. Still, there will certainly not be one blog entry for every day this year. There is no use writing a blog entry just for the sake of making the statistics better, I want to have something to say that it at least somewhat interesting. Well, hopefully, the blog will be even better next year. There is always room for improvement. Stay tuned, and you will see.

Digits of the Year

This year is soon over, and we enter the year 2013. This happen to be the first year since 1987 that is written with four different numerical digits. This was very long time ago, especially from a dog perspective, way before even Mum was born. This little piece of trivia actually has no meaning, but as is the case with many trivia, it is rather fun to know.

A Mostly Happy End

Earlier in December, the animal protection authorities raided a small flat in the village Ljusnarsberg north of our home city Örebro. The flat was just 50 square metres, and 27 adult dogs and 15 pups lived there in great misery. They had not been properly taken care of for a long time, and the flat was covered with feces.

It looks like 42 of the dogs will have no trouble getting new, loving homes. However, eight of the adult dogs where in such a bad mental state that they had to be put down.

It is horrible what some dogs have to go through in life. Humans can be so mean. This really shows the need for animal protection agencies. I am thankful that they exist. In my mind, they are one of the essential things in any civilised society. Luckily, in this case, most dogs were saved, even though some were not. It was a mostly happy end to this story.

Uncontroversial Speech Sparks Controversy

My Dad's father was from Belgium, so I have always taken some interest in that country. They have an interesting human population, about half of which speak Dutch, while the other half speak French. Some humans want there to be a conflict between these language groups. The main uniting factor between the two groups of different languages is the King, who stands neutral between them.

In the northern, Dutch speaking part, there is a populistic political party who wants this part to break free from the southern, French speaking part, because they say they would do better economically without the French speakers. In the King's annual Christmas speech this year, the King warned people for populistic political messages and to search for scapegoats in the current bad economy. This made the leader of that populistic political party mad, even though the King did not mention him or his party.

I believe that if you are a populist political leader, you should not be mad about comments against populistic parties. You should, instead, explain why you are right and your opponents are wrong. If you are just gettng mad, it is as if you cannot defend your politics. If you cannot defend your politics, are they any good? I think not.

Thus, the King's speech sparked controversy, but I believe it was uncontroversial. Anyone who speaks out against populism is usually right, and the King of the Belgians was right.

Boxing Day

Hello, Peanut here!

I was curious of the fact that the day after Christmas day is called Boxing day in English. I was promised to write something about this in the blog, but I could never find a conclusive answer as to why the day is called Boxing day. This is why there was no blog entry yesterday, so the fault for that is mine.

There seem to be many competing theories on the origin of the name. Karstuhl even said many of the theories may be correct, but I am not sure if she is pulling my leg or if she really means that.

One theory is that, on Boxing day, you could put gifts to the poor in boxes sitting outside churches. Another theory is that servants used to have the day after Christmas free, to go home to their families, and that they used to get boxes of gifts from their employers to bring home with them. In Britain, tradesmen later used to collect Christmas boxes of money or presents the first weekday after Christmas.

Whatever the origin may be, I think it is easier in Swedish. The name "annandag jul" simply means "Second day of Christmas". You do not have to have a more complicated name than that.

Christmas Is Nice

Hello, Peanut here!

Last week, I wrote in this blog about my concerns for my first Christmas. It turned out I need not have worried. Christmas is a great thing. We got extra ratios of food and we got candy. Everyone was in a friendly Christmas mode. Today is Christmas Day, and Christmas is far from over. There are a lot of good days of Christmas yet to come, this and next week. Still, I look forward to next year's Christmas Eve.

Rudolph and Bullying

Hello, Karstuhl here!

There is one thing I do not understand about the lyrics of the Christmas song Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer: why the bullies changes their minds.

The song is, as most of you certainly know, about the reindeer Rudolph, who is bullied by other reindeer because he has a shiny, red nose. Then Santa Claus comes along and asks Rudolph to guide his sleigh, which results in the bullies turning around and starting to love Rudolph.

As far as I know, bullies do not usually change their minds about their victim because an authority figure comes along and gives the victim an important task. It is more to the contrary: they tend to bully their victim even more, certainly behind the back of the authority figure, now also claiming he is a kiss-up to the authority figure. The authority figure in the song is, of course, Santa.

I can think of two explanations. Either the bullies say they love Rudolph just when Santa is around - or they say they love Rudolph with a great deal of sarcasm. This is, however, nothing that is expressly revealed in the song, so I am still puzzled by the lyrics.

If any of the readers of this blog has a good explanation, please leave a comment!

Christmas Eve

We have had a nice Christmas Eve at home. I hope most dogs around the world has had the same. We can celebrate Christmas with our humans, because we are part of human society. Merry Christmas!

Prepared

All my gifts are bought, wrapped, and ready. The house is cleaned, candy made, and food purchased. There is no more need to stress, now I can look forward to Christmas. I wish you all a very merry Christmas!

The World Will Survive

Humans often think too much. When I write this, I mean that humans often draws too many conclusions of very little evidence. They figure out a lot of thing based on too little facts. A common trait with humans is that they always want to know what the future will look like, and many humans thus take a little evidence and draws a lot of conclusions about the future from that evidence.

Today is the last day of an epoch in the old Maya calendar. This epoch has gone on for many thousands of years. Some humans have understood this to be a prediction of the end of the world. In truth, this epoch is just followed by another, equally long epoch. According to one Maya "ajkij", it is even wrong to say that this long epoch is ending today, the right day is a few years from now.

I wish humans would be a little less concerned about the future, and certainly about the possible future end of the world. They could learn something from us dogs. We live in the present, thus we enjoy each day to its fullest potential. A little planning is good, but it is not wise to be so preoccupied with what might happen tomorrow that you forget to enjoy the good things that happen today.

Christmas Gift

We visited the veterinary hospital today. It was I, Auntie Linni, Paula, and Daniel. Auntie Linni did not like to go there, it reminds her of veterinary care, which she does not fancy. We were not there because anybody of us required any veterinary care, though. The object was to deliver a little gift and a Christmas card from all of us dogs at Kennel Aangenaam to the staff at the hospital. This is just to show our appreciation of all the great care that we and our pups get there. You can hardly be too kind to these people, upon which we rely. We wish they get a merry Christmas and a happy new year, even though we actually hope not to meet them very much.

Cleaning

Auntie Linni and I cleaned the house today. It needs to look Good for Christmas. Paula helped, of course. It is always nice to have a clean house, Do not Think we are of a different opinion because we are dogs. Dogs like it clean. There are instances, however, when our definition of clean is different from that of humans'.

Another Great Japanese-American Has Left Us

My US Champion Mum and other Shiba Inus in the USA are not the only great Japanese-Americans there are. Not everyone are dogs, there are humans as well. One of these left us yesterday: US Senator Daniel Inouye.

Senator Inouye had been a member of Congress since Hawaii was admitted as a State in the Union in 1959, and has served as Senator since 1963. He was a war veteran, decorated with the Medal of Honor, the highest US military medal, since he destroyed a Nazi bunker in Italy during the Second World War, losing an arm in the process.

Our thoughts go to the late Senator's family.

One Week To Go

Hello, Peanut here!

It is now one Week left to something called Christmas Eve. Everybody is looking forward to it. Well, everybody except me. I do not know what to expect, this being my first Christmas. It is supposed to be some kind of party with a lot of food, which sounds promising. There might also be candy and new toys. It is just that there is also talk about giving gifts to the ones you love, but what shall I give them? I have to Think this over, I am all new to this. As long as I am this unsure, I just cannot look forward to Christmas the way the others do. I guess it will be easier in future years, when I have been around for this holiday before.

Abe Won

Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party won the general election in Japan today. Congratulations to him!

Mr. Abe has said he will strengthen the Japanese military. This might be necessary to counter China, but he will surely receive critique if he goes through with this. I can see why, in the historic perspective, but I would not agree. The limits on Japan's military were understandable after the Second World War, but now, Japan is a stable democracy close to the communistic dictatorship China which constantly tires to expand its power.

We will see what happens now. I hope that Japan will get more stable politics.

Christmas Greetings

We put our Christmas greeting cards in a mailbox this morning. According to the information from Posten AB (Royal Swedish Mail, ltd), they would reach their destinations in Sweden before Christmas Eve, if mailed no later than the 16th of December.

When the cards where already in the box, though, we realised it is noted on the front of this box that Posten is not servicing this box on Sundays. Daniel said that if they claim you can mail the Christmas cards on the 16th, they have to give this guarantee to all cards mailed before midnight tonight. This would mean that they would deliver all Christmas cards they get when emptying mailboxes tomorrow before Christmas Eve. I and the other dogs remained sceptical. Daniel is a lawyer and knows what guarantees of certain dates normally means by law, but we fear that Posten have their own, special rules on this subject.

Well, if you get a Christmas card from us before Christmas Eve, please let us know!

General Election Today

Today is election day. Not in Sweden, but in the home country of the Shiba breed: Japan. This is important. Japan is a great power and needs to be strong, not just for the Japanese dogs and people, but to counter the growing power of the dictatorship in mainland China.

The main contestants to become prime minister is former PM Shinzo Abe of the LDP and the incumbent Yoshihiko Noda of the DPJ. The polls seem to indicate that the LDP will return to power. Still, it might be that no party gets a majority of its own, so there might still be turmoil in Japanese politics in the years to come.

I will comment more after the election, so stay tuned.

New Show

It is a new dog show this weekend. I am not going, since I was at the vet this week and have a quarantine. It is sad, but true. I feel alright, but you have to obey the rules.

Fights in Parliament

Some say dogs can be overly aggressive towards other dogs. Well, humans can be overly aggressive towards other humans. War aside, there are nowadays democratic forums like parliaments, where political disputes are supposed to be solved through careful examinations, debate and votes. One would think humans who rather fight with words than fists would seek to become members of parliament. Nevertheless, in the parliament of Ukraine, fist fights have recently occurred more than once. It would be comical, if it would not be true. Now it is more like a tragedy. I hope no dogs were hurt in the fights.

Dental Work

I went to the veterinarian today to take care of a broken tooth. It has been broken for a while, but I did not get any time with the veterinarian until today. It is nice finally to have this source of pain taken away. Veterinarians are among the best humans there are, really.

Mum has been without one of her teeth for many years, so perhaps this is the beginning of a family tradition. Of course, my dear daughter Karstuhl hopes it is not so. For her sake, I hope so too.

An Imaginary Friend

You usually hear of children having imaginary friends. However, Swedish health care authorities have used an imaginary friend called Tolvan Tolvansson (directly translated: Twelve Twelveson), with the civic registration number 121212-1212, for research and education purposes. The Swedish civic registration authority, Skatteverket, has just received notice of this imaginary fellow, born on the 12 December '12, and has, therefore, stopped said civic registration number from being awarded to any real boy born tomorrow. Some humans sometimes complain that not all dogs are registered with the authorities. They should not be so soon to judge us dogs, since there are, obviously, problems with the registration of humans as well.

Home Again

There is no place like home. I did not feel well in Finland. I do not believe it was the country as such, I have been there before and felt good. However, I agreed with Paula not to go into the show ring on Sunday. Now we are at home again, and I feel much better.

Gunde became fourth best male on Sunday, winning a reserve CAC.

I guess that if I would have felt better, this would have been a great trip. It had all the ingredients: nice company, dog show, and new, exciting environments. I might go back another day.

Dogs Driving Cars

Hello, Karstuhl here!

This is no joke! A charity in New Zealand are teaching dogs how to drive cars. Follow the link and watch the video sequence! They teach the dogs how to use the gears, brakes, and steering wheel, all in order to prove how intelligent dogs are.

Most humans who live with dogs already know how intelligent we are, but I guess the ability to drive cars is something even most of these humans are impressed by.

I would like to learn how to drive myself. It would be cool to drive around myself. I wonder whether there might be dog driving licences in the future.

First Loser

In America, some people say that second place is "first loser". This means that only first place really counts. at the dog show today, I was third best bitch, while Gunde was second best male. We both received reserve CACIB and Gunde got a reserve CAC. There were many Shibas competing, so we cannot say we are really unhappy about being "second loser" and "first loser". We are good losers. The worst part was that the Shiba who won Best of Breed did not show up in the Group Finale. Both Gunde and I would have participated, had any of us won Best of Breed. Oh, well, I guess in this aspect, at least, we would just have been better winners than the dog who won.

Helsinki

We are in Helsinki this weekend, for a dog show, of course. I am looking forward to going into the show ring again. It is Paula and Daniel, and I, Gunde (a.k.a. Kookie), and Kaiou. We just went for the first walk in Helsinki, and discovered a nice dog supply boutique just around the corner from the SAS Radisson Hotel where we are staying. It is the Koirankauppa on Lönnrot Street 42. The nice young lady in the boutique gave treats to both their four legged and two legged customers. Now we are waiting to get our hotel room. There are computers in the lobby of the hotel that we may use in the meantime. This is great, because it makes it easy for me to keep up with my daily blogging. Stay tuned for more reports from Helsinki!

Veterinary Care for Homeless Dogs

We heard on the radio that veterinarians in Helsingborg offer free veterinary care for dogs who, together with their humans, are homeless. This is really good. The veterinarian who was interviewed said that these dogs were, generally, in good health, which is also good to hear. It is nice to hear positive stories like this on the radio.

Blanket

Hello, Karstuhl here!

It is really cold outside. As Shiba Inus, we can handle it without problem, we start to consider the cold too harsh when it goes below -20 degrees Celsius. We have a Toy Poodle friend, however, called Love chan, who needs to wear a blanket whenever she goes out in this weather. This is mostly because she is so small, she weighs not much more than 2 kg. Love chan is black, and her blanket is bright red. April, who is red herself, says to Love chan that she looks better in the blanket. I pretend to agree, though I am black and tan, because I notice that Love chan is not fond of the blanket. Everyone knows, anyway, that dogs are more beautiful black, don't they?

Rescue Dogs

Rescue dogs from all over the country came to Örebro Airport yesterday to practice rescue operations. A mock earthquake scenario had been built up, and the rescue dogs with handlers had been noticed as late as the day before. It was great of them to show up.

I like rescue dogs. They are such a strong proof of the valuable contributions dogs do to society. Sometimes, I wish I would have been a rescue dog. I believe Shiba Inus would be good at it. On the other hand, practicing rescue operations in the cold winter weather of yesterday would have been a little harsh. Kudos to the dogs who were there!

First Sunday in Advent

Hello, Karstuhl here!

This is the first Sunday in Advent. The countdown to Christmas is starting. We are getting lights in the windows. It is nice. There is also snow on the ground, which adds to the Chrismas feeling. It cannot be much better.