Missed the Bed

This evening, Viola jumper down from the bed. She usually gets up again soon. This time, however, she misscalculated the jump and missed the bed. Daniel lifted her up into the bed instead. Viola was not physically hurt, but her pride took a hit. I believe she will get her pride back the very next time she wants to get up into the bed again. We all know she can do it, and she will do it. Then it will be great again. 

Leap Day Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the 29th of February. We normally just have this date every four years. The calendar rules on leap days are actually stronger than this. Allof this is because humans have this idea that they must keep track of time. It is easier to be a dog and live in the present. Life is complicated enough without calendars, I believe. 

Sweden Joins NATO

Sweden is about to become a member of military defence alliance NATO. This consists of countries with the aim to defend democracy in Europe and North America, around the North Atlantic Ocean. Canada and the USA are members, but not Mexico. As a Chihuahua, I think it would be nice if Mexico was also a member. Then my home country and the home country of my dog breed would be part of the same military alliance. This would be cool. 

Large Snow Flakes

We had a snowfall again today. The snowflakes were very large, some were a couple of centimetres across. None of us think we have seen such large snowflakes before. 

Winter is not over yet. After all, we are still in February, which is certainly a winter month. While a lot of this snow melted away almost immediately, we are not certain spring will soon be here. The weather is not foreseeable in this way. 

Taco Seasoned Minced Meat

Paula and Daniel ate tacos. They did not finish all of the taco seasoned minced meat, so Daniel gave it to us dogs.

You might think that dogs like us prefer less seasoned meat, but this was very tasty. Taco seasoning gives us a taste of Mexico, home of our breed. Morran, an Affenpinscher, also enjoyed it.

Later, Paula asked about the meat. She wanted some more, which I can fully understand. Daniel told her, however, that he gave it to a dogs. Paula was content with this, and prepared other food instead. There are a lot of different foods that are tasty, so everyone was satisfied at the end. This was good. 

Boring

The movie that I recommended yesterday was quite boring. I appologize for this. However, the fourth and final qualification round to the Swedish qualification competition to the Eurovision Song Contest tonight was even more boring. Two established artists were qualified with songs that were not that good. No other songs were particularly good, either. Now that we have heard all of the songs that may represent Sweden, we believe Sweden will get a bad result this year. This may be the plan, to avoid the cost of arranging the Contest next year as well. We will have to see what songs there are from other countries. 

Lunar Landing

An American space probe has landed on the Moon. This is the first American Moon landing since the last Apollo landing in 1972. It is also the first Moon landing ever conducted by a private company. 

Hailey and Polly were always interested in news about the Moon. This was fitting, considering their names: Lunar Eclips and Full Moon Eclipse. Polly told me humans have visited the Moon and that someday, humans and dogs might live there. I would not want to, but to each her own wishes. 

Movie On TV

This Friday evening, there is a Japanese movie, Drive My Car, aired on SVT2 at 21:45. For the sake of my late friend Polly and her mother Hailey, who formerly used this blog and who was of a Japanese breed, I want to tell all of my readers about this. I have not seen the movie, but it has had good reviews. I plan to watch it tonight. 

Carrot Cake

It is the season for the Swedish pastry semla/fastlagsbulle. Paula has never been fond of these pastries. She bought a carrot cake at the store today, instead.

Carrot cake is very good. It is American, from the beginning, the country to the North of Mexico. Carrot cake is one of the great American contributions to civilisation, like the Chihuahua breed is one of the great Mexican contributions. We all like carrot cake. It was a good cake to have. 

Service Dog

Here is a great story about a service dog in the UK.

There are times when I would like to be a service dog or something like this. Service dogs do so much for society. 

Some days ago, Pepe acted as a service dog. He told Paula to go to the hospital with her troubled stomach, which made her decide to go. The staff at the hospital said it was good that she came as soon as she did. We are all grateful for Pepe for this. Next time, perhaps I will be the hero. 

Sausages

There were sausages in the dinner tonight. Paula made a classic dish from her family, with spaghetti, mushroom soup, bacon, and sausages. It is easy to cook and tasty. 

Some of the sausages went to us dogs. This is always a treat. We wish we could get sausage more often. 

Live Sport

Paula and Daniel went away to watch a game of handball live this afternoon. I would not have the patience to sit through a whole game like that. Live sport can be watched live on TV, but then you can come and go as you please to the game. If I am to watch a competition on site, it is a dog show. Otherwise, I would rather stay at home. I did today, it suited me fine. 

Relay Gold

The IBU Biathlon World Championship has not been a success for Sweden, before today. In the mens' relay competition today, Sweden won the gold. It was an exciting race and the gold was far from easy to get. We all rejoiced when we watched it on TV. It made the day better.

Spring?

It is thaw again. Is spring finally here? By the middle of February, spring may come, but we are not so sure this year. It has been a cold winter so far, so winter may continue after a few days with a promise of spring. We just have to see what will happen. It is more daylight now, at least. 

Moon Rocks Named for Dog Breeds

A Japanese Lunar probe set down on the Lunar surface at the wrong angle. It has still been able to take pictures of its surroundings.

The Japanese team operating the probe from Earth, has named rocks on one picture for dog breeds, apparently to give viewers a sense of the size of the rocks. One rock is called Shibainu, Hailey and Polly would have liked this. Another rock is called Toy Poodle, Laila would have liked this. While we like it as well, we would also have liked a rock called Chihuahua and another called Affenpinscher. It is still nice to see the impact of dog breeds on the names of those rocks. 

Valentine

It is Valentine’s day, a day to express your feelings for your loved ones. 

There is one Chihuahua male here, Pepe, but two Chihuahua females, me and Viola. Pepe said he can be the Valentine for both of us. While Pepe is often a charming dog, this did not make me or Viola especially keen on doing anything Valentine like with him. We both told him so. He ended up next to Paula, instead. 

Working Late

It is not often, but sometimes, Daniel work until very late at night. He did this tonight as well. I blame him for writing my blog post for Tuesday past midnight, because when he worked so late, I did not realise how late it actually was, before we all went to bed. 

You will get a blog post on time for this Wednesday. 

Claw Cutters

We had our claws cut yesterday. This is always a terrible experience. With a little distance in time, however, it is nice to have shorter claws. They feel better and look better. 

I wish there was some way to keep the claws as short as they are now. It is good to have short claws, but none of us dogs like having them cut. Life is full of conflicts of interests. 

Old Books

It would have been the 150th birthday for Swedish childrens’ book author and illustrator Elsa Beskow today. In some of her books, there were dogs, although these seldom played an important part of the story. It is still nice that she had dogs in the books. The illustrations were really good. 

More Bland Music

Another qualification round for the qualification round of Sweden to the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest took place tonight. It was another stretch of bland music. If you want to compete in music, why can’t you do better music than this? We had the TV set on, but did not play the competition all of our attention. There better be better music further on. 

Friday Night

It is Friday night, and we go to bed rather early. We do know the alarm on the alarm clock is turned off, but it is still rather nice to go to bed early, even when we know we can sleep until late tomorrow morning. Friday nights and Saturday mornings must be the best parts of the week. I wish we had those more often. 

Garbage

Once every fortnight, the dust cart collects our garbage from down the road. When Daniel works from home, like he did today, he usually goes out to get the emptied dust bins as soon as he can. He does not like the sight of them down by the road. I do not care, but if it satisfies him, I do not object to it either. Everyone gets to have his or her special ideas. 

Biathlon World Championship

The IBU World Championship in biathlon started today with the mixed relay competition.

For a while, it looked like the Swedes would end in a position far from the medals. This changed and Sweden managed to win the bronze. France won the gold and Norway won the silver. 

Morran was disappointed that Germany did not finish better than fifth, after Switzerland in fourth. Her breed is from Germany, so she usually roots for German teams. Germany led for a long time, which made the disappointment worse. 

We hope for better results for both the Swedes and the Germans in the competitions to come. 

Snow Started to Fall

We got some more snow tonight, while we were out for the night. It was not much, but if it continues to fall throughout the night, we will have a lot by the morning. I hope not. We have had enough snow as it is this winter. 

Swedish climate should be more like Mexican. It would fit us Chihuahuas better. 

Melt

Dinner was a bit simple today. It was bread with melted cheese. Even the simple dishes can be really tasty. Cheese is always tasty, melted cheese even more so. I wish we could get cheese more often. 

It was cold outside today, a few tenths of degrees below the freezing point. Thus, no melted snow. Then it felt even better to eat melted cheese. 

All of These Designated Days

There are many days around the calendar year that are assigned to different things or causes. Late last night, Paula discovered that yesterday was the annual Carrot Cake Day. We did not know until she told us, so nobody had made sure we had any carrot cake to eat. 

Paula and Daniel went to make some grocery shopping this afternoon. One of the things they brought home was a carrot cake. Thus, we celebrated Carrot Cake Day one day too late. It is a s the old saying goes: better late than never.

We blame the late celebration on the great amount of annual days. If there were fewer days, it would be easier to remember them.

We will have to see if we remember Carrot Cake Day on the right day next year. 

Pre-Qualification

The first round to decide which songs will participate in the Swedish qualification round to he Eurovision Song Contest 2024 was aired on TV today. There were no excellent songs. At least, the worst Song got the worst result and the best of the mediocre line up won. We agree that there are too many pre-qualification rounds. The final qualification round should be enough. Then you would be spared the really bad songs, we believe. 

It remains to be seen if any excellent songs will take part in the other pre-qualification rounds. 

Noisy Cats

It is said that cats move in silence. While this is often true with our cat friends Malin and Totte, they can also be noisy. This afternoon, Malin jumped around making noise in the bedroom. It is nice to hear cats are not always more silent than us dogs. 

Claws

Yesterday night, Paula told us she would cut our claws today. This never happened.

We do have rather long claws, but not so long that they need to be cut. Not yet. The claw cutting may wait.