Oooouuw, oooouw!

Luke spent the day outside alone....howling..... Our neighbour heard him howling on and off, but he stopped when she went outside and said, "NO"!  This evening, he has not shown much interest in the romantic way towards Phoebe..... Maybe he realised it was too early and he is just biding his time...!?  His howling may also just be because he is unused to being alone!?  They will now spend the time chained to their respective house, so we should not have howling at least....

Interesting developments...

Yesterday I went out for a bikeride again - I was so impressed by their team performance on Monday that I wanted to test two days in a row... Again the kids performed very well - Phoebe is extremely "forward" and Luke can pull you up a hill... His only problem is that sometime he decides to "mark the spot" and that stops everything for a few seconds - oh well, that is no real problem! Getting to the end of the road, we met a guy walking two loose dogs - they "suddenly" appeared out of nowhere in the dark, and startled Phoebe.... Bof, bof.... She stopped, backed away, but Luke good boy got us past - Phoebe is actually afraid of the dark! We got back on track, and only turned around after we hit an icy patch and.....well.....two dogs - two wheels... You figure it out! We went slow, so no problems apart from the chain coming off the cogs. "Quickly get back on your horse", as they say... Back towards home went we, with a minor detour to add on a couple of kilometers. Total maybe 7km (forgot the GPS)?
As we came back to the house and I was getting my shoes off, Luke suddenly decides to mount Phoebe....! WHAT!? Get down! Most of the evening he tried, tried....but Phoebe rejected him...
She only had her last heat 3 months ago, but it is not impossible that she could have been triggered by his arrival to have another! After all, he is The MAN! :-) At night we chained them each to their house to avoid....complications, hoping there was no hanky panky in the night! Today, we left Phoebe inside our house and Luke in the kennel.... We shall see how the situation develops...! Mjau, Voff Voff!

Doggy routines..

The dogs after a quick run.

Wake up in the morning - meaty soup... Go for a walk, pee, s**t, back in the kennel and bye bye... When I came home today I took the dogs for a spin in front of the bike. There has come a sprinkle of snow, so the local road is less slippery. Short distance - around 5 kms at a good pace. Phoebe RUNS and Luke PULLS when he doesn't stop to mark his spot...

Luke is getting more and more relaxed with us - he is a really sweet dude - calm and happy :-)

He seems to adapt really well also to Nexus - they even layed down on the floor together - Luke cleaning Nexus' fur and Nexus licking Luke on the nose just like he does with Phoebe!

Luke has spent his long life as a kennel dog - he has, shall we say, acquired a.....an odour?! On Saturday we took him into the shower and washed him - NO PROBLEMS! He was calm and accepting, even seemed to enjoy it! Gooood boy, Luke :-) We love him!

Doubling the number of dogs...!

Oh dear....here we go... We were warned about the Siberian husky sickness.... After finally moving into a house, we have had a chance to build a mini-kennel.... So now we had space for more than one dog...!

Our good friend, Johanne let us inherit her trusted wheel dog Luke. He is now close to nine years young and has raced in many long-distance races such as Finnmarksløpet - lots of experience to match Phoebe's youthful enthusiasm!

They are alreday best of friends except that Phoebe tries to steal all the food...heehe! Oh - and they didn't even need the new house I had built - they moved into Phoebe's "two beedroom house"!

The one thing that Johanne has warned us about with Luke, is his previous history of eating a pet rabbit! Our chubby boy cat Nexus may be at risk, since he is used to running around with Phoebe in safety, whilst Luke might decide to hunt him for real! Well, so far everything is fine! Luke takes direction well - he breaks away when we correct him, and it seems more and more that he ignores Nexus :-) Although Phoebe and Luke sleep outside and spend the day in the kennel, they are inside the house with us in the evening in order to integrate with us :-)

At least now we have two dogs to pull bikes or our sled.... A little slow perhaps, so perhaps we need a couple more....!?

Quo vadis?

The last weekend before we moved away from the apartment a couple of friends became parents - in the hectic rush to the hospital they had to leave the dog behind, so we took pity on the "little black sausage", Hugo and let him spend the weekend with us :-) It was really nice to have a visitor - Phoebe clearly appreciated the company of another dog! But Nexus....? Well - he decided that Hugo was an object suitable for his "hunting game"....heheheh. He would jump out from behind or from the top of the cardboard boxes that were everywhere and "kill" the poor little Hugo! Of course, Hugo was only mildly curious about Nexus, and showed no fear or anxiousness as a result. What was even more interesting was Phoebe's reaction - if Nexus and Hugo got too "hot" in their encounters, Phoebe would run up to them and "push them aside", just like I imagine a mum will do with her kids or a bitch with her puppies....! :-)

Now that we are installed in the house we will hopefully have a chance to finish the building of our kennel space - perhaps we can then adopt or borrow a couple of dogs....hopefully to make a better sled team than with the little black sausage!? :-)

Home.....at last....!

After a long silence on the blogging front....we are back! Rather, "we have moved on"! Since Thursday Thursday last week, we have been living in our new house in the forest southeast of Oslo. The location is perfect for those of us who enjoy the "great outdoors". There are paths and tracks in the nearby forest, including an active group of dog sledders maintaining a small network of trails... Down the road from us, there are several kennels, and we are ourselves preparing a corner of our land for a small run-around kennel area. Nearby is a lake called "The Long One" (Langen) - this is a shallow, narrow lake that stretches for more than 10 kms North-South direction. During summer, we have our own small place to tie up a boat or our canoe (no engines allowed), and during autumn and winter, the lake can be used for ice skating and even pre-snowseason dog sledding! We hope to park our canoe there - Phoebe likes to come along - after an impatient 10 minutes she will in and swim for a bit before we drag her inside again...

We already feel quite at home in our new house, even if we are surround by cardboard boxes and outdated facilities (we will replace the kitchen). In the morning of Friday and Saturday we had visitors in the front garden - a group of two roe deer and a lone roebuck....! Nice to see them, but they tend to eat the flowers.... L8R :-)

Change of status....

In the lazy days of summer, there have been several possible life-changing events in the MjauDoggyWoggy household.... First of all, our "little boy" Nexus has had a trip "to buy ice cream" (also known as - going to the vet)....! He is now 15 months of age and has had ample time to "go through the change" of puberty.... To avoid any potential for unwanted kittens the vet removed his "crown jewels" the other day - is there no other discreet way to say that he has lost his balls!? Nexus is still the same however - after a groggy, spaced-out evening he is back to his good old self; "Prrrrr, prrrrrr - food? Prrrrr, prrrrr - scratch me under my chin, behind my ears; Prrrrr prrrrr - "trot trot" - let me chase my sister (Phoebe) and kill mummy's (Priscila's) foot under the carpet....!!" :-)

The other piece of news worth mentioning is that the household will move from the very nice apartment into an even nicer house! Our new adress will be "enter the forest and turn right by the 2nd big pine tree"..... We will have a house bigger than we need, but the bonus is that there is a big piece of land (2500 sqm) with a corner perfect for constructing a small run-around kennel area....! It is soon about time for Phoebe to "move out" and perhaps establish herself with a much older man.....!? Actually - we are hoping to adopt a mature, experienced sled dog that can teach Phoebe so much more than we humans ever could - who knows, maybe there might be puppies in her future too!?

The good thing with our new location is that there are several other dog mushers in the neighbourhood, including people we know, and that there are prepared sled tracks in the forest next door... We might even have a chance to take up some rock climbing too, since a great cliff is located within walking distance from the house (Fjell - where some of the hard routes and boulders were put up in the good old sport climbing pioneering days...)

Days are already colder, so we hope that Phoebe can get some proper autumn training this year...