May, part one

May was a somewhat eventful month, even with not much success on the travelling part.

The first weekend we stayed at Denton house, to look after everything while the owners were away. Elsa, the Labrador of the house, recently had a surgery, and was rambling about with a cone around her head, hitting everything in her way. We took it off whenever we were with her, but poor Odin quickly learned to stay out of her way. It was a nice weekend, even though a bit cold and rainy, so we didn't get to enjoy the garden very much. Also, primarily Tollef, but me too, got a cold, so we had to postpone our planned camping-trip to Yorkshire the weekend after.

Instead, we made a daytrip on Sunday 9th, to Haywards Heath and ACES (Athletic Canine Dog Society). There we met a crowd of people with athletic bulldogs, bullterriers, mixes of those two, and the occasional lurcher and smaller terrier breed. Odin got to try weightpull, a sport where the dog is up to pulling as many times his own weight as possible. As not being trained for it, Odin "only" pulled the wagon itself, weighing about 100kg. The wagon is on rails, so it's not that hard to pull when they first get it startet, but that is hard enough in itself, and takes tecnique and focus. Very fun, and definitely something that we want to do more with Odin. We also tried running a 100m sprint after a lure (being pulled by a wire with some motorized device), and Odin did quite well. We look forward to the next meeting in june!

That week, I had to go to Oslo to sort out the house, as the tenants were moving out. I also took the opportunity to visit the breeder we are hoping to get a puppy from when we get back in august. A very nice meeting, and we also talked a lot about UK, since she had lived in Scotland as a child. The dogs were very nice, and the puppies were soon due to arrive! I also had dinner with Michael, who is looking after the house for us until we get back. And also turned the attic up side down to find some of the things I needed to bring back to England. Quite a lot done in very short time, before I got back to Oxford.

Saturday 15th, it was the Cuddesdon Fete, a local gathering to collect money for mainentance the local church roof. First, we met up with Per and Marianne in Oxford and did some sightseeing, before we went to the Fete together. It was a lot of food, games and dog shows. We got in a dog show with "musical sit" (almost like "musical chairs, just withour chairs and having the dog sit instead of yourself), and went out of the game first, as Odin was more interester in the cute bitch beside us than he was in listening to me. We also got to se some Morris Dancing, finally!

Karianne