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Snow down
2009-12-19

The first snow has landed. Lisen likes snow but she gets quite irritated when the snow turns into small snowballs and attach themselves between her toes. She usually stops what she is doing just to lay down and try to gnaw them away.

Her fur is much like a Newfoundlands, it is water-resistant and protects her from the cold. This also means that when her fur actually gets really wet, when she has bathed or I have washed her, it takes many hours for it to dry. Also dirt and snow for example gets stuck in her fur a lot easier, which can be annoying for her sometimes but on the other hand it protects her from this cold weather as well.

Is Lisen pregnant?
Lisens period has ended and now there is two months of Lisen believing she is pregnant and all that comes with that. This usually involves care behavior, finding a suitable place in the apartment to give birth - usually a dark and secluded space where she feels safe and protected, a lot of digging (especially during the night) - this is because if she was to have her puppies outside she would want to have a sort of hole in the ground where they would be protected. Actually when she was pregnant for real we found a deep hole in mums garden sheltered by a bush which she had dug without us knowing or finding it. She also get milk in her udder and towards the end of the two months she doesn't want to be away from home too much.

Perfectly natural
The first time we saw Lisen behaving like this we thought she was sick and took her to the vet. The vet said that if we wanted to not have these "problems" with her we could increase her exercise and decrease her food and if we still thought that didn't work we could have her uterus removed. This was about 7 years ago and I didn't know anything about dogs so of course I and my family listened to the vet. However since then I have learned a lot more about dogs and their natural behaviors from for example a 40 hours course about dog behaviors and dog language I attended. Among many very valuable lessons I learned there one was that these behaviors are perfectly natural and not at all difficult for the dog however we dog owners might perceive them as difficult for the dog. It seems insane for me to even have considered depraving my healthy female dog of her uterus and I am glad that it never came to that. One complication that can occur during this time is mainly udder inflammation, so you always have to keep an eye on that but so far everything has gone well.

White forest
Yesterday we all went to the forest again and Lisen and Diva played around a lot in the snow and as usual ran around a lot.

Below left: Lisen tries to gnaw of minisnowballs from her paws. Below right: Lisen taking a break..


Above left: Diva performs her version of "playing dead". Above right: Lisen and Diva playing.
 
Lisen pregnant?
2009-12-14

Lisen still has her period and this time I think she is more eager to mate than usual. She whines a lot at home and wants to go out all the time so she can look for male dogs. As soon as she see one she starts to whine and stare at that dog until the make eycontact and then she wants to run to him. But unfortunately for her I won't let her.

She also wants to carry her leash as soon as we are on our way home, she jumps up and tries to take the leash from my hand so she can carry it. At home she wants to carry around all my shoes, especially my boots. She usually does this when someone comes over but now it is all the time almost. I don't know exactly why? But she seem to have her reasons.

Today we all went to the forest again, Lisen, I, my sister and her dog Diva. Both Lisen and Diva had a lot of energy and ran much more than usual. I was a bit surprised beacuse Lisen and I took our usual long sunday walk, which takes about 75 minutes. But Lisen was a bit energetic this morning so it did her good to run around and release that energy.


Lisen carrying my shoe and her leash.
 
Fun in the forest!
2009-12-04

Yesterday Lisen, Diva, I and my sister went to the forest so the dogs could run and play together. They always get so tired after we have been there, which is very nice :-).

They always get so excited whenever we go to the forest so all the drive they whine and bark and when we finally get there the want to jump out of the car, like racehorses fly out of their start positions, and start to chase each other. This is not always so good because Diva, who usually is the one getting chased, doesn't always pay enough attention to all the trees in the forest. About 1,5 years ago she ran right in to one tree and broke her thigh bone. It took two operations and many months for her to recover. This makes us very nervous sometimes when they run like they do, but on the other hand we can't stop them from doing what dogs should do and have fun because we are scared they might get hurt.

Today Lisen and I went on our Afvesgärdewalk again and now she stops every few meters to mark that she has been there. She is almost at the point in her period when she wants to mate so she is making sure every male dog knows it.

Below: Lisen in front and Diva in the back. Above: Lisen left and Diva right.
Below: They hear strange noises in the forest...
 
Animals everywhere
2009-12-02

Lisen and I took our so called "castle ruin walk" which is a walk to the old castle ruins of Lyckeby and on our way there we usually see sheep and when we have passed the ruins we walk on a bridge by the water and there are usually birds of some sort. Lisen doesn't care as much any longer about the animals or water but when she was younger she loved to jump at them and be a bit of a naughty dog. She also used to pull her leash because she wanted to jump in the water whenever we were near it. But today she walked calmly and sure she saw the animals but didn't care so much about them.

Lisen has her period now, I think it started almost a week ago. This obviously makes her interested in other things than animals and water. She usually takes her time sniffing around outside but now it takes her even longer when she finds an interesting smell. However she is not that difficult during her period its more after her period when she thinks she has puppies in her stomach she can be a bit difficult. But now she is just looking for a nice male dog to mate with, which of course is not going to happen.

lisen birds
Lisen is looking at the birds as they swim.



Some of the animals we saw today.
 
Weigh in
2009-11-25

Today Lisen and I went on a walk, I call it the Afvesgärdewalk, because the area we pass is called that. We stopped in at the vet-station to weigh Lisen. She was quite overweight a few years ago so now we are very careful when it comes to how much treats and food we give her. When she weighed the most she weighed 46 kg, that is as much as she weighed right before she had her puppies. It took some time but she has kept the weight off now for about 3 years and she is so much happier and healthier. Today the scale stopped at 33,9 kg, which is ok. The absloute perfect weight for her according to the vet is around 32 kg, so I am happy with todays number.


Here is a picture of Lisen resting on her bed after our walk.
 
 
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