It´s Halloween… October 31, 2008

Yesterday I finished up Simo´s and Samu´s school Halloween party costumes. I had to do some sewing, because they were both too big (Samu had Simo´s old costume and since Simo wanted to have a police man dress I had to buy an adult´s dress and make it smaller. Simo wanted to dress as a police man – he has always been into police things – and Samu as a medieval knight. Their school has each year a Halloween party organized by the English language classes. It´s actually weird that Halloween is celebrated in Finnish schools in this way, because it is so American thing. …actually I don´t like the idea that kids dress up as monsters and evil spirits, even devils, witches, and so on. It feels so unchristian. Glad Simo and Samu were satisfied with their policeman and medieval knight dresses! But even teachers were wearing some devil´s/ sceleton/monster´s clothes! I´ll include pictures of the kids in their costumes. Today I left work earlier to take Samu to his party, parents were allowed to be there too. This party was for grades 1 – 3. Then I drove Samu home and took Simo to his party which was for grades 4-6, so tonight I´ve been doing some driving around. When I fetched Simo he told me that all the monsters had been running after him screaming “Arrest meeeeee, please please please arrest me!!!” Some teachers had also commented on his costume saying it was good that there was a policeman with them to make sure there is order. Simo himself was not so happy about all the attention he had got because of his costume…

It´s raining again really heavily. It was difficult to drive because of the rain. It did not rain when we left from home so Simo did not have an umbrella with him. We were all wet just from running across the street to the car. It can be like this until Christmas. After that I hope the rain will come down as snow. If we are lucky we will get a white snowy Christmas time, but lately the winter has really come only in February and lasted for about 6 weeks. But winter can wait – now it´s the rain period. We have had now heavy rains. Usually end of October and November are very rainy. But I think your rain is heavier than ours. But last weekend for example it was a real storm. It was raining cats and dogs and the wind has been blowing so hard that some trees had fallen on streets and in many places the electricity was off for a while because some trees had fallen on the electricity wires. And guess who had to go out with the doggies in that weather! Brrrr…. Even the dogs seemed to refuse going out in the beginning. For the first 100 meters or so they tried to turn around and go home. When they realized they had no choice they came with me, but on the other half they were pulling so much that I had difficulties. They were in such a hurry to get quickly back home. How spoiled pets

… So the deep autumn has come now. Some of the trees have already lost their leaves today during the storm. I love the early autumn (because of the colours) until the leaves fall. After that it looks so naked everywhere. Then it´s just waiting for the spring again. Some people love winter, but I must say that i never was a winter-person. Winter is always hard work because even to get the kids ready for school takes a lot of time, because I must put on tehm so many layers of clothes. It´s much better in summer. Spring and autumn are ok as well, but if I could decide I would cancel winter Of course we hope for snow for Christmas, because it´s beautiful, but I don´t like the extra work that winter means and it´s too cold.

Singing (?) in the rain… October 21, 2008

Another day of rain. The rainy autumn season has really begun now. When you go out in the morning you never really know how the weather will be like in the afternoon and of course if you take the umbrella with you it never rains, but if you choose to leave it home, you can be sure that at some point you regret you did not carry it with you.

Simo (10 years) went for the first time all alone for a walk with Wilma (Welsh springer spaniel, 3 years, 18 kg). They had been ok. Kalle was with Dilbert at rescue training and while Simo was walking Wilma I took Samu to the scouts, loaded my bus card and went shopping for groceries. Now trying to clean up the mess at home….

Reading another Torey Hayden Book… October 20, 2008

Just started yesterday evening another Torey Hayden book. Her books are just awesome! She is an educational psychologist and special education teacher. She has taught classes in public schools, hospitals, and mental institutions and has done research on elective mutism, physical and sexual abuse in children and bullying. In her books she tell true stories about her experiences with disturbed children. The children´s stories are really schocking. I´ve got tears in my eyes so many times when I´ve read her books, because the things she discribes have really happened to a child. When reading her book it becomes so obvious that when children are having really bad behavioral problems or other problems at an early age they are often because of a trauma. Somethings has happened (or is happening alla the time) to them that should not have happened. I´ve bough quite many of her books as paperbacks. Some are in Finnish, some in English and some I bought in Stockolm and they are in Swedish. These books are my all-time favourites!!!

Wilma the dancer October 20, 2008

This is Wilma and me after the doggy dancing competition. Wilma´s got her prize on her chest.

It´s been some time already since our doggy dancing contest, but now since I just registered us for another competition that will be held November the 2nd in Janakkala, 2 hours from us, I thought I could write a bit about the previous competition. It was quite an experience I must say At first I was not planning to attend at all but then my dog school teacher started to talk to me about it. She would also come and some other dogs& their people from our training group. I did absolutely not feel ready for it yet, but all the more she talked to us about it, the more also felt tempted to give it a try and so I made the crucial phone call and our name was on the list. We started with doggy dancing last March so we´d been training once a week for 6 months, though I must say that for the most time we have not been training at all at home during the weeks. In the beginning we did, but when summer came we just went to the training group without having done anything at all at home. We also could not make it every Saturday during then summer, because we were gone quite a lot during our summer holidays.

…but then it was September suddenly and our teacher just blurted this out to me: “If you won´t register to the contest with Wilma, I will! We had really not been training almost at all during the summer, but now we had a good reason to continue. We made a simple coreography to this music that we had chosen, but it took for a quite long time to decide which movements we would make – how I shall move and what Wilma will do, so actually our program was ready only one week before the contest. During the last week we practiced quite a lot and I was afraid that it was a bit too much for Wilma, because on Saturday evening she refused to do anything! She is so used to getting a reward (a piece of sth delicious, like a piece of mince meat balls or a little piece of sausage) after every movement that she had difficulties understanding I want her to do the whole programm with a big reward only at the end and nothing before that. She was protesting the evening before and already in the beginning of the song she was just standing there and staring at me when I did my best to motivate her to do her part even if I could not give her anything. She must have thought “This is criminal – why does she not give me ANYTHING!” I did not feel too encouraged after the last training. I don´t know what happened during the night ( I did pray though, but don´t know if God is interested in doggy dancing competitions, he he) – but the day after she was like another dog at the competition. She could not have been happier. Whatever the reason is, she was gorgeous. She did absolutely everything I asked her to do and quickly and with such a joy. Her tail was wagging so much that it looked like it is the tail that is wagging the dog and not vice versa She clearly enjoyed the loud music and she was on a good mood. And after she had done so well, at least 5 people from our dog training school (who had been in the audience) including the teacher rushed to Wilma hugging her and petting her and praising her. She got so much positive attention that she must have felt like a queen. And I am 100% sure she sensed the atmosphere and knew exactly how great she had just been. You should have seen her tail then… By the way the dog school teacher also was competing on the same level as we – they became 3rd. Come to think of it, we were not so much behind them and she is my TEACHER. I´m so proud of Wilma.

In doggy dancing there are 4 levels – this was just the beginners´ level. But since we got so high points we will now have to move one level up so next time the quality of other competitors is higher – and no, I don´t feel ready for that. This is so funny, I would never have imagined that I will end up dancing with my dog. It was the last hobby that I can think of inside the dog training field. Reason: I cannot dance myself! And I definitely do not look like a dancer. But since Wilma was so good I must give her another chance – And I must say it was so much fun being there. The atmosphere was good. Absolutely everybody were encouraging other competitors and it didn´t feel so serious situation, but it was possible just to go there and have fun with the dog. Some were very good – some dogs started sniffing around in the middle of their programme (I was sure Wilma would do this but she didn´t), but I saw some really good dogs too. On upper levels there were some that were just awesome. One starts really asking how on earth a dog can learn such things and how much do they practise…