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October 25 2004
Good boy

This afternoon I got to go on a party with mum! It was a former working collegue that celebrated her birthday, and it was so nice to see her again! Actually we met several former collegues, and I enjoyed seeing them all. They all said I was very handsome, and telling me what a good boy I was. I managed to make mum very proud, behaving very well for the couple of hours we were there. I hardly begged for food at all, because I know I'm not supposed to, and in order to be allowed to stay at the party I decided to keep a low profile. I must admit I did check out the kitchen where all sorts of lovely smells came from, and I did walk around the table to see if I could find an easy victim to beg from, but no one gave me any attention at all. So I was mostly lying down in a corner looking at all the people. Oh, don't tell mum this, but I did get a little piece of meat... A very nice lady kind of dropped it on the floor right next to me!!

Now I'm going to relax the rest of the evening, because I feel kind of tired after behaving so well for so long, and also mum has brought me for a long walk a while ago, so I think some sleep would be in place now.

October 24 2004
Autumn with colours

The last couple of days you can really tell the autumn is here. It's been very wet, some days it's been raining a lot, but mostly it's just wet on the ground which is kind of annoying since my feet, legs and stomach gets all wet while going for walks. One good thing with all this wet weather is that you get so many very intersting smells from the ground! I love to smell different things, and investigate, and I can stand for a very long time at the same spot just going over it time after time. This however makes mum a bit annoyed, because she finds it boring to stand still in one place for too long, but I think she should be patient since the walks are for me anyway!!

Hmm, interesting spot...

OK, I'm ready to move on.

One thing with the autumn that mum likes is all the colours. She loves taking photos of trees and stuff as you can see on her own website. Actually, mum doesn't only like the colours of autumn, she also loves all the colours us cocker spaniels have. She says we have so many lovely colours in our breed, and they are all gorgeous. What made me mention this is what mum and I read on our friend's website, Kennel Mighty Falls. They are 6 cockers alltogether and they are all beautiful. It's the policeman Alfons who is as handsome as me - in other words black - Milton who is blueroan&tan, Aladdin, Xarah and Annie who are sables and then their latest addition Honung who is red. All of them are cockers which means they are all the same inside, the only difference is their colours. Oh, and three of them are boys and the other three are girls, and I find girls more interesting! But other than being boys or girls in different colours, us cockers are nice and loving dogs who loves our humans - actually most humans as long as they treat us well - we love to have fun and play around as well as be company and support to our humans. We love to please, go for walks, to work with different things, and we also love to cuddle and comfortable on our humans beds, sofas and on their laps. We don't mind to relax on the floor either for that matter! Our colour doesn't matter - as long as our owners don't dye our coat green or purple because that's just pretend colours anyway - because it's not the colour that makes the dog! Of course us cockers have different minds and characters, but it's the same with humans! Some of us are more playful or more shy, some of us eats more biscuits that others, and some of us don't seem to stay still for more than a second at a time. I'm sure there are a thousand differeces I could mention, but it has nothing to to with our colour. The weird thing mum and I read was that Aladdin and Xarah had been on a show, and they were described in the wrong colour!! The description was "wrong coloured black&tan's with too much red". Now how strange is that?!

Mum has told me that some people doesn't want the sable colour to exsist, but how can they say a thing like that!? The colour is obviously there and allowed, so I don't see what all this is about. As I said, it's not the colour that makes the dog, it's what's inside that matters!

Now I've only one thing to add: Looking at this following picture, would you drag me out for a walk late at night?

Anyone can see I'm very tired and very comfortable on mum's bed and all I want to do is sleep. My silly mum wouldn't believe me when I told her I could hold it until the morning. She insisted on dragging me out for a walk, and put my reflective vest on and out we went. Everything was white outside, but not on the ground because then it would have been snow. What was white was the air which you normally can see through, but this white stuff is called fog. It was very strange, and you couldn't really see things around you. People we met looked like ghosts, and so did lamp posts, bushes and everything! Very strange! I don't really like to go for walks in the dark, and I can tell you the fog didn't make things any more fun!

October 19 2004
Bags

The other day when mum and I went for a walk, she suddenly started to say all those funny words that I'm not allowed to write in my diary! They sound like &%§*&##^ and mum uses them when she gets annoyed or really angry. What made her use them this time was that she stepped in some doggy poop, and it wasn't mine!! She also started to mutter something about lazy idiots who don't pick up after their dogs. While doing all this talking and muttering she was trying to clean her shoe on the grass, and I was trying to look as if I didn't know her which was kind of hard since she was holding my lead...

In Sweden you're supposed to pick up after your dog, specially in places where a lot of people and dogs go for walks. It's not really a law, but you're still supposed to do it. Unfortunately there are plenty of dog owners who doesn't care, and they kind of give all dog owners a bad reputation, and it makes mum very annoyed. She can't see why it's so hard for some people to carry black bags around in their pockets, and do what they're supposed to do! I actually carry my own bags in a little bag that's on my lead, and it's very good! Mum sometimes offers bags to dog owners who don't pick up after their dogs, and sometimes she gets embarassed looks, but other times people give out to her!! Isn't that strange?!

How can this be so hard for some people to carry around?

The little bag on my lead which contains poop bags.

October 16 2004
Ooops!

Today when mum was doing something in the bedroom, I decided to help her with some housework and took care of the bed. I was digging some in her duvets, moving pillows around and rolling around all over the bed. It's not only helping mum, but it's fun too! What wasn't so fun was that I fell down on the floor! There I was, fixing things in the bed, rolling here and there and just like that I found myself on the floor. Mum said I was lucky landing on the pillows I'd thrown down earlier, or I could have hurt myself. She also said it was a pity she didn't have her camera there, because she would have liked getting the expression of surprise on my face on a picture. Like I would have shown a photo like that?!

I will show you this one though, it's me sleeping very comfortably on my back on the floor. Mum doesn't understand how I can sleep like that, legs all over the place, my head in a strange angle and on the hard floor. She says it can't be comfortable, but how can she say that when she hasn't even tried...

October 12 2004
Going in the car

Today when mum came to pick me up from her mother where I'd spent the day I was all ready to go! Mum's mother had started getting ready, and she'd told me we were going in the car, and I love that! So when mum finally arrived I was so excited I hardly knew what to do. So we went out to the car, and mum lifted me in as usual, and then her mum got in and sat on the passenger seat. Mum started to reverse down the drive, and I decided since I'd had such a good day with mum's mum we should all go in the front of the car! I thought that would be very nice, the three of us together, so I went between the seats and tried to get into mum's lap. She told me to return to my place in the back seat, so then I tried to get over to mum's mother instead, but she also told me to go to the back seat again. Well, if no one of them wanted me on their laps, I'd still sit in the front of the car, so I sat down on the handbreak between the front seats. By this time, mum was down on the street, and she stopped the car and got out. I thought she was going to let me drive, so I moved over to her seat while she opened the back door mumbling something about seat belts. (She did buy me a seat belt, but I don't wear it all the time since mum is very lazy at times.) Now I thought mum would get in to sit in the back of the car, but instead she lifted me out and placed me in the back and told me to stay there. I had no intention of doing that, so I tried to get in between the front seats again, but now mum's mother had put her bag there and her arm, so I couldn't get in there! Silly humans! I mean all I wanted was us going together in the front of the car, and they wouldn't let me?! I got annoyed and lied down on the seat behind mum with a grumpy look on my face. I decided to stay there for the whole ride, but after about 4 min's it got boring since no one payed any attention to me, so I moved over to the other side where I usually sit and looked out the window.

I still don't understand why they wouldn't let me sit in the front! I heard mum saying to her mother that "Higgins never wants to sit in the front of the car, not even when he's had to!". Well, that might be true, but it's not the same! If mum tells me to sit in the front just because she's put loads of huge stuff in the back seat, it kind of annoys me. The back seat is my territory - if I decide so - and shouldn't be filled with other things! If I decide it would be nice to sit in the front togheter with mum and anyone riding in the car with us, I think I should be allowed to.

October 6 2004
Being left in different places

I'm pretty good now being left by mum during the days, and I've stopped whining about it. Getting up really early in the morning is silly, and I'm tired so when mum drops me off at Rusty's place or at her parent's place I have a new routine. I run inside and into the bedrooms hoping to find whoever I'm staying with in bed. Then I crawl in under the bed and sleep a while, or I jump up in their beds and cuddle. I take every opportunity to sleep, since it's very exhausting for me during the days now. When I'm with mum I'm not as tired, and that's because I know her ways. If I'm with Rusty and his mum I have to keep an eye on everything they do, and in order not to miss anything I can't sleep! Same thing if I'm with mum's parents. It's very hard work keeping an eye on them if both of them are home, because they don't stay in the same room all the time! And sometimes one of them goes out on their own, and how can I keep an eye on them if they're not in the house! I think that's a reason mum leaves me there, so I can keep an eye on them, and how can I do that if one of them decide to leave the house?!

Anyway, when mum comes to get me in the afternoon, I throw myself at her and tell her all the things that's been happening during the day, and mostly I'm very anxious to leave immediately. Sometimes mum decides to stay a while and have coffee or something before we go, and I don't see why she has to do that. I mean I can tell her what's been happening during the day, so why does she have to talk to either her parents or Rusty's mum? Very strange if you ask me.

September 10 2004
Strange times

Ok, so it's been weeks again since I updated here. All I can do is blame the fact that everything is upside down here! Mum and I have been home for a year or so since mum is unemployed at the moment, and I think that's been great! But now mum has been forced to go to some boring place every day - except weekends - for a couple of weeks. It's not a job she's going to, it's something else she has to do and it must be a weird and boring place since she's not allowed to bring me! So our days has totally changed, first of all we have to get up very early in the morning, something none of us like, and mum brings me for a walk. Then we come home and she has some coffee, give me my breakfast and packs a bag with stuff, and then we go in the car. Some days she leaves me with Rusty and his mum, and other days I get to spend with mum's parents. It's a good thing I get to stay in places I know together with people I know, that's all I can say. Another good thing is that both Rusty's family and mum's parents lives in the same area, so all mum has to do is to remember which house she's supposed to drop me off at! Mum can be very confused, and it doesn't exactly help when she's not really awake yet!

The first couple of mornings when mum dropped me off, I decided it was a good idea to whine a bit, but then I realised I didn't have to. I mean I'm with people I know, and they treat me very well, so I really didn't have anything to whine about. It would have been worse if she'd left me on my own, or in some un-known place...What haven't changed though is me greeting her when she comes to get me in the afternoons! I'm all over her, kissing her ears off and telling her all about my day. When we get home we usually go for a walk, and the rest of the evening I usually relax and rest up. It's so good to just have mum around, I know her routines so I don't have to keep an eye on her all the time...

August 19 2004
Big mystery

There is something very strange going on now. During the last week mum and I have been going in the car to her sister's house, but that's not the strange thing. What is strange though is every time we get there there's noone home?! I don't understand why we go for visits if nobody's home? Usually when we get there mum parks on the street, but this last couple of days she's parked in their drive, and every day she goes to their mailbox! Then we go inside, and I run around looking for mum's sister, Stefan or little Martin, but they're not there! Maybe they've been kidnapped?! I've been searching the place every day, looking under tables and chairs and even under the beds, but there's no sign of them. The only things I've found are a few crumbs. Mum and I have even been taking walks in the area, but I've found no leads to where mum's sister and her family can be. The weird thing is that mum doesn't seem worried about it at all? Like it's natural going to their house visiting when they're not home...Hopefully they'll be there next time we go for a visit.

August 16 2004
A day out

Last weekend mum and I went on a small trip to a place called Sundbyholm. It was so much fun, first to go in mum's parent's car, and then get to investigate the place we went to. We were walking around there, and saw a lot of exciting things. There were quite a few people there to look at, and I saw some dogs too. Mum and her parent's mostly looked out over the water, they were apparently watching out for something which turned out to be some boat. I spent most of the time looking for sausages. I found one, but unfortunately mum saw it and took it away, and after that I spent the rest of the time looking for more hoping mum wouldn't find me out. Unfortunately the only sausage I found was the one mum took off me. The boat that mum and her parents were interested in looking at was very boring if you ask me. I guess their excuse is they are humans, and mum took quite a few pictures out there which you can see at her own website. Only go there if you want to look at the stupid boat! Mum didn't even take a picture of the sausage I found, and that would have been a very interesting one if you ask me. Before leaving the place, mum and her parents had coffee and some cakes, but all I got was some water mum had brought from home. I don't think that's fair! When you go on a little trip I think everyone going should have something nice to eat.

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Text and photos Copyright Yvonne Eriksson 2001-2004