wow...two days in a row!

Over the past year we have continued working on Inko's tricks, but probably not as often as we should. My plan for this year is to try and do more with her, to make her performance on tricks more consistent, and to try and learn some new ones too. I also hope to try and finally get round to doing the Kennel Club Good Citizen Bronze award with her (and maybe even Silver) - I must get booked onto a training course soon, to learn the last couple of bits more solidly, and then we need to keep our fingers crossed that we both can get it right under assessment! I'm pretty sure she's nearly ready now, but it depends on her being in the mood on the assessment day!



I managed to get a quick video of us doing a bit of practice the yesterday. Whilst she knows quite a few tricks, she is a little haphazard in her performance at the moment, and often starts trying to 'offer' tricks in the hope of a treat, rather than waiting for the command!! This is especially the case for 'shy' and 'wave' - she starts flapping her front legs as soon as she sees me get a treat, so we need to work on getting some more control there. Hopefully it should be do-able with a bit of effort, seeing she does generally know the commands.

I did also take another better quality video on our new camera today, but I just uploaded it and it was 106MB! Ooops - seems I recorded it in HD! I'll try and work out how to reduce it in size so I can upload it on here...or I'll try recording a new one!

In the meantime, here's some more new pics

Inko showing off her long toe hair!!



A bit more singing!



Such a grown up girl now!

Thought it was about time for a new post!!!

Just realised that it has been nearly a whole YEAR since our last blog post, so I thought it was about time we did an update! I have made a New Year's resolution to try and keep more up to date with the blog this year - fingers crossed I manage to stick to it!

Last year has been quite a busy year (with us getting married!), so hopefully we can be forgiven for the quietness on the blog (ok, maybe it might partly be laziness on our part, but we were pretty busy too!)

It is hard to believe that Inko is now nearly 2 1/2 years old - that time has gone by just so quickly. She is quite the grown up now and is definitely starting to be much calmer now. She still has her crazy moments, but she is also much more willing to lie down quietly than she was when she was a bit younger.

So what has she been up to for the last year...?

Well, she went to several shows, including Crufts. At Crufts she decided to try and put off the opposition with a LOT of barking - anyone who was there will testify to her determination to ensure that everyone at the NEC was aware of her presence! She was in an enormous class, and as one of the babies in the post graduate class (having only just moved up from Junior) she didn't manage to place, but we all had good fun, which is all that counts!

Shortly after Crufts, Inko finally decided to have her first season, aged approximately 20 months! She certainly took her time with that, and to this day has still not bothered to have a second one! We're still waiting for that, and we're hoping it won't coincide with Crufts for this year!

At other shows over the last year Inko has done better, qualifying for Crufts at nearly all of them, and sometimes beating several dogs to get into the top 3. Whilst we didn't manage any firsts with her (apart from at the Finnish Lapphund Club of Great Britain show...where she was the only one in her class!), we did manage several seconds and thirds at various shows, which was great. Unfortunately she made her presence known at all of those almost as much as at Crufts, so that is something we need to be working on for the shows this year! She just gets so excited at shows that she wants to let everyone know :)

As well as the shows, Inko also had some holidays over the last year. Jennifer and Jay, her breeders, very kindly had her to stay when Adam and I went on holiday to Scotland, and they also had her to stay when we went on honeymoon. She had a great time, because she got to play with her fur-mum, fur-dad and sister!

Inko also got to come to our wedding last year. She was being looked after by a local dog carer for the weekend of our wedding, and the owner very kindly agreed to bring her over to the wedding venue for the photos! Whilst it wasn't practical to have her there for the whole day, it was great that she could be there for at least part of it, and we have got some lovely photos of her with us :) Inko also enjoyed a trip up to Malvern with us to see Jo, George and her brother Tarkka.

More recently, Inko very much enjoyed the covering of snow we got. It never ceases to amaze us just how at home lappies are in the snow - she just LOVES it, and likes to spend as much time in it as we'll let her! As the snow began melting she would run to the last patch to lie on, making the most of every last moment she had with it! Whilst many of us are hoping it doesn't return too quickly because of the disruption it causes, she, like most lappies I'm sure, is probably hoping we get more January/February snow like last year!

That's probably enough of an update for now, but here are just a few pics...


Inko at one of the shows in the summer




And at another show, sat next to her sister, Kaija




Inko at the pub in the summer, looking like she's singing!




Inko at her second birthday party with her doggy pals Sammy, Bobby and Guiness!




Inko at our wedding




Inko on our weekend in Malvern in October




Inko and her brother Tarkka in Malvern




Inko in one of my t-shirts, to keep her calm during the fireworks




Inko in the snow this winter

Inko...on your mat

Here's a short video showing Inko practising 'on your mat'. She's definitely making progress :)

(although when I tried to get a video of this at lunch time as soon as I got the camera out she picked the mat up and shook it instead of sitting on it! Unfortunately I didn't catch it on camera!)

Sorry for the silence!

I can't believe it was October when I last posted anything on here! It has all been a bit crazy recently with the renovation work, and we're not quite finished yet, but we're much closer to normality than we were!

The actual building work is now complete and three rooms have become one at the back of our house! It is a lovely space, and makes so much more sense as it is now than the clumsy layout it used to be. We have installed the new kitchen and we're really pleased with it. We have a bit of painting left to do in there, some coving to fit, handles to go on the cabinets and the new flooring to lay, but it is actually a fully functioning kitchen since the cooker went in last weekend, so no more cooking on the two ring portable electric hob! Not to knock that too much though, as it has served us very well for the last 3 months or so!!


We haven't started on the other end of the room yet, as you'll see from some of the video below which scans round the new room (sorry it's a bit blurry - it was taken on my phone), but we plan to get going with that fairly soon. We need to damp proof the floor and pay self-levelling flooring, and then we'll be laying laminate. It also needs painting, and some pipes need boxing in, but none of that should be too difficult hopefully. We haven't really worked out what to call that end yet. Ideally it would make a great dining room but as we don't have the money left to buy a nice dining table yet, at the moment we are just referring to that end as 'the bit' :)


Now that we're not so chaotic Inko is much more settled than she has been, as it is starting to feel like a home again, rather than a building site. She is still sleeping upstairs in one of the bedrooms as her den area is still full of stuff at the moment but we hope to be able to clear that in the next few weeks, as much of what is in there is destined to end up in 'the bit' once the flooring is down!

This is a rather wobbly and blurry video, but shows what the new kitchen looks like

Looking backwards from the new kitchen to 'the bit'

And again from a slightly different angle

One side of the kitchen, facing out to the garden

The other side of the kitchen, with our new cooker that we LOVE!

"Inko...arms"

Thought I'd better include an updated picture of Inko, seeing as we have been using her blog for house stuff for so long! This is Inko's favourite position, which she gets from her Dad, Keskiyo, having the underneath of her arms scratched. She likes to ask anyone to do this by hopping up onto her hind legs, and will sit there for ages loving the attention!

At the end of this month Inko has her first show of the year, an Open show in Reading. I just have to hope that we both remember what we are supposed to do in the ring - seems like ages since we last went to one! We're off to ring craft tomorrow night to get back into the swing of things.

I have also started doing some new training with Inko at home as I have been a bit lazy with it with all of the house stuff going on. I am trying to teach her to sit on a mat on command. The mat in the picture above is the one we're practising on. She seems to be picking it up very easily at the moment which is promising, but it still needs a bit of work yet. Hopefully it won't be long before I get it more consistently from her...and can start getting a response without the constant promise of a bit of sausage :)

OT - more progress (or at least more destruction to make way for progress!!)

We've had a bit more wall knocking down done this week and today Adam and I have been emptying our house of furniture into storage ready for the electrician who is coming in on Monday to start the re-wire and an empty house will make it easier for him to get it done quicker. We have also taken up the laminate flooring in our lounge/diner so he can take the floorboards up for the wiring. We have already ordered carpet to replace the laminate but now we've seen the floorboards they seem quite nice!

Here's some more pics...

Here's the latest 'hole' - we've had the old shower bit taken out, leaving a hole. We now just need the bit between this hole and the doorway taken out and then it will be one big room finally. Then it's a case of the builders putting pillars and RSJs in.




Here's Inko watching me attempt to cook in the shell that is our old kitchen - she loves watching, and now she has more space to do it in! See her 'devil eyes'!!

Inko watching from her den while we're clearing - feeling very annoyed at being left out!!

Sofas gone into storage and replaced with garden chairs so we could eat our lunch, before beginning the rest of the clearing...

There's quite a lot of stuff to clear out!

Nearly there with the clearing

Once most of the stuff was out, it was a case of ripping up the laminate flooring.

To reveal some nice old floor boards...

OT - first wall out!

Opening the ex-kitchen through to utility room is well one it's way. The wall is mostly out now and awaiting the RSJ. Next step is for the wall between the utility and back room to be taken out and then it will be one big space. Already we're getting the sense of space and it is very exciting...if a little echoey with no flooring and no furniture! Inko is having great fun running around it all desperately trying to eat bits of dust. Luckily we can shut off this part of the house because otherwise she'd be licking all dust off the floor!!

It was another take-away tonight as couldn't face trying to cook in this chaos! Even though we still have a functioning oven and sink in the old kitchen it was so much easier just to get a chippy tea!!

and some more demolishing...

Taking out the last of the kitchen cabinets...

All gone...just oven and sink remaining - and the old dishwasher kept in there to act as a temporary extra work surface while we're still living in here before moving out once the electric re-wiring starts in about a week's time.

Looks like there might be some nice quarry tiles under the old kitchen floor. Not sure if they will be all over in the kitchen but will have to wait and see. They are covered in a lino and then other tiles, plus laminate type tiles on the top. We are going to keep these down for now to protect ant quarry tiles that exist underneath from the building work and will then uncover them later and are keeping our fingers crossed that there might be lots of them and not just a few where we've already uncovered.

All looking rather bare!!

We've also had to take down the ceiling in the kitchen ready for the electrics and wall knocking down work. It was clad in wood, so all had to be pulled down!

Here is the little conservatory at the side of the house that runs alongside the rooms that we are working on, that we will be turning into a mini utility room. Flooring up and near enough cleared, ready for work to begin.

Flooring all up in the back room where the kitchen will be once the walls are knocked down. Now just need to find a home for the exercise machine that we NEVER actually use!!!

And finally, here is the scene this evening where we were doing our best to cook in our shell of a kitchen - not the easiest of tasks!! So glad we kept the old dishwasher in there diconnected so that we can use the top of it as a worktop. We have got a kettle, microwave and other bits and pieces on the floor...let's hope all the work gets finished fairly on time as this could get a little tiring!!