Oh, it was an incredibly busy winter 2010 :-)! So many activities have been happening every day that it is hard to find a spare minute to write about our Girly. She is growing and growing, changing day by day, and in three days her First Birthday is coming! Seems like she stopped to grow physically: she is 67 cm high and her weight has been approx 34,5 kg during several months. She is dark chocolate, shiny and very beautiful Ferrari-looking dog . 

Betty is rather strong. Having a natural for Dobermann very emotional psychic, sometimes she is pulling leash hard trying to reach "the place of event" as soon as possible. She turns into muscles and looks like an athlet. We are trying to get her relaxed by talking softly to her, and sometimes it works; but when she is very eager (another dog appears in the Horisont) you must be REALLY strong to hold her. 

Here is a roundabout right in front of our house and it has always been under vigilant surveillance of Betty . It is HER property and she is guarding it every minute. She only seems to fall asleep, but NO! she is on the alert like a soldier. The slightest sound outside makes her jump on the couch and observe her posessions carefully. With short and serious bark ("wuff") she warns every strainger: "You'd better keep yourself away!" 

In spite of she can gnaw or bite off en "interesting piece" from time to time, it seems like the most difficult behaviour inside house have passed. Yesterday she ate a GPS device and that's it ! No, to be serious, she changed a lot during last period. She is calm at home, she is lying either on the carpet under small table eating pigears/feet/tales etc., or on sofa, on top of pillows like a real Queen. She jumps into shower cabinet herself when it is time for bath, she even lets me cut her nails!! Even if it is not the most pleasant prosedure, she still sits and bears me cutting every of her nails slowly and carefully. Clever girl!

She has very interesting and funny moments in her behaviour that I would love to share with you. First of them is how she meets people coming to us. She is very welcome to guests! She is happy when people come and especially when mamma Ira or pappa Ståle come back home. She takes any closest shoe into her mouth and runs big cicrles with the shoe around whole house. Her ears are back tight to head and tail is moving from side to side. She runs jog trot several very wide circles along the walls in all rooms. Then her circles are more narrow and at the end she is just running around us.

It is aslo amazing to see how she sits. She sits straight on her rump. She can sit on the sofa like that looking through window, putting her head on backrest and philosophizing about the higher matter. Then she finds the most attractive place with a lot of pillows and lays down on top of them with all four feet under cheek.

Betty likes to share our bed with us . She is cute and warm, but she is sooo big! When she is lying in compact position like a brown cookie (or like a ball) at the end of our bed - it is OK. But after a while she becomes hot and stretches in the whole length kicking us out of bed. Every evening she comes and lyes into bed, but pappa Ståle removes her from his place. No, she doesn't want to leave this nice and warm place! She makes herself heavy and turns into "potato bag" fighting for her place ! Anyway she ends up on the floor. But!.. During night she sneaks into bed again and every morning we are waking up three heads on pillows.

But she is adorable!

 Our Little Betty is 7 months today! She is at the office with me. My boss is very kind to me and lets Betty be here whenever it is necessary. She has just finished her pigfoot (these feet are her "passion of the month") and layed down close to me to rest.

She is amazing when it deals with her way of eating. She is soooo kind - we can stroke her while she is eating, hold her bowl, even take the food away from her - she never gives a slightest sound (neither barking, nor growling), just makes a surprised face, sits on her rump and waits untill we give her food back. When she gnaws a bone she "shares" it with us: comes and asks us to hold it on one end and another end is in her mouth. This is what she has done several moments ago here: she insisted on holding the pigfoot to her. She came up to me and asked me about it using funny sounds. Eating alone is boring to her. She is incredible! 

Betty is talking! Oh, how funny it is. She is answering when I give her order to go to her place, or when I try to put her to bed in the evening. When she doesn't want to do something I tell her to do, she is talking to me, muttering into her nose like an old "grandmother", sometimes she is protesting by copying the tone of my voice. But she listens to us.

She is a clever girl. We go for a morning walk to the forest where she can run and let her energy out. She likes these areas - it is an expanse, big fields to run freely! But when I call her name she comes to me at once. She is suspecious to straingers: when she sees someone coming to our direction, her fur goes up, she takes a strained position and is ready to defence. We are working now to get her indifferent to other people. And it goes well. Step by step.

Our doggie gives us a lot of positive emotions and joy!

It was so incredibly long ago since I wrote some news about Betty. I have been always feeling bad conscience about it and was going to come back with news, but it was such a busy period for us, so I simply never could find time.

But finally I got a quiet minute and am glad to write a couple of words about our Chocolate Princess. On Tuesday she will fill 7 months!  She became quite big: 66 cm hight and 31 kg.  She doesn't look like a puppy anymore, but like a beautiful teenager girl.

She is very smart and clever, she understands almost everything at home. She started to defend us and our house with no joke. She is not sleeping deeply any longer, but always in alert. When I am coming slightly on my toes to her (in order, for example, to cut her nails), she opens her eye and shows that she sees everything.  She doesn't sleep in our bed all night long like she used to do before. Only just before wakeup call she jumps and enjoys early morning dream at the far end of the bed.

She is extremely brave! I don't know what can frighten her... only something unexpected: sudden appearence of a person or an object from the forest when we are out or something new and unknown. She is jumping on hills, klimbs up slippery rocks, runs wide circles on high yellow grass full of water with a big smile from ear to ear, drinks from waterfalls. When we come back home she is running proudly around her property with a few barks: well, I am back, everybody better keep yourself away!  

22 and 23 of August we took part in dogs' exhibition named Ranautstillingen in Mosjøen. It was Betty's 1st experience. Despite there were so many different dogs around, she behaved well. She could of course be more concentrated, but we cant judge her - she is just a baby in her "researching-the-world" stage. 2nd day she showed better result. I was glad! She is corresponding to the best dobermann type in all parameters. She was called for "the best bitch" in puppies category, got good critics and a rose.

Yes, it happened so much during these last two weeks!
My mom and stepfather are visiting us here in Norway. Sergey, stepfather, is a big fan of fishing and our area full of mountain lakes seems like a dreamland to him. We took a few trips to different picturesque places in Mo i Rana suburbs in order to show him around. There was not a single day without fishing after that! Last week we spent on the island called Nesøy. It was one of the deapest impressions in my life when I first came there. Island has incredibly beautiful landscape with it's rich nothersn nature full of blueberry, raspberry, cloudberry, juniper, dwarf birches and pine trees, heather and very clean air. Sheeps are the main inhabitants of the island . 3 raindeers and 1 moose escaped from the "stressfull life" of the main land, swam to the island and found quiet life over there. There fly a lot of seagulls, eagles, puffins. In the Atlantic ocean lives uncountable number of various fish. Curious seals show their faces here and there... Betty got a lot of impressions there! She was very brave and showed the best sides of dogs character that you can be proud of. She was climbing on hills and mountains using all her power, she went deep into water, jumped on big stones. She met a family of sheep: quite big mother of 4 lambs came close to Betty, she made some scary sounds trying to chase her away from her babies. Betty was standing like a monument, her fur was up, but she didn't step back. The best thing - she behaved decently, she didn't bark, just was charmed by unknown animal. She was sailing the fishboat. She found a nice nest full of pillows in cabin sofa and went straigt there. From time to time she went out to look at big codes, perches and pollack fishes that we caught during our trips. She was riding small boat together with Ståle. She wasn't afraid of anything! Our girl grew up significantly during this week. She became bigger in size (she is almost 20 kg!!) and very clever and understanding. Look at her new pictures in gallery!

Yesterday we were at Dobermann meeting at  RTBK , Mo i Rana. Annja organized this meeting + training before the exhibition coming in august. There were five dobermans with their owners: 6-year old excellent-trained and very intelligent black male Arthos, 16-months old young and alive black male, Annja's Pia and Cashmir and Betty. Before training dogs were running freely and playing with each other. "Brave" Betty also tried to party with all others, she attacked them, pushed them with her childish foot, but when getting someone's attention she hid immediately under table and benches. It was funny to look at :-). We made some simple exercises: ran circles, learned to go and stand properly. I was proud of Betty - she was trying her best and despite she was the youngest and smallest, she looked very well! She consentrated so much as she could and at the end became incredibly tired. When we came home she almost didn't manage to walk, fell on the pale of sand and became dusty and dirty like a piggy. After shower she fell asleep so deeply that I couldn't wake her up in the morning... 1st time she didn't go to work with me but stayed home.