some pictures about dogs

i just went through my pictures at uni and found those on dogs. they are related to the topic i am studying, the function of scent marking behaviour in the dog. the last one especially shows really well what i am trying to achieve . . . .

there is this new toy on the market that sends your dog's vocalisations via sms to your mobile phone, translated of course. in return, you can send your dog an sms which will be transposed into your dog's language. i was thinking about taking advantage of technology and just ask the dogs what they get out of scent marks. that would save me a lot of work ;-))

and here is a link for all the cat lovers among you
http://screenclean.ifrance.com/
but you have to switch on your loudspeakers to fully enjoy !

my blog . . . . and my family

it is just under a week later and i remember that i have a blogspot. it was my aim to pudate (sorry, update) our blog regularly, so this is what i am doing. here are my brothers and sister. top are my mum, my dad, marc and his love karen, then comes eric the philosopher, below carole my sister in the snow, followed by marc somewhere in the planets, and my bum riding back home in cambridge. hope no one minds being sent around the world . . .

we went 'black-currant-picking' on wednesday evening and had a great time. one joke that cirulated was: why do gorillas have big nostrils ? and here is one for philippe: what are three words for 'short'. (answers at the end, if i don't forget). we also talked about smoking while we were eating greasy english fish and chips on a south-cambridge-neighbourhood green. rio was running all over the place and doing little tricks in exchange for chips.

i have been out observing dogs everymorning, mapping their spatial pattern of scent marks. it is fascinating to recognize all the dogs by now and observing trends. but it can also be very cold in the morning especially on windy days. so when i come in to uni i am usually like a block of ice when everybody else walks around nearly topless.

elie found car-full of bazaaaar in a posh village south of cambridge. when i saw that i nearly had a heart attack. but we are going to sell it all on the carboot sale on sunday morning, so i will feel much better then. today he went up to prestwick to buy some more furniture for the shop. this is about 3h north of cambridge.

oh, and here is the answer to the gorilla anatomy: because they have big nostrils !!
and the three words are 'is' 'it' 'in'.

i may be back before the end of the weekend. let me see if i can find a picture.

rio the pooch

so this is rio, the dog. an important, fun, time-consuming and inspiring part in our lives. he goes with us everywhere, nearly, and we hope he enjoys these trips. he came to us from spain, more exactly from the following organisation: www.tierhilfe-aktiv.de , where some of his story can be found under "sonnenseite 2002" (he was formerly known as mingo).

yes, he is a little mad in his head sometimes, but most of the time he is just being an (re-) active and entertaining little critter. he has come a long way since he got to us and we are still working on eachother . . . . more later.

here we are !

hello to the world !! this is the first post and at the same time a first test. i am creating this blog especially for all our friends far away who would like to keep in touch and see what we are up to. i don't know whether i should rewind time and start a few years back, or just start from today.

i would like to start by introducing who we are and posting a few pics, hope i manage to place them on the blog somehow . . . . i am not a techno-genie. this is for people who have not seen us in some time and others who would just like to have a look at us once in a while.

i have been thinking long what language to post in. but probably my typing skills are best in english at this stage and my keyboard is not geared to type some of the german characters. - further, i assume that english is a language that most people understand to some extend . . . . so this is what it will be.

our 'old' computer crashed last week due to a mechanical hard disk failure. unfortunately all our pictures went down the drain, which, in my opinion, was the saddest part about loosing our 1.5 year old toshiba. so, please, if anyone has got some pics i sent out to them, i would be more than happy if you could send them back to me to re-stock my picture archive. thanks !!

i have no clue how regularly i will be able to post on here. the idea is something like twice a month or so, but don't know if i will be able to stick to it.

ok, then the name. it is a combination of daisy and elie, who the blog is all about. at the same time it means 'little daisy' in swiss german, as the ending "-li" is the diminuitive form of any noun.

good start, wasn't it ?? un abrazo a todos !!