of eyes, sheds and sunflowers

the theme of this post seems to be round shapes, looking through, seeing. above is a nice pic of rio's left eye with the blue pigmentation well visible. and this is my eye . . . .


and these are my fantastic sunflowers !! i wish we had chickens like the neighbour to get rid of those thousand of snails. they have eaten at least half my sunflowers, decapitated them and had a feast once the tomatoes were finally ripe. on the second picture you can actually see the cherry tomatoes, there is a shy one showing its cheek.



and this is our shed. i don't know what elie was doing, but i kind of like the picture. it also shows some of our garden. as you can see our shed is not the most modern one . . . .

a trip down the river . . . .

my friend elisabeth lives on a house-boat and regularly takes trips down the river to the town of Ely (26km from cambridge) to refill diesel, water or empty her toilet tank (....). she invited me to accompany her for part of the trip, so i took off by foot and soon found her tuckering along the river with her entire house.

after walking along the bank for some time we hit bait bites lock. i have passed by that look many times, but have never seen it in action. it was interesting to see how it actually works and how powerful water can be (on a small scale).


from there i hoped on the boat and we glided down the river with a cup of tea in the hand. it was so relaxing, quiet and peaceful. -



for us, not for rio, whom i did not let on the boat. he frantically ran up and down the bank, got in the water wherever he could, and swam after the boat in an attempt to catch up with us. once we reached the bridge in waterbeach we let him get on as well and he watched the world go by, not totally convinced that this was actually the best way to travel . . . . .


it was totally worth taking the morning off uni to take that trip together with elisabeth. thank you for suggesting a little day out !! she then went on all the way to ely and back the next day. her boat goes about at walking speed, so it is great to walk along the bank while she is cruising. or sit on the boat for a change.

impressions from my beloved ZŰRI

after my short trip to the french-speaking part of switzerland and france i had another few days to spend in zurich. my friend from canada came to visit for a whole week and we had a great time with loads of fun and relaxed moments.

let me show you a few pictures. this first one is taken of the mountain on one side of zurich, the Űetliberg. this is also the place where elie and i spent a night to celebrate our fifth/twelfth anniversary a few days before ngaio and i walked up to the top again. after climbing that obstacle we took the tram down to the lake to visit the yearly 'theaterspektakel'.

it was a lovely evening and we were surrounded by great company, my mother christine, father luc, and my brother eric, whom i don't really see often.here he is, nearly natural:


and this is rare, but does happen:


and this is myself with two dogs of a friend of mine. four humans took three dogs and two horses out into the forrest for a peaceful walk. it was fantastic. i miss the woods around here, among other things.


and this last picture probably best discribes the way i felt after having spent a wonderful time in my homecountry: split in two. it is my home, but equally i feel like a stranger or foreigner. in a way i was looking forward to going home to england, seeing elie again, the house, my familiar surroundings. on the other hand i was leaving behind a bunch of people i love, places i'll miss, and moments i will sap on until the next visit . . . . . .

rio in the mountains

yes, i am sorry, i appologize for all those that couldn't care less about dogs. just jump this post and hope to have something more exciting soon. this session is about rio in the mountains . . . . .

so, i took the car and drove to the beautiful valais in the southern part of switzerland. this is a picture of the little lake up there on a valley high above the regular valley. it was beautiful and i realized how much i miss mountains over here in england. the highest i ever get on a regular basis is the third floor of our university building or the railway bridges in town ;-(

so little dog was travelling with me in the car. this roughly looked like that:


then we reached champex in the valais after much effort of myself and the car, neither of us being used to driving in the mountains. there are some more shots of rio in the mountains and he visibly enjoyed the fresh mountain air.


of course i found a lovely blueberry field where i spent hours harvesting these mountain treasures. of course rio was a good assistant and took taste to those vitamin bombs.


but as usual after a short time he got bored and waited for more instructions of what to do next. that is the collie in him, he just cannot keep himself busy without instructions.

so i found a stick and asked him repeatedly to climb on that rock, which kept him occupied for some time, as he is not very good with heights . . . .

we then visited friends in geneva before staying with another friend 'dans la haute savoie', which was the highlight of my vacations. my friend has three belgian shepherds and lives out in nowhere at an altitude of 1000m above sea-level. we walked across meadows and picked wild herbs of all sorts, which we later ate in our salad. it was a lot of nature in a short time !!


rio discovered mice underground . . . . .


. . . . . attracted curious spectators . . . . .

. . . . or watched other dogs at work.


and after an extended session of swimming the three dogs finally found some time to keep still for a picture. thank you marianne for a fantastic time !!

switzerland here we come !!

finally in august it was time to visit family and friends in switzerland. james and jack from england accompanied rio and myself across the channel and france all the way to zurich. the entire trip went smooth and after a very noisy night near arras and some more driving we hit the highway in switzerland. next morning we went to have some sweets at the famous confiserie Sprüngli in the most expensive street of Züri. i think my proportions look a little funny on that picture . . . . . . maybe i was still crinkly from the recent trip back to my roots . . . .


i was accompanied by a bunch of wonderful men who were preparing their minds for the big evening of the street parade http://www.streetparade.ch/:


one of them, by coincidence my husband, finally found someone with the same clothing style:


the boys then went on to play with some toys. more specifically they "test-drove" two smart cars for an entire afternoon. it looks like they've had a lot of fun ! (thanks philou for not being on the picture ;-)) )


after all this hard work we some re-filled in my parent's new appartment. it was actually quite lovely and unexpected to spend some time with my brother eric, to elie's left (right in the picture).

addendum for spring '05

i found a few pics i would like to share dating back to the months of may and june this year. we've had a few visits from belgium, germany, the states, which was great. but first i would like to show you our nice little house as seen from the garden. when we got here the whole garden was like a jungle and now we've got something approximating english lawns.



one of the visits was our long-time friend philou from belgium. he treated me to 10 (yes, ten !!) pints of ben & jerry's ice cream !! imagine, i was in heaven. and here's the proof.



you'd think after indulging myself in these pleasures i had an overdosis of chocolate for some time. but this is far from the whole truth. not enough, in addition philou got 1kg of belgian pralines just for me, for my birthday. philou, that was close to the dream that haunts me: swimming in a tub of smooth melted chocolate ! incredible i did not lose my mind in all this chocolate.



but to burn off some of these excess calories laura, rio and i walked from ely to waterbeach, which is a 12 mile walk. we were doing pretty well and did the whole thing in 3.5 hours, probably because there was a pub at the end of the trip, and we were followed by two boys, just some other walkers, whom we did not want to catch up with us. at the 'bridge' in waterbeach we met elisabeth and ngaio, who'd walked all the way from cambridge (7 miles), as well as elie (who came by car !). it was a lovely walk and i'd be ready to do it any time again soon.



laura's parents came to visit from the states and we took them to a lovely non-smoking pub for dinner one evening. we had 'bangers & mash' and a plate of cheese accompanied by english beer, wine and smoothies. thanks a million for a lovely evening in great company ! this is a shot of elie and i they took after the meal in front of elie's shop.

more on dogs, sorry . . . . .

just wanted to show you a few more pics that i like. i went to this dog show in august held in windsor park. it was fantastic and i don't think i have ever seen so many dogs together at the same time. it was the seven biggest U.K. animal charities organising a fun day to fund raise, among other things.

they also tried to break the world record of number of dogs sitting for two enire minutes, i don't actually know if they managed. it was very busy, but all in all a nice day, after which we went to see windsor castle from outside.

basically the whole day i tried to chase dogs with the same colouring as rio. it is basically a mutation that changes a dog's black colouring into this grey-black-spotty pattern. it is recessive and often comes with blue or part-blue eyes.

the first two days i think were brothers, lurchers for sure. they were fairly big and looked fantastic both together. i particularly liked the black and grey colouring of the dog in the back, but have seen a similar colour of the beige dog in a picture with a podenco in spain.



and this is rio's new girlfriend. she is apparently a greyhoud x whipped x border collie x bedlington terrier and is just about exactly the dog we would be looking for as an addition to our family.



and these two pups i absolutely loved. probably siblings as well, very very cute, could have taken them home.

long time no hear

hello everybody,

i have not updated my blog in ages. the summer is nearly over, i don't know where it actually went, it seems to have flewn by like the concord jet, the sky is still clear, but the nights are crispy cold. i will go through my pictures and see what interesting things i have to show you. the aim of this blog really is to share pictures.

in july i was sitting in a dog park for four hours a day, for nearly the whole month. i created something like a visual map of places where dogs scent mark, which i will analyse for spatial and temporal patterns at uni. while i was doing this, rio would accompany me and look out for the next dog to observe. he was something like my research assistant and signalled well when i should take my nose out my book and follow a dog.



the picture on the left was taken by dita who used to live with us. we had a BBQ party the evening before when that wooden wheel served as a table. the next day rio sensed the energy of the sun inside the wood and decided to have a nap on it ......