Piitu - the Comedian

Now that I finally decided to take the time to update my blog, I noticed that I have not written in a month! This autumn has really gone fast. I have some reasons for missed weekends which I will blog about and my work seems to take so much time. Of course the puzzles take a big part of my time but sometimes I have felt I have not enough time for them either.

Now I decided to show some pictures of Piitu. She is one of the reasons my blogging is suffering. I have gone to so many shows with her and seen agility practises. Sometimes she just arranges shows for us at home. This is one of them. I guess she just got bored and decided to chew her big football to pieces...

I already told Piitu was picking mushrooms with us. Here she is taking good care that the mushrooms will be cleaned properly. Jumping to the kitchen chairs is no problem for her. Actually I have caught her several times climbing to the table...

Piitu really has only two modes, on and off. When she finally gets tired, she totally drops from standing feet. She can really find the most comfortable places to relax.

The last one is a video. Piitu learned to jump into a cardboard box a long time ago. We did not have the box available for a while and when we tried again, she had not forgotten the command, but she really had learned to jump. The jumps were really high regarding the size of the box. We had a good laugh watching.

Piitu's jumping skills are too good. She managed to jump over our backyard fence when she saw Lulu practising on the other side. The fence is 80 cm high and Piitu is very low. I still am wondering if she has acidentally been fed by a cat or something...

Beauty Queen

As I have written before, Piitu has been attending dog shows. In match shows she has not been very successful before. In match shows the dogs go to the ring as pairs and the pairs are random; they are basically generated by the order the dogs are registered to the show. The two dogs can be totally different breed and even size. The other one gets a red ribbon and is the better one of that pair and the other one gets a blue ribbon. After the dogs have been divided in two, both groups are competing in their own group.

Piitu has got the blue ribbon in all match shows. While I was still in Israel, Piitu got the 4th place in the blue group! She got a bag full of dog food as a prize.
She also attended a real dog show in Raisio Turun elonäyttely. Now she finally got graded as excellent and was 4th in the Junior class.

Since my daughter is very keen on taking Piitu to these shows, we left again yesterday, this time for Helsinki. I think I have been sitting in cars a lot lately taking Piitu everywhere… On the way Piitu once again showed her spirit. She has a harness attached to the safety belt holder, but she decided to travel on the back. The picture is not very good because I was sitting on the front seat, the worst possible place to see her.

Piitu has finally started to understand what dog shows are about. Nowadays she can even stand still for a moment without sitting down and she is also walking in a more dignified manner. When we started, she wanted to run or to go to a totally different direction or she started to jump against Katri. The result was excellent also this time and 4th place in junior bitches.

After the show Piitu met another Corgi Pembroke which looked just like Piitu. At one point we were looking at the other dog and thought that Piitu had once again found a way to escape from the cage. There are small differences in colouring, but from many angles they are so alike!

Here is the "official" picture we took at home

After the show Piitu was very tired and slept and here is a picture which again shows how much cat-like Piitu is. I have never seen a Corgi who sleeps like this. One day she looked like the fox in Firefox logo when sleeping :)

Back to Ruovesi Dog Show

It’s funny how summer goes fast. I have been doing everything else than writing my blog. This post has been waiting for a long time to be written; the first part of our journey to Ruovesi was written already a month ago.
The next day we had the dog show or actually shows. My dog is a Welsh Corgi Pembroke and my son and his girlfriend have a Welsh Corgi Cardigan. They competed in totally different shows. As you can see later in the pictures they look very much alike.
In the evening I was writing my blog and as you can see, Piitu always wants to be in the spot light. She just jumped and sat on the bench taking care that she saw everything.

Here I found Piitu in the morning:


Piitu has a “cage” made of fabric and Lulu fitted there with her. the problem with this is that Piitu can open the zipper if it is not secured.

The next pictures are from Piitu’s performance. She got again graded very good, but not excellent. She is too enthusiastic walking and she had never practiced on grass before.

Here is Lulu. She got graded excellent and also was the winner of the intermediate (young dogs) class. She got two nice badges but unfortunately I have not pictures of them.

After the show both were just exhausted:



The last picture is funny and we have actually two looking exactly the same. My son was jumping over a ditch and got Piitu jumping also. My daughter tried to catch Piitu in the picture, but here is the result. She was so fast, that all seen in the picture are my son’s feet.

City people in Ruovesi

This time I am in Ruovesi with my children and two crazy dogs; my Piitu and Lulu who is a Welsh Corgi Cardigan and belongs to my son and his girlfriend. Tomorrow we are attending a Dog show for Corgi’s.

The trip has been funny so far. That is what happens when people used to living in a big city head for the country. We had printed the map from the Internet but it does not help if you are not paying attention to the directions. I was as usual doing my puzzles on the front seat when my daughter was driving. I was supposed to be the navigator, but when I was not fully concentrating we drove past an intersection and the result was that we had to drive over 100 km too much using a smaller but a beautiful country road. We had a real map with us which I preferred to use instead of the Google maps in my sons mobile.

We had made a reservation for a cabin and it turned out that this is a camping cabin instead of a normal summer cabin. We share the common toilet and showers with this whole small island in the middle of a lake and we were not actually prepared. We did not take any water with us, no plates or mugs, no bug spray… We have bought all the dinners in advance so we don’t starve.

At least we are in a good mood and are laughing about this. The nature is fabulous. This photo was taken a little before 11 pm. The Finnish summer is at its greatest!

Gorgi Agility Camp in Kajaani

Almost two weeks ago my daughter, my dog Piitu and I spent the weekend at a corgi agility camp in Kajaani, which is about 700 km north from where we live. Since there were only the two of us and I don’t particularly like driving long distances, we decided to go there by train. That actually meant three trains in one direction. I was very nervous before the journey because Piitu is very wild and I was afraid she would get bored spending so much time just being in the same place. As usual I worried for nothing; Piitu acted like a little angel. I guess just looking around and seeing new things was enough to keep her happy.

Here the journey starts. Piitu had a ticket to stay on the floor, but she kept jumping to our laps. Pets are allowed in a certain department and with one exception the compartments in each train were almost empty.

The second part from Tampere to Oulu was a night train and we had a sleeping cabinet. Piitu is here checking what is happening outside. My daughter slept on the upper bed and Piitu would have liked to go there with her. She actually thought about trying the stairs to jump up but came to her senses and did not do it.

This is the railway station of Oulu where we spent two hours in the morning waiting for the next train. The building is a very typical railway station in Finland.

Piitu in the back seat of the VW Golf we rented; this time totally happy without even trying to get out of there.

Here my daughter is packing. Piitu wanted to make sure that she would be included in the things to come with us and placed herself in the end of the line.

This is from the last part of the trip. Piitu was totally exhausted and placed herself in the middle of the floor. Fortunately there was not much traffic…

And the best part last. Here are pictures from Piitu’s performance. These photographs were taken by Katri Soini. She had the right equipment to freeze the moment. Have you seen flying dogs before?

Cute Corgis

Corgis are just so cute. I wrote earlier that Piitu has her own social network. My daughter joined a Finnish Corgi Forum provided by Suomen Welsh Corgi Seura (Finnish Corgi association). The forum is very active and the Corgi owners upload lots of photographs there.

Two of the best pictures have been uploaded by the same user Mona (Promisehill Irish Rose).

This picture is a bit spooky… Where is the rest of the dog?

Every Corgi owner knows that Corgis are very “good eaters” and they have a very good nose for food, but this is just amazing:

The last one is a video I found in YouTube. Even though my Piitu is an excellent jumper, she can’t do this :)

Agility - fun for the Dog and the Watchers

My Corgi Piitu is very energetic, as I have shown before here and here. She has experienced her first Match Show and got graded as Good. The event was outside and it was cold. It had been raining recently and all the places were wet and muddy. In some respect that was a good thing, because Piitu did not want to sit on the wet ground and we knew that standing in front of the judge the whole time would not probably succeed in normal conditions. We were so tired and cold that we left after the first part. We found out what Piitu had to practise: her contact with my daughter who was showing her was so intense that she did not like the judge interfering in the moment.

Piitu has done very well in school and the first lessons in agility are behind. Piitu is doing well because she is not afraid of anything. She did not even hesitate to go to the pipe which seems closed. The other end is not rigid and it is hangig like a curtain blocking the light. Here is a videoclip from her last time practising. Concentration must still be focused on.

I work at night until 9 pm, and usually anything that I like to watch on TV is on when I come home. I know it is not a good habit eating in front of the TV, but what can you do...
Piitu is an excellent jumper and does not want to leave me alone when I am eating. She pays attention to every bit, hoping that I would drop something:

"What are you looking at? I am just making sure mother does not mess up!"

She really does not try to steal my food, but I must admit that her gaze is somewhat disturbing. She tries to pretend she is so hungry, like she had not even seen food in days :)

Leena from A-Z (26 Things You did not Know About Me)

I have been a fan of memes as you may have noticed, but recently I seem to be behind in answering them. To my astonishment this meme was already three weeks ago sent to my direction by Jenny Mannion from Heal Pain Naturally. Actually the Finnish alphabet goes from A to Ö, but since all the words containing the last one are in Finnish, and probably even all of the readers can't see the letter right due to language settings, I decided to keep this to the original. So here are 26 things which you probably did not know about me

A is definitely for Algebra, the most fascinating part of mathematics.

B is for Blogging, my new hobby which I could not even dream about a year ago.

C is for Conceptis (of course), my best source for my very serious addiction, puzzles.

D is for Dave Green, who is responsible for Conceptis making me the puzzles.

E is for Einstein, a person who I admire.

F is for fractals, recursive geometrical figures which create the most beautiful artistic images.

G is for Gil, my friend and supporter in this blogging adventure.

H is for hugging. Finnish people are not very keen in hugging, but I have always preferred hugging instead of shaking hands when I meet old friends.

I is for Israel. The country I knew only by the news stories until last summer, when I found out that in reality it is a very beautiful and a peaceful place filled with the friendliest people one can imagine.

J is for jeans. Regarding my age and work I should probably wear shirts but I have never liked them. Even stepping in to the car is so hard with a skirt. I wear jeans always when it is possible.

K is for Katri, my daughter. She got her name from my grandmother.

L is for the Lily of the Valley, my favourite flower.

M is for Mankell, Henning. He is a Swedish novelist writing detective stories (and also about Africa but I have not read those books).

N is for net, which is a big part of my life these days.

O is for Olli, my son. I had no good family names when he was named and I learned much later that my grandmother Katri had a grandfather named Olli and 5 or 6 of the forefathers before that where named Olli. The first son always got his father's name.

P is for Puzzles and Problems and Piitu, my 11 months old dog, who is so full of life and energy and who is very eager to learn agility.

Q is for Quality, which I have learned to respect in my purchases. When I buy cheap stuff, it also gets broken so fast that I have to buy several of them to last as long as the more expensive quality product.

R is for Rosa, whom I am going to meet tomorrow!

S is for summer and the almost constant light we have in Finland at summertime – I am not so fond of hot weather though.

T is for tile, which also is a mathematical concept. One of my favourite courses has been Tilings and Patterns.

U is for unambiguous. It's a fault of mine to think that sentences can be interpreted only the way I say them. However I have found out that most people read between the lines; things I have hard to even imagine.

V is for Volkswagen, my favourite car. We have had several of them in the family and even though part of them were very old, they never left us on the road.

W is for Welsh Corgi, the breed of my dog Piitu. The dog that the legends tell were the carriers of fairies.

X is for x, the variant in mathematical equations.

Y is Yucca, a palm tree which we grow inside the house. Mu husband's name is Jukka, which is totally impossible for the English language. The pronunciation for the palm tree is the same as his name.

Z is for zero, the interesting number which means nothing, except in multiplication it has all the power :)

The rules of the meme and are as follows:

The instructions say that each player starts with some random facts/habits about himself/herself. As you are tagged you need to post the rules and your responses on your own blog. At the end of your post, you need to choose some people to tag, list their names and, of course, leave them a comment, telling they have been tagged and they need to read your blog for more information. Please list 26 facts A-Z that people did not know about you.

Since I have done so many memes lately and tagged so many people, this time I am not tagging individual bloggers. I am passing this meme to all bloggers who read this ;)

Cat or Corgi?

It’s been a while since I wrote about my Welsh corgi, Piitu. Now she is 8 months old and she has finished her school but I think she would need some extra classes. Now that the gardening time is over, she has been concentrating on tearing all her soft toys to pieces. She loves to tear a small hole first and then take all the stuffing away.
I have had one Corgi before and this one has a skill I never imagined a Corgi could have. She is an amazing jumper. I have found her on the kitchen table and she jump from the sofa to the armchair and it seems there are no obstacles in her way. Here is a video showing her jumps.

Next week she will start agility. I just hope she’ll spend her energy there and just not learn more skills to reach new places. She can also relax…

Piitu is networking, too!

Piitu has her own network! Here is Piitu's profile page in www.Corgi.com:

And here is a widget from her page:


Find more photos like this on MyCorgi.com

Piitu has already 2 friends and received 3 comments about how cute she is :)

Like many connections lately I just stumbled upon this. I had a visit from slstsang in Stumble Upon When I visited his site I found out that he is CEO of MyCorgi.com - a free social networking site for Corgi owners.

This is so awesome !

The Amazing Corgi

It has been a while since I last wrote about Piitu and her second day in dog school. She is doing very well there an she started the second level this week. She has a great desire to please people and that makes her an excellent learner.

She is full of energy and does things I never thought that Corgis would do. I have had one in the past but Piitu is totally different. And I thought Ellu was wild. I actually knew nothing!

Piitu watches TV sometimes and sees herself in the mirror. I have not yet figured out what kind of programs she prefers. She does not have time to watch TV very often.

Ellu used to eat every bit of food we ever gave her and additionally she stole sandwiches which were left too near the edge of a table. Even though a Corgi has very short legs it has a long body and it can reach the table by jumping to lean on the edge of the table. Piitu is not that hungry. She does not necessarily want to eat when we offer her food. I think that is good since Corgis get overweight very easily. Piitu also doesn't eat her chewing bones when we give them to her. She hides them, either in the garden or under the furniture. She has many times come from outside with a dirty bone she has dug from it's temporary storing place.

Now she is practicing on jumping. For a long time she has been able to jump on the sofa and the bed. Two days ago I was working in the living room with my laptop and the door to the garden was open. Suddenly I heard an odd sound from the outside. When I went to see what had caused it, I found Piitu standing on a box we have for gardening tools. The box is actually very high. It's a bit higher than Piitu's own length if we don't count the tail.

Yesterday I was again working when I heard something strange, this time from the kitchen. When I went to check that one, I found Piitu on the kitchen table. She had used the chairs as her stepping stones. And I had thought they were too narrow for her to jump on! We are going to take Piitu to agility practice. I hope she will get enough jumping there to need to do that at home any more.

Piitu has obviously musical talents also. We have almost all of the Singstars for PS2 and when children come over, we take battles with each other. Piitu joins us because in her opinion the children don't visit often enough. When the song has those la-la-la, da-da-da -parts, Piitu starts barking. Otherwise she does not bark often. Maybe we are not as good in singing as we think we are.

It's all about learning

Well, this day has been learning about details.
My dog, Piitu is very active and distracts m work all the time.
Here she is trying to catch my daughter's ear plug:


And here is her dearest hobby: Gardening.
No wonder my flowers don't grow very well