First, it was horribly, horribly hot – our thermometer said 33°C (92°F) INDOORS! – and we have no AC machine in this house in Sydney. My human, Hsin-Yi, opened every window & door in our house but even the breeze that blew through the house was HOT AIR!!   Me & Muesli barely had energy to do anything…we just spent our whole day doing this:

My humans couldn’t even sleep at night because they felt like they were burning up. Hsin-Yi kept getting up in the middle of the night & going to the bathroom to splash water on herself and wet her arms & feet, because then she would feel a little bit cooler in bed while the water was evoporating!

And then, suddenly, in the middle of the week, the horrible hot weather went away but we got THIS instead!

Hmm...I am NOT convinced...

ALL DAY!!!!

It has been raining non-stop since Wednesday. Which means a lot of VERY wet walks for me…

Honestly, I told Hsin-Yi it doesn’t matter – I really don’t need to go out walking in the rain – but she said snootily ”We’re not fair-weather walkers!” - and that it’s really important for us doggies (no matter what size!) to go out a bit every day, if possible. Even just for a very short walk. Just to stretch our legs & have a change of scene. It’s good for our bodies and  good for our minds (and good for our humans too!). They only skip my walk if somebody is sickie or the weather is really bad.

My humans believe that having regular exercise every day (even just a little bit!) is better than having days of doing nothing at all and then suddenly doing huge hikes or big running & playing (that’s how you get injured easily)…just like how it’s better for humans to do a bit of walking every day rather than a crazy gym session once a week. They think this is one of the reasons I’ve remained so fit & agile and kept in very good condition, even as a senior doggie. And it’s good for my “mental well-being” too – no matter how big our house, it’s not good for us doggies to be cooped up in the same place all day – and a healthy mind leads to a healthy body!

But don’t worry – I have had some ‘dry’ adventures too! Hee! hee! One of them was visiting a big pet store near us. It’s called PETstock and you might remember we went to one of its shops back in Newcastle but this was the first time we visited one in Sydney.

It was great – nice & big & roomy with wide aisles to walk down (my humans don’t like taking me to small, cramped pet stores coz it’s really hard for me to turn & move around in there – and not enough space if we meet a strange doggie!) and the Staff Humans were so friendly!

They gave me lots of treats just for “being gorgeous” – hee! hee!

We had a good time checking out all the cool doggie stuff…

…and we were really pleased to see that they stocked my Raw Diet BARF patties! (I have Raw Meaty Bones like chicken wings or lamb brisket for my breakfast in the mornings but I have BARF patties for my dinner in the evenings.  They are ground meat & bone, mixed with veggies like broccoli, celery, spinach & carrot; fruits like apple, pear, grapefruit & orange; offal like beef kidney, heart & tripe and some other good things like flax seeds & garlic. They come in different flavours, like Lamb, Pork, Beef, Rabbit, Kangaroo or  Chicken – my favourite is the Combo flavour! . My humans usually also give me a bit of wholegrains with my patties, like oatmeal or brown rice, and sometimes a raw egg or some healthy leftovers.) Oh, of course, on Sundays I get oily fish, like sardines or mackerel!

I also met a couple of young fans!

They were very nice, well-trained human-pups who knew how to behave around doggies. I showed them a couple of my tricks and they gave me some treats!

OK, time to pay for our stuff now…

Ooh…what’s that? Would I like more treats? Don’t mind if I do!

I like this pet store! I sure hope we come here again soon!

(I wish they’d do something about the slippy floors though! Even when I was sitting, I kept sliding backwards! Look at my back legs all splayed out in this picture!)

Well, aside from my exciting visit to the pet store, I also had another exciting thing happen…I got a parcel from Italy!

It was from my great friend, Lucille the Italian Dane.

Do you remember when my humans were visiting France last year and Lucille’s humans had specially driven all the way from Italy to France just to meet up with them?

Well, Lucille was wearing her beautiful chain collar. Hsin-Yi had always admired this collar – she thinks us Danes have such long, graceful lines in our bodies, it’s a shame to break them – and she likes the way a chain sits at the base of our necks, like a necklace, and doesn’t break the line of our necks, the way thick buckle collars do. Even when I wear my blue daisy buckle collar, I have it on very, very loose, at the base of my neck. (of course, a lot of times when posing for photos, it looks best to have NO collar at all! And since I’m very good about obeying Hsin-Yi – hands-free! – it doesn’t really matter what kind of collar I’m wearing, if any! )

Lucille’s collar was very pretty – it is a double row of silver chains and is a martingale-style collar.

Well, Lucille & her human had remembered Hsin-Yi admiring it and guess what? They got the same collar and sent it all the way to Australia for me!

I love it! Don’t you think it looks just like a silver necklace? Matches my silver hairs, I think!

And Muesli got a new collar too! Lucille got her a really pretty ‘girly’ collar with little pink ribbons all around. (I don’t know who got more excited about this collar… Muesli or Paul! )

And they hadn’t forgotten Hsin-Yi either! Lucille’s human had bought her a lovely woolly hat & special gloves, in one of Hsin-Yi’s favourite colours: turquoise! It’s a bit hot now still for Hsin-Yi to wear them - hee! hee! – but when winter comes in June, she’ll be getting them on!

Finally, some of you may know that it was Chinese New Year – the Year of the Dragon – recently. My humans didn’t do much to celebrate this year. Last year, in Newcastle, Hsin-Yi had made a special Chinese New Year dinner with the special foods you eat for good luck (well, OK, she cheated and ordered 1/2 of it from takeaway! ) – and I got to taste spring rolls and even some special sticky Chinese New Year cake! (if you missed that post, you can read it here)

But this year, she was really busy and didn’t feel like doing much at all. (Although she did take care not to wash her hair or throw out any rubbish or do any cleaning on Chinese New Year Day (23rd Jan)…otherwise, you’ll wash/sweep all your good luck away! ) The one thing she did do, though, was get a little pot of Lucky Bamboo!

Chinese humans often give Lucky Bamboo to each other at Chinese New Year – it is supposed to be very good Feng Shui. It is “lucky” because it brings all the 5 elements: Fire, Earth, Wood, Metal & Water into balance, in your home. The Wood is the bamboo, the Water is the water it grows in, the Fire is the red ribbon that the bamboo stalks are tied with and the Metal is the little metal coin on the pot.

Chinese people also love bamboo in general – because of its special meanings. Bamboo is very, very strong and grows very straight (“upright integrity”) but when a storm comes, it bends with the wind, only to spring up straight again when the storm is over. This is how Chinese people believe everyone should be:  ”to have the ability to cope with adversity and still stand firmly without losing its original ground” – to be flexible and open (hollow bamboo) to new ideas but at the same time, be strong & sure of yourself.

Even if you don’t believe all that stuff, lots of people like Lucky Bamboo because it is so pretty – the green looks so lovely in a room and the curly, spiral patterns are so beautiful; it doesn’t wither & die quickly like a vase of flowers and it’s so easy to grow – all it needs is a pot with stones and some water, and hardly any special care or fertilisers (especially good if you have Black Thumbs, like Hsin-Yi!! )

Oh, it isn’t curly naturally, by the way! You have to grow it in special ways to make it become like that – special Gardner Humans lay them on their sides and cover them up so that they only get sunshine from 1 side – so that they grow towards the light and against gravity! You have to rotate the plant slowly to get those beautiful curls & spirals, so it can take quite a long time to “make” Lucky Bamboo!

(* Actually, Lucky Bamboo is not really a bamboo at all! It’s proper name is ‘Dracaena sanderana’ and it’s a member of the lily family and in the wild, it grows in the dark, tropical forests of Africa & SE Asia. )

Well, although my humans didn’t celebrate much at home, they did go out to have a Chinese New Year dinner with my new friend, Boo the black Dane’s human, Sarah - in Sydney’s Chinatown…

In case you’re wondering, yes, that was Paul showing Sarah how to use chopsticks properly…that’s because Hsin-Yi is hopeless and she uses her chopsticks wrong! She crosses them, instead of having them on top of each other, whereas Paul uses them the ‘correct’ way…half the time, Hsin-Yi asks for a fork anyway! Paul says she is an embarrassment to Chinese humans but Hsin-Yi says the important thing is to get the food into the mouth – who cares how it gets there?

WRONG way to hold chopsticks (and how Hsin-Yi holds them!!)

CORRECT way to hold chopsticks

* Images from http://ieatishootipost.sg/2009/05/how-do-you-hold-your-chopsticks-let-us.html

After dinner, my humans & Sarah went to watch the Chinese New Year parade. My humans had been to the parade once before, when they were living in Sydney 11yrs ago and that had been great – but this one was quite different and they were very disappointed! They weren’t playing Chinese music a lot of the time (music like ”When the saints go marching in” and “Go west!” does NOT give the right atmosphere!! ) and a lot of the floats were really “commercial”, from companies that had nothing to do with Chinese stuff at all!

Also, the parade people weren’t very enthusiastic – even though they were dressed up in costumes, they were just walking around, looking bored and not doing much, which Hsin-Yi thought was shameful…if you’re going to take part in a parade, then you have to ‘peform’! Otherwise, why bother??

Anyway, Hsin-Yi managed to get some pictures – here are the best of the bunch!

I think I’m glad I stayed home with my Lucky Bamboo!

* ps. I don’t know why but the Spam filter on my blog seems to have gotten extra sensitive lately – a lot of my friends’ comments are ending up in there! So don’t worry if your comment disappears after you click on “Post Comment” – it’s probably gone into the Spam folder – but we check that every day and we will fish it out!

…well, I thought a movie was the best way to show you just what an Adventure Animal I am! And we have been rehearsing and filming and editing all week. Whew! Being an action adventure star sure is hard work – and just like Tom Cruise, I did all my own stunts! (Muesli wanted a body double but Hsin-Yi told her not to be so vain…)

My human, Hsin-Yi had all these grand ideas for the script but unfortunately, she ran out of time to teach me the new tricks needed and so we’ve had to make do with just “simple” stuff. (Well, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to climb up the tallest building in Sydney, no matter how long we had! )  She had to change a lot of the script too since she had all these ambitious ideas and then - ahem – things didn’t quite turn out as she planned! Hee! Hee! (well, this is what happens when you include cat actors…tsk…tsk..)

Most of the scenes were shot here in Sydney, although there were a few clips (the dunes & the river) from Newcastle and one clip from Brisbane of me galloping in the night!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it – and don’t forget to vote for ME when Mango Minster gets under way Feb 12 – 19!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrXP_pwJdOc

If the movie won’t play, try it here: http://youtu.be/jrXP_pwJdOc

* For anybody who didn’t “get it”, the name of my movie is based on the latest MI film, which is called ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’…and that was supposed to be my drool putting out the fire in the beginning!

We had a lazy morning at home together – then my humans went off to have lunch in a very yummy Taiwanese restuarant called Din Tai Fung (which is really famous for their “soup dumplings” – voted the tastiest in the world!) and then they went to the Art Gallery of NSW to see an exhibition by a famous Painter Human called Picasso…

I don’t know what the fuss is about his paintings though – they all look very strange to me! With eyes in weird places and heads in weird shapes…and some just look like funny boxes stacked on top of each other…

Well – I can do Art too! Look! Here is a picture of me…

…and here’s me as 3 different types of painting!

(If you want to turn yourself into a painting too, you can do it online here: befunky.com – and it’s all free! )

After my humans came home, they took me for my usual daily walk in the evening – it had been a very rainy, grey day but it was still very hot & humid, so it made me feel very panty. And even with the bad weather, there were still lots of people out celebrating…we passed by a big concert…and I also met some new fans!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8rEwJ_Pi84

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ps. A lot of you will know that one of the biggest events in Blogville is on right now! I’m talking about Mango Minister, of course! Don’t worry – I haven’t forgotten to enter – am working on my entry now but Hsin-Yi’s got a Big Idea so it’s taking a bit of time to put together…I’ll hopefully be able to show it to you soon! And if you haven’t entered, what are you waiting for? You can check out all the details here: http://mangominster.blogspot.com/2012/01/mango-minster-2012-official-rules-for.html - the deadline for entries is Feb 5th 2012 – so you’ve still got time!

pps. Hsin-Yi has been helping me catch up with your blogs & messages – but typing one comment after another (or one email after another) is the worst thing for her RSI ouchies…so she has been trying to use her Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software as much as she can. But it does slow us down a lot and takes double the time to do everything. Plus it still gets a lot of words wrong – we try to check but sometimes we miss a few words so please forgive us if some of our comments sound a bit weird! Hsin-Yi also can’t do too much in one day – so I know we still owe a lot of people replies to messages but please bear with us; we’re getting there slowly!

(Courses: Callan Park, Sydney / Heaton State Forest Park, NSW Central Coast / Foreshore Park, Newcastle / Horseshoe Beach, Newcastle )