Part 5: Meeting strange creatures. Page 13.

Part 5 has grown into a multi-page thing. This is page 13, covering the days from October 6 to November 30.
This is Hugo, a Kelpie from 'down under', specializing in herding sheep and other strange animals. I forgot to ask him how you can herd sheep, when you are walking upside down all the time, but perhaps he has taken up herding in Sweden, where he can walk upright. Like me, Hugo has his own website. I like Bichons. If you wrestle them down, they are soft and fluffy to warm your tummy on. This is Bubben who is much younger than I am - by 3 full days! Met him in a dog enclosure and his fur was not as white as before, by the time I had finished.
This is Ruff, a 15-months old Berner Sennen. He weighs 60 kilos (132 pounds) and isn't even fully grown yet, believe it or not. That's me on my back underneath him. Didn't feel completely safe and managed to wriggle out from under him. Suppose he had decided to lie down. I would have been squashed like a rotten tomato. Elling was present and was looking for an escape route himself. Frankie turned up at the office together with his servant, who was visiting on business. He is an 8 years old Jack Russel and I tried just about everything to make him interested in playing. But the only thing I could make him do was to sniff my behind. Nothing else. Zero. Zilch! What's wrong with these guys?
This is Buster again. He lives next door to the office, so I have been seeing a lot of him since July, when we first met. Buster is only 9 months old, but has grown so big, so fast that other male dogs have begun to see him as a rival and want to fight with him. So he has no playmates his own size any more poor thing. I am just about his only childhood friend left. Here is a type of dog I have never met before, a Hovawarte [hofwart], a German race specializing in guarding farms - as the name suggests. Her name is Elsa and she looked a bit out if place in Stockholm's shopping district with no farms to guard for many miles.
This is Embla, a 6 months old Cocker Spaniel. Met her during my morning walk and recalled how wonderful it is to feel the soft ear flaps of a Cocker Spaniel between my teeth.... ... so I wrapped up Embla in her leash and mine and started gnawing away. She looks very decorative against the autumn leaves, doesn't she?
This is Uffe, a distant relative. His father - Rasken's Robert de Niro - is also my paternal grandmother's grand-uncle. Uffe is 12 years old and wasn't interested at all in distant relatives. He doesn't like photo flashes and was looking for a way out and home. I was looking at Selma, who was just outside the picture. Uffe's father is her paternal great grandfather, so we had a real family reunion. Here is another relative, Chardas Chippendale a.k.a. Hampus. Observe his elegant fur and noble bearing, clear proof of his relationship to me. We are related both on his father's and mother's side. His father's maternal grandfather, Frank Zappa, is also my mother's paternal grandfather's maternal grandfather. On his mother's side, we share a.o. Simon Templar as ancestor.
This has been my meet-the-relatives-week. Here is Alex. His maternal grandfather's paternal grandfather - Snorrehus Merrie is also my mother's maternal grandfather's maternal grandfather. And not only that, his maternal grandmother' paternal grandfather - Sarimont Simon Templar - is my mother's paternal grandfather's paternal grandfather. Not that you need to know the details. A single glance at his beautiful fur and noble bearing tells you right away that he is a relative of mine. Archibald a.k.a. Archie is the biggest Labrador I have ever seen. He weighs 60 kgs (132 pounds) and has two servants who need to hang on to his leash for all they are worth in order to prevent him from going astray. He walks them for 10 kms per day (6 miles) which keeps them in perfect physical trim. Please note that Archie is not a relative of Archie the submarine commander who I met at a dinner party the night before