Summer has come

You may think that the summer has already come, but if you define the end of rainy season as the coming of summer, it is still unclear this year.

Although Meteorological Office announced on July 13th that the rainy season in the Kanto and Koshin Districts was over, this might have been overeager, considering the sticky rainy days during the first half of the last week. The last weekend saw hot clear weather of the summer.

The coming of summer for my family is defined as the beginning of all-day air-conditioning of the rooms, where my dogs are kept.


Leeds is 13 years old. This is equivalent to 70s for human beings. At the changes of seasons, she shows slight disorders like diarrhea and vomit, but she is quite healthy in other time. The hotness, however, would surely put burden on her, and I would like to let her live in comfortable environment.


Chilwell is 11 years old, which is equivalent to early 60s for human. Since Cairn Terrier is the origin of various terriers and is closest to the ancestor breed, she is most healthy among the five terriers. While the room is air-conditioned, she would sit and lie in various places in the room and does not seem to choose cooler places.

Well, when I opened the windows to change air, someone giving a walk to his/her dog came to the road in front of my house. In such cases, my dogs would rush onto the sofa by the window, and call (bark on to) the visiting dog. The "space race" is a fun.


In the case of this photo, Pizzicato and Pieta first realized the intruder, and are gazing outside together.


Then, other dogs noticed the change and got together. At first, Leeds took the left end of the sofa as the best position, right end of the sofa, the best position, had already been occupied by Pizzicato and her daughter. As Leeds was not able to watch the stranger, she tried to move to the right corner, which was intercepted by Piacere. Piacere was not very much interested in the external situation, but rather interested in the excitement of the adults, and trys to participate "joy" in some ways. Chilwell is small and alert enough to stand on the back of the sofa.




A catch up of Piacere is shown here. Since she had her coat trimmed about 10 days ago, her "Scottie" expression has become natural to her. The photos show relatively large head, but this is due to the camera angle. As she is still at the stage of "puppy" in definition, the balance of head and body has getting better. Her large loin seems to promise becoming a good show dog.

The first full-scale trimming of Piacere

Due to a matter of conveience of the owner, Pieta has passed up the best timing of her trimming for two weeks, and I brought her to Nakahara-san. Although he murmured "At the absolute edge of being beyond care", he finished Pieta very nicely.


Pieta's coat, which was damaged by the childbirth las December, has been entirely replaced, and Nakahara-san praised up the good quality of her coat.

I brought Piacere together to be checked by Nakahara-san, while no reservation for trimming had been made. When I asked him how to deal with Piacere's coat in preparation for dog shows from the fall some weeks ago, Nakahara-san told me to leave is for a while. And when he saw Piacere in rough coat, he said "It is about to have skin disease", and I decided to have Piacere trimmed immediately.


A photo of "BEFORE".


And a photo of "AFTER". Piacere has changed as if she were another dog. Nakahara-san told me that Piacere had been tame without refusing trimming touches.

　　
Piacere has been reborn from an unkept child to a "beautiful girl". Pleas compare with a photo on the right (bottom), which was taken only a week ago.

Catch up with terriers

Today, I would like to show you my dogs, who spent the last weekend at my second house.


Leeds is watching out at a window, while Piacere wants her to play with her. Leeds really loves watching out, and we can see her in this posture quite often. The pair of a white Westie and a black Scottie is the authentic combination of the whisky and fashion brand, "Black and White", but it is very hard to take photos of this combination. Both in automatic and manual exposures, if you adjust the aperture to the Westie, then the Scottie would be entirely black and you can not see the expression. In the other way round, the Westie becomes too exposed to see the shape of the body.

Well, Piacere has become fairly large. Viewed from directly above, the length of her body is now almost same as her mother's. Piacere is now 10 years old for human being, and we often see 5th-grade school kids who have same body size as adults.


From left, Pizzicato, Pieta and Piacere. This photo reveals that Piacere's head is still smaller than those of her grandma and mother, and that Piacere's expression is still infant.


But, when viewed from a little higher so that we can see their bodies, the position of Piacere's buttock is almost same as those of Pizzicato and Pieta.