Another dog show

Recently we visited another type of dog show.

In opposite to previous one it was not about dogs exterior but about their work.

There were a lot of participants, because it was not only for police and army dogs.

There were courts for other dogs sports like pitch-and-go, dancing and others.

Thus dogs of all sizes and their owners had a chance to show their skills.

The show was started by army dogs, who show us how they fast they can find a blast (mine) hidden in the car, poison in the luggage, and other they skills.

After that it was the time for civilian dogs.

It was a good event to see, but almost nothing to write about ;)

I like the court with pitch&go.
The rules are simple:

 - The place is divided onto different zones.
 - Each zone has own amount of scores.

 - Owner and his dog has 90 seconds to collect max amount of scores.

The scores counts, if owner throw the ball in some zone and dog bring the ball back.

So, there is some strategy too, depend of time, and your dog speed you can decide what to do, several short throws for small scores, or made a few long ones.

For children there was a contest for best drawing on any related topic, and my boy made the painting.
I am sure you can easily find it on this photo:

During this show as on any Russian event there was a special truck:

It's an army kitchen truck, this stove attached to it produce food.

Traditionally we have it on every mass holiday.

I don't know why we need that, it's not a problem to visit a cafe, but looks like it's a tradition.

It's a free food for everyone. It's not what you can get in the restaurant, just simple army's food, but many people like it.

Usually this truck serves  hundred people at least, but during massive holidays it would be several food trucks in the row.

We like it too, and we always taste it when we can.

This time I forgot to take a photo of that food, but I'll do next time. 

Climbing wall

I finished the course "Introduction to Health and Wellness", and among others there was an excellent idea about right environment.

The gist of the idea is:  don't build the environment which provoke you to lay down and read, but build such environment which will force you to be active, especially it is important for kids room.

I love this idea a lot, I already have a lot of things like slants and ladders, but it's never too much.

I decided to build a climbing wall. 

I bought this hooks, they are specially designed and made of solid rubber.

I bought few pieces of plywood, and other stuff.

In total it's cheap, less then to have a dinner in restaurant.

With my friend and my boy we made a plan.

The problem which we wanted to solve is how to made this wall adjustable.

We don't want the same way each day, we need it to be easily modifiable.

Because of that we made a lot of holes, and we installed specials nuts inside the holes.

So now we can install hooks in many different ways.

As future shows us, it was very important solution.

Having the opportunity change hooks is important.

Each hook is unique, some of them are easy to grab, some need more energy. 

Combining paths from it is not a trivial task, and we spend a lot of time to adjust them. 

We want the paths be easy for first, and also want to have a way make the paths harder. 

It's important because our sportsmen are becoming more proficient each day, and to have the reasonable hard path is a question of interest for them.

It was hard to install this things on to wall, because children can't wait, they have to climb immediately.

After we finished, the overall height of the climb desk is more than 2.9 meters.

Even I can use it  ;)

As we all know the children are more creative than their parents, and they ask to make a secret room inside the desk.

We made a drawer for toys inside that secret room, and now I am more happy than usual. A lot of toys are kept there without to be on the floor.

A little painting and there it is:

Street sculptures

In my town we like street sculptures, there are many of them.

Some of them are made because municipality bought them, not so many of that type.

A lot of them is the gifts from city's artists to us.

If one can make good enough sculpture, one can present it to city, and municipality will place it somewhere. 

Many of them have special topic, and located in special place to support that topic.

For instance:

this bird situated in front of perinatal center.

In Russia we still believe that we got new baby from a stork (bird).

This sculpture kind of strange, and from time to time there are some debates should we keep it there, or demount.

Our city is industrial, and our industry related to metal, may be because of that we have so many metal sculptures - almost all of the are made from metal.

Some of them just a joke:

that is our the statue of independence

Some of them referring to famous books and stories, some just funny.

I prepared the album with 40 photos of our sculptures, there :https://yadi.sk/a/FaEeGpOKronAC

My favorite is this one :

Do you have sculptures on your streets? 

Chusovaya - The famous river

There are many rivers in my area, but one of them is very special.

It's name is Chusovaya.

When that place "Ural" was conquered by Russians in 1580 it was a main road for them.

Later, it was a main road for industrial goods, and that is the reason why the industry was developed here.

Chusovaya comes to another River - Kama which comes to Volga.

And it's mean that you can reach almost any Russian place by water.

For many centuries all the life here were concentrated around the river.

Ural mountains not the best place for terrain roads (still) and before trains the rivers was the only options.

Chusovaya is unique because it is the only river which crosses the Urals, thus we have a thousand stories about it.

It used for everything here.

Each year local theater do the outdoor performance on the river.

Something about history and events which had taken place near to the river.

It's always interesting, educational, and fun.

This year it was about Demidov, the guy who owned industry here and used a river to deliver goods to Moscow.

It was a really hard work, because Chusovaya is too shallow for heavy boats, but our industry (metal) produces only heavy goods.

But people can solve any problems. They had invented many and many tools, special devices, boats and it is a very interesting thing to learn.

If someone interested I can write a series blogpost about the process.

We love this river, almost each year we rafting along it, and usually I have a new book about history of this area, and I read it aloud for everyone who is in my boat.

And anyway local theater has more listeners than I.

Probably I need some costume and a few cheerleaders too.

Dog show

In my family we all like dogs, that's why we like to visit dog shows too.

Traditionally in our town  from 2 to 5 shows take places  per year .

They are different:

- some of them just for showing dogs, for their exterior

Judges look at them and decide which one is the best suits it breed.

- some of them for testing dogs' work

For different work police or hunters dogs show to judges how their work.

And all this grades very important for dogs and their owners, it allow or disallow you to breed those dogs.

Our dogs are usually mongrels from shelters and we are not breeders,thus we don't pretend to participate in such show, but we really like to watch them.

Also we have many friends from those dog owners, and it always a pleasure to meet them.

My older boy likes dogs too,


and  he always asks me to visit such shows.

The hardest part of my job there is to explain him that we can't buy all these dogs, which he always wants too.

Because there are many people who love dogs, such shows always are too crowded,

and they longs the whole day.

There are many rings for different breeds, and many people visit only their favorite rings, for instance it can be ring of German shepherds from 10 to 11 am.

It helps keep that place not so crowded as it be if all the rings start in the same time.



Our next dog will be Giant Schnauzer:

that's why we visited show in time when it was their ring.

Since this breed is not a decorative only but used for service too, these dogs have to participate in show and in tests too.

We will visit such performance many times, we will look on dogs and their breeders before we choose one breeder, and after we sign the contract with him and will wait when our puppy will be born.

From my experience it too hard to have a puppy and a toddler at home in the same time, so we have to wait an year  unless my younger boy grows up.