Here you can read about the thoughts we had, the investigations and preparations we made before Manuel came to us.

Lost in space regarding ticks

Thursday, 04 May 2006  

Scalibur, Frontline, ExSpot, Bolfo, home-made decoctions, and a various amount of herbal variatons of collars - all caused by this little toddler that fills no relavant part in the food-chain. WHAT purpose was is created for???

Yet another jungle to get lost in...the world of  collars, drops, xx, and yy that are supposed to stop the ticks... pooh! After research on the Internet, I have now been to the pharmacy and collected a number of brochures. This summer Manuel will just be a puppy and his weight will be low, so a lot of what is available will be too strong for him. Probably we will use Frontline this summer.

Unfortunately I do not believe that the herbal variations are working, even though I fully understand that the ones we by at the pharmacy are far from good for our Mother Nature.

I will ask Silvia as well what they have used. They start early since they have the brown tick.  Except for all the "musts" that the vet will have to do in Spain, I have also requested for some additional actions from the vet. There are diseases in Spain that we do not have in Sweden.
/Charlotte

The litter is 20 days old now! 

Saturday, 06 May 2006

20 days old - are the puppies now. They have started to open their eyes. We do have a feeling of which of the puppies we want, but still, we wait to decide until we have seen some video shots. We will not make our final decision yet, which is ok by Silvia. But yes, we do have a favourite already now.

The wait is unbearable!

Tuesday, 09 May 2006

Very soon it is time to choose between the puppies, and decide upon which one is our's. Then everything will be more realistic to us. Then we will know who our Manuel is. Yes it will be a male puppy. Now the puppies are almost 5 weeks old. An Akita shall  not have (according to the standard) long coat. According to what is known today, neither Kumi nor Goushi has produced puppies with long coat before, but Silvia is suspecting there might be some of the puppies in this litter that have long coat. Therefore will she wait yet another week before she will give us more photos and information.  

The long-coated Akitas tend to be very very beautiful, but that is not what we currently have in our minds. So we cross our fingers and hope that the one/the ones we are considering not are long-coated.
/Charlotte

So the gene is present

Monday, 15 May 2006

Now it is confirmed. The parents have the gene for long coat since some of the puppies have long coat. If I am not totally wrong it is a recessice gene i.e. both of the parents must be carrier. Non of the puppies we were interested in have long coat, which is good. But of course they could be carrier of the gene.  Long-coat or not...they are just as charming anyway.
/Mikael

Finally!

Tuesday, 16 May 2006

By the end of this week we will have decided who "our Manuel" is. Two females had puppies. First runner up was Chikara, then Kumi. One male was reserved from the Chikara litter. We were first to decide from the Kumi litter. Now Chikara only got one puppy, a female. Therefore the person who wanted a male from Chikara got to choose first from Kumi's litter and we came as number two. Fair enough. That person chose the darkest male, with the spot, which suited us perfectly since we alredy had "decided" on another male. This little "gentleman" I have liked very much all the time. He has a very dark face, minimum white on his paws, which enables red on the side of his legs. There is also a third very nice male. The final decision will be after some more pictures and video clips. Then we will finally decide.
/Charlotte

The two finalists!

Tuesday, 23 May 2006

Vi have received loads of pictures and videos. We have almost decided, but we will get some more vidoes. This will happen this week I belive. To the right is the one we like the best, but we want to see more movements and other angles.
/Charlotte   

The decision is made!

Thursday, 25 May 2006

KAKUSHIGOTO SHUN'YOU KENSHA.

No we know who Manuel is. Our friends may call him Manuel, others can call him  Kakushigoto :-). After watching video clips, pictures and asking Silvia "thousands" of questions vi decided on one puppy. Manuel is currently being feed with Nutro Choice dog food and it shouldn't be any problem finding that in Sweden. We will probably swop to Robur further on, since it is produced in Sweden and contains Swedish raw material. (So they say) We will try to be some what environment consious.

Today Charlotte found a door to a kitchen cabinet at the IKEA bargain basement. This will fit perfectly in the bedroom doorway. Hopefully this will stop Manuel from finding out how nice and cosy the bed is. (Charlotte is sligthly allergic so we will not challenge the destiny to start with).
/Mikael

The Jägersro day-care and the trip to Spain

Thursday, 25 May 2006

Yet another visit to a day-care. Also, the details regarding the trip to Spain are soon in place. We have bought a majority of that was on our list.

DAY-CARE
So we have payed a visit to three different places. Today we went to the Jägersro day-care. It is big in size. Many dogs, and more than one person in the staff. It is really good to see that me and Mikael are synchronized when it comes to the opinions we have about the different places. Positive and negative remarks concerning the "small and individual" versus "bigger and businesslike" places. (Exaclty the same as when discussing day-care for kids.)

We will think about this for some days. Currently we are not sure of where Mikael will have his job this autumn. The most convenient would be that the day-care is situated in a fashion that makes it smooth for us to bring Manuel back and forth. Since nothing is set regarding where I will work, right now we do not know if we can split this between us or if it will be all on Mikael.

Well, anyhow, Jägersro is very clean, nice and gives a very professional impression. It felt very relaxed and not stressful. What I noticed was that yes, the dogs barked when we arrived, but it became quite again after a short while. That was not the case at one of the previous places we visited.

A disadvantage would be that they only have day-care, not boarding house. So if we want to put Manuel at a boarding house it will be a completely new place with new staff.

Jägersro Hunddagis (day-care)

THE TRIP TO SPAIN
Well it's getting closer and closer. Currently I chat with Silvia via MSN så that is smooth and fast. We do have some difficulties with the language, it is easy to misunderstand. Anyhow, I have learnt what is needed in Spain i.e. Frontline very early due to the brown tick. There are also many restrictions on how the puppy shall live before entering Sweden, which Silvia has confirmed, and signed. That is good, since there are diseases in Spain that we do not have in Sweden, that not are regulated by the rules and regulations. This way we avoid these diseases too.

MOST OF THE SHOPPING IS DONE
Well, we need to realize that Manuel will grow fast. Therefore we have not bought any expensive equipment since he will outgrow them very fast. Though, we have bought a large sack of dog-food. (The same as Silvia is using.) Even if we want to swop dog-foods that must be made slowly so we will need this sack.

Mikael has digged into the world of dog-food, and is still convinced of that in the future we should by a Swedish brand. Well that sounds nice and patriotic and ok if no problem, but we both agree that highest priority is of course the well being of Manuel.

We do still miss one thing that is on our list...a lattice gate.
/Charlotte

In your dreams

Saturday, 03 June 2006