Our neighbours

These adorable cows have been moved into the field opposite our house. Yesterday Heidi and Miller were playing in the paddling pool on our small balcony and were overjoyed to see the cows and spent the first ten minutes mooing at them from across the road. The cows are so friendly and come down to see what you are upto when you go to collect the post. I am not going to spend this post talking about what may or may not happen to them later, I guess I will leave that upto you. What I will say is that Heidi and Miller are becoming even fonder of animals.

The other day I was looking in a dog manual to see if I needed to take Paris, our black 11 year old Labrador to the vet about a sore she has on her leg and Miller was fascinated by the book which has pictures of all different dogs in it. It has since become his favourite thing ever (apart from potato & veggie cakes and dark chocolate rice crackers - much to my sofa's dismay!) he carries it around everywhere, cries if Heidi takes it off him and points at the dogs and says 'der'.

I also now have acquired some bumper stickers for our cars and I put one on my old beat up volve that says 'Love animals, don't eat them'. Matthew (my husband) says it makes me look like a drifter but frankly I don't care. I am feeling rebellious!

My parents arrive on Thursday so I must have a clean up soon, considering my mum once said I was the messiest person she knew! Oh well, you can't have everything! x

Vegan Christmas

Well I'm just getting organized for Christmas. We have the snow and most houses have little lights or candles in the windows which looks really pretty. Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve here in Norway, with Santa arriving around dinner time and the opening of presents just after that. We have chosen to mix both cultures and have some presents on Christmas Eve and still have a somewhat traditional English Christmas Day on the 25th....minus the turkey, chippolata sausages, prawn cocktail etc etc!

Last year we drove to Sweden for supplies and bought some vegetarian fillets and made a traditional dinner otherwise, with vegetarian gravy, roast potatoes, roast parsnips and carrots. We even had Christmas pudding arrive from friends in the UK! This year we may take a total change and have something completely different, not sure as of yet! We don't want to get too much in as we fly to the UK on the 27th for 2 weeks. We have to leave the dogs here but they are being cared for by one of our neighbours - last time we left them here with other friends they got used to lounging on their sofas and thought it was the height of rudeness when we returned and reminded them what a dog bed was!

So, we are excited about our trip and looking forward to catching up with family and friends and being able to go to a vegan restaurant (so looking forward to that!). We hope to make the most of the babysitting options with family and have maybe our first night out alone without the children since Miller was born!

Not so looking forward to the noise, traffic, crowds, keeping a tight watch over the children in busy places and so on - I was back last November and it was a culture shock then. Matthew has not been back for 2 years so I think he will see a big difference to the lifestyle we have now. We have tried to save up a little so we can bring some things home with us but yesterday old Bente (our volvo) broke down twice so maybe we have to start growing magic beans...!

Miller is just waking from his nap so back on duty! .... However, if you follow yoga baby (www.yogababy.tv) you can tune in next week to see a special edition - 'Yoga Grandma' - filmed when Matthew's mum was here....she told me not to tell anyone but I think that means anyone she knows personally...!

Have a compassionate day!

Dogs

I am still unsure of what to do regarding my dogs diet. I have been researching the issue but am just downright confused! I know of 2 companies that make vegetarian dog food, both in the UK and the US. I cannot get anything in Norway as far as I can see. I have emailed the two companies but have got no response. I know I can get it shipped here but as you can imagine with 2 Labradors and the amount they eat that is not a cheap option and I am not well off by any stretch of the imagination!

I have read that dogs do not cope very well on a meat free diet but it's really hard for me now to feed them regular dog food. There are pictures of dead animals on most of the packaging, I now know what is probably in the dog food, no matter what brand I can get here - don't forget my limitations (Friskees and Pedegree Chum being the only options) and frankly the smell of the food is just disgusting. I think about how many animals suffered every time I have to fill up their food bowls.

My solution so far and it's not really a solution is to only give then half of what I usually do and top the rest up with homemade vegetarian food. I usually make more pasta or casserole etc and give them that. They have always enjoyed raw carrots as treats and seem to enjoy this new combination.

My dogs are 10 years old and sisters. They emigrated out here with us and have been through many changes in their lives. I want what is best for them but at the same time, want an option that makes me feel that I am not adding to animal suffering.

Comments welcome!