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When dog training meets pragmatism
There are instances in which you need someone reliable and pragmatic by your side. It is not only soldiers on battlefields who need mates full of practical sense and decisiveness, dog people need them as well. Some dog people, especially those with red hair who get lost in training philosophies and follow shamans, need these people more than others. After religiously following White Feather for more than six months, Briony decided that it was time for a change, she wanted less discipline and more freedom, I could hardly find the balance. WF training grounds, furthermore, were no longer available as the alfalfa and other crops were growing quickly. No other…
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Guidare in Inghilterra: verso nord
Gli italiani che programmano un viaggio in auto nel Regno Unito hanno una grande preoccupazione, quella di dover guidare sull’ “altro” lato. Io avevo un piano: avrei seguito la macchina davanti a me (il che non ha sempre senso, lo ammetto) e mi sarei ricordata che il mio corpo avrebbe sempre dovuto viaggiare sul lato della strada, accanto al marciapiede. Il discorso destra-sinistra mi toccava poco, lasciate che vi racconti un segreto: non riesco a distinguere bene la destra dalla sinistra! Sono destromane ma il mio occhio dominante è il sinistro, l’ho scoperto praticando il tiro a volo. La dominanza crociata rende molto più complicata qualsiasi disciplina sportive che preveda…
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Accomodations, hosts and guests
To plan my trip to the UK I used two instruments: Booking.com and Google Maps. Booking.com showed me where I could stay, mostly hotels and pubs, but I wrongly believed to be a Bed & Breakfast person. Whereas in the UK everybody runs a B&B, or at least have a friend who does, these accommodations are quite unusual in Italy. I thought (wrongly – again) that B&B were sort of “friendlier” and cheaper than pubs. Hotels sounded more expensive and houses, despite being extremely attractive, looked a bit too much for a tiny single human being and her dog. Each time I read stuff like “sleeps 6”, I imagined myself…
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On steadiness (… and obedience!)
As soon as Briony became steady to flush I, full of pride, posted some videos on Facebook. The road that brought us to steadiness was a long one, I was extremely happy to have reached what, months early, seemed to be unattainable. Briony was originally purchased to be my personal shooting dog and indeed she became a good one. She knew how to locate birds, point, be steady on point and retrieve the killed ones but, like all the Italian shooters, I did not even think to make her steady to wing and shot. I simply did not care and she spent years “chasing” after the bird was produced, until…
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On driving in the UK, to the North
When people plan to drive in the UK they are usually very worried because they will have to drive on the “other” side. My plan was to follow the car ahead of me, and to remember that my body had to remain close to the sidewalks. Left and right did not concern me that much, for the very simple reason that, I will tell you a secret, I am not good at differentiating them. I have a right hand dominance and a left eye dominance, a thing that makes any kind of shooting a bit more complicated and that makes hard to differentiate the left from the right. In the…
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The Universe Speaks
I sometimes get lost in my own dreamy world, a world in which I cannot open gates and sometimes I cannot even see them (Linda!). Being a little weird, as anyone who is much into animals, homeopathy and acupuncture probably is, I sometimes pic up messages from the Universe. Well, it’s not that it sends me a text or anything like that, when the Universe “talks” it simply makes things happen. I think I have been having a long conversation with the Universe which lasted more than a year, and it still thinks it is right. The hot topic are my returns to Italy from the UK: I think it…