There will be Kongs!

Papu's been quite destructive lately, so we decided that she needs more activity toys. We visited two pet stores nearby, but the selection of active toys for dogs was quite narrow in both of them. Of course we use empty toilet paper rolls and stuff to keep Papu busy in a more economical way, but we don't have enough toilet paper rolls to keep her busy for hours. We definitely needed more toys. We ended up buying another Kong toy for Papu. She loves her Puppy Kong, but we though she's big enough for Classic Kong too now that she has her new pearly white teeth set. Now she has two Kong toys, which means she has twice as much to do while we are away. That will probably prevent her from getting bored.


Papu totally recommends Kong toys!

We also bought her a mini Molecuball. The package said "the product should be slightly larger than your pet's mouth", but there were no "small" or "medium" Molecuballs in the stores. Just these mini Molecuballs and quite large-ish Molecuballs. We decided to try mini Molecuball, even though there is a big change of it being too small for Papu. On the other hand, Papu is a MINIature pinscher, so maybe it is the right size. We haven't tried it yet, but I let you know if it works with minpins. We tried it. It's OK as long as there are treats inside, but once they're all out, she starts to chew it. And it's not strong enough for chewing. But Papu seemed to like the toy, so we will let her play with it. We just have to supervise her really closely.

There is also another dog toy I would like to recommend: Flossy Flappy. It's definitely Papu's favorite toy. Seriously, she loves it. It's perfect for retrieving, tugging, chewing... And it squeaks in a way that won't kill your ears, I promise! Papu's been playing with her Flossy Flappy a lot, so I have had to fix it three or four times by now, but I still think it's very durable. No dog toy is indestructible (except Kong toys maybe). Papu also has a Fleecie Flappy, but she doesn't like it as much as she likes Flossy Flappy. It's just not as... flossy.


Fleecie Flappy above, Flossy Flappy below.

Papu doesn't have so many toys after all. I would love her to have more toys, but I'm really critical with her toys. I want her toys to be durable and safe, and many dog toys aren't. Especially plastic squeaker toys look hazardous. Anyway. Papu also have a rat softie we bought from Ikea about month ago. As you can see, it's still very much in one piece. Hooray for Ikea quality? Papu likes her rat, sometimes she even uses it as a pillow. You know, when she's not killing it. Papu also has a basic rope toy for tug games.



Yes. A dog has replaced my life. This blog was supposed to be about me, Amoena, but nowadays it's mostly about my dog called Papu. I hope you're not disappointed. Papu is just much more interesting than me. But if you're fed up with Papu-related posts, please let me know. I could try to blog less about Papu.

What's new in Amoena's exciting life? NOTHING!!

Every week I decide to blog more. And then I end up posting less. I should decide to blog nothing at all, and then I would probably post every day. I have all the time in my hands but yet nothing to blog. Nothing interesting, I mean. It sucks to have a such a normal life. I wonder how other, normal boring people deal with blogging. Is there some trick that I'm not yet aware of?

Anyway. We spent the last weekend in Viiala at my parent's place. Papu was super excited to meet her best friend, Minni the dachshund again. They play-fought through the whole weekend. Their fights can look quite rough sometimes, but they're both still in one piece. We have to watch them constantly while they play together, though.





We also let Papu to run free so she could sniff everything as much as she liked. And she liked to sniff a lot. And I think Papu looked gorgeous with the autumnal background. She's just so beautiful sometimes. I'm so happy that we have her and we can watch her everyday.









We also took Papu to a walk one warm day and borrowed my sister's dog retractable leash. There's not much traffic there so we wanted Papu to be able to explore things more freely. Here in the city we keep her on a short leash. There's too much people and cars here.



I sewed a Barbie doll dress while J.R. was picking mushrooms with my mom and aunt. I would like to sew Barbie clothes more often, but my niece doesn't really play with her Barbie dolls so she doesn't need so many clothes either. I'm not so happy with this particular dress, I've definitely made better ones. The fabric was very forgiving, though. I literally sewed it on the doll and it still turned out OK.





We also visited few flea markets and I found and bought a really cool board game, Bombay Bazar. It cost only 5€ so it was a real bargain. And we played it many, many times during the weekend. Even my aunt and mom liked to play it. It's a shame we don't play board games so often at home.



And that's pretty much it.

Fail semester... sorry, fall semester

My school started on Monday and it feels good to get out of the house regularly again. I missed seeing people and having conversations without the trouble of inviting friends to come over. Though I don't have many friends at school, due to my weirdness, but at least I think that I have all the right friends around me. I wouldn't even want to be friends with everyone in my class. By the way, there's some changes in our class dynamics. There used to be more girls in our class, but now there's only three of us. I kinda like it. When I studied dentistry, there were only girls in my class and it made me feel quite insecure. I feel better now when the vast majority of our class is boys, because I don't have to care about how they feel about me. Girls are more critical and gossip-y and they easily create an unhealthy study environment. Or at least that's how I felt studying with only girls.

Anyway. I have four new courses to study. On Mondays I have a course called "Developing Data Network Services". We don't have any lectures in it, just a few seminars. We should watch some virtual lectures independently, but I still haven't installed that vpn-client on my computer which makes it possible. I read the instructions for Linux OS and there was an end-note which said it doesn't work on Ubuntu. And currently that's the only operation system I have in hand. J.R. said that there is a change it might work, because my Ubuntu is a newer version than the one mentioned in the instructions. We'll see. And oh... of course we have to do some big project. Laurea is all about making projects. We still don't know what our subject will be, though.

On Tuesdays I have some bullshit called "Managing Business Performance". I know I shouldn't be so judging, since our teachers probably mean well. But the last time we had the same teacher it was real pain in the ass. Seriously. Some people just shouldn't be teaching. Thank God we have two teachers in this course, and the other one is more pleasant. We were actually able to a) understand what he was trying to say and b) listening through the lecture without falling asleep. That's really special in Laurea.

On Wednesdays I have "Managing Information Security". It's the first course that actually sounds important and useful. And the teachers seemed OK too, like they actually know what they are talking about. We also got some books for free in our first lecture. That was cool. Free stuff is always cool. And it's quite amazing that finally some teachers actually believe that we're capable of like a) reading a book, b) learning something and c) being truly interested. Whoa!

On Thursdays I have a second part of an "Analysis and Design" course (I couldn't find a matching course in English and the Finnish name was absolutely impossible to translate), in which we are supposed to continue our project. In the last course our team designed a booking system for a hotel and in this course we should execute it. On the first lesson our team found out that we were the only team who managed to pass the last course completely. Talking about having the right friends... It feels good that everyone in our team is equally motivated. Or motivated in general.

And on Fridays I have NOTHING! Hooray! Anyway. You could probably hear my negative attitude towards my school through my post. It's justified. If my school was a person, it definitely wouldn't be the sharpest Crayola in the box. It wouldn't even be in the box, it would be too second-rate for it. I think the main problem with my degree program is that anyone can get in. Even monkeys. And monkeys aren't motivated to study, which doesn't make teachers exactly motivated to teach us. We do projects after projects without proper guidance and the end-results are poor (except in our team, of course). And the monkeys also have low moral "oh, let's plagiarize everything, that's why we have Wikipedia in the first place". Argh. Enough said.

And now you probably wonder why I keep studying in Laurea. Here are my reasons:

a) It's very close to my home, it takes only 15 minutes to walk to school.
b) I have a few good friends in my class that makes it worth the whine.
c) Despite all the bullshit, it's still about computers. And that's what I wanted.
d) It's only 3,5 years, 3 years if I keep myself busy. And I just started my second year.
e) Business Information Technology sounds good. I might actually get a job after I graduate.

EDIT: I have changed my mind. I said that one of our teachers is real pain in the ass, but now she's quite good at teaching accounting. I have absolutely nothing to complain about her way to teach in this course.