Bought online.

Not as gripping as the account of Arthur’s journey through the jungle and adoption but a nice account of Arthur’s life after adoption interspersed with stories about other rescue dogs.

A wishlist book going to sakirmo as part of Wishlist Tag.

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Thank you!! Arthur's story is a very touching one so I can't wait to read more about it :)

As I've been occasionally checking out Arthur's facebook page there wasn't much news in this book, but I still enjoyed reading about him and looking at those photos. I found the collection of other rescue dog stories a bit unnecessary though - everyone was just saying the same things and those adoptions were more or less similar to each other anyway, so why include so many just to fill some extra pages in a book? Oh well. I wild released the copy of the first Arthur book and have been planning to buy one for myself to keep ever since, which I now finally remembered to do :)

Going to the winner of (Finnish) November sweepstakes. Enjoy :)

Am I the winner? :) Thanks.

Lovely dogs! But if Lindman already wrote a book about Arthur earlier, why is about a third (well, maybe not quite that much) of this book still about their meeting with Arthur in Ecuador? I haven't read the first book so it didn't matter except because I thought of those who have read it. I liked the stories about all the rescue dogs, but became a bit confused because they all ended the same way ("if you're going to take a dog you must take a rescue dog").
Great dogs :)

Helmet: 39 (ihmisen ja eläimenn suhteesta kertova kirja)
Popsugar: 23 (a book set in Scandinavia)

Thank you, took this from our little Bookcrossing Meeting in Nivala, Finland.

Nice book - I haven't read Arthur's story before, so the parts of Ecuador were interesting. But maybe too many, too similar stories about rescue dogs... and I did feel sorry about the Great Dane who got walking trolley - not sure if the quality of life for any dog would be that good with it.

Merry Christmas, Kirjakko!

Hello, many familiar faces here! Merry Christmas, everybody!
I haven't met Arthur before, but my first dog was a rescue Siberian husky. Should I add - a Finnish rescue dog. I wish people would take rescue dogs from their own country and lessen the risk of importing some new exotic zoonosis into their own country. If you want to help dogs elsewhere, give the organizations money to operate in their own country.

Pic: From Chania's note cards... Has she been spying on me?

I know I should read promised tags to Sakirmo and Chania first, but this looks like a fast read and it's going to go into my St Valentine's Day parcel. My shipping preferences were "An elderly eligible UK bachelor with a huge bookshelf", but Poodlesister doesn't know for sure if this will be a match made in heaven as you can't tell from the recipient's name if it is a male or a female. Knowing how few bookcrossing men there are, the odds aren't on my side, but this one has a rescue dog, hence the choice of a book.
I began reading already and spotted Petra from Åland (page 59), which means I can add this book to the "Finland mentioned" -challenge we have on the Finnish forum.

Ann rescued Billy from Afghanistan. My workmate's brother is the Finnish ambassador in Kabul (now at home for Christmas), half a year left if all goes well. Normally diplomats spend four years in one post, but Kabul is considered a danger zone, so he will get out having served two years. He has a helmet and led vest next to his bed, the embassy is in a walled area of the city and he has a bodyguard. How the rescue org. manages to ship dogs out of there on a regular basis amazes me and I have doubts of how valid their vaccination certificates are in a country that is in such a turmoil and where not even people have proper medical care. Muslims also consider dogs unpure animals and avoid them due to their religion. Good for Ann that Billy apparently hasn't brought rabies to the UK.

I visited a Dublin vet while attending the European Winner Dog Show there some years ago. He told me that 40 000 greyhounds are abandoned EVERY YEAR, when they haven't brought their owners fame or fortune in the dog races. 40 000 annually!!! Most of them are tossed out of the car on motorways. That is horrendous! Ireland isn't a third world country, it is part of the EU and something ought to be done about it NOW. In Finland all purebred dogs have to be microchipped before registration. If you find one, you should be able to trace its owner. If they would microchip all racing dogs, it would be easy to find out the people who are doing this, ban them from competing and give them a fine so high they would have to stop this negligence. What would be even better is to ban money prizes from all dog competitions, like we have done ages ago. If you only win a trophy and some dog food, those who are in it for the money will drop out.

I want to SCREAM! Mikael and Helena wanted some tips from a dog trainer on how to best ask Arthur to return when he has wandered off. Not TRAINING as such, but just getting him to come back when he is in danger. He says it like training would be something BAAAD. Like it would change the dog's character. And to top that, he says he doesn't want Arthur to be like a child who would be threatened with "wait till your father comes home".
Arthur is a dog. He does not understand "wait till your father comes home". Dog-training is GOOOOOD for the dog. You don't have to teach them silly tricks, if you think it is beneath them. But STOP and COME BACK are skills that might save their lives one day. And surprise, surprise, they have to be taught. If you just sort of talk to them about it, they might stop and come back, when they are good and ready and have nothing better to do.
Dogs are pack animals and they are happy to have a clear and fair leader, rules and regulations. The better trained they are, the more freedom you can give them, because you can trust them. They are also better PR-dogs for all dogs, which is a needed quality for any city dog. But so stupid is Mikael that he tells how they told the trainer that Arthur doesn't need lessons and they don't want to change anything, but they worry about him disappearing. I'm glad I wasn't that trainer, 'cause I would have said: "Ask him to read a book about it." Instead she told them what to do with him, they did the exercises, Arthur obeyed better, everybody was happy and apparently they still do not have a clue that this is called dog training!!!
My dog does not know how to sit on command, but she knows stop, stay, come back and leave (edible things). She is house-trained (Arthur is, too, unless Mikael, the stupid idiot, forgets to take him out) and from puppyhood she has been trained to lie on her side for nail-clipping, ear-examining, hair-clipping around her a-hole so that her poop does not stick to anything, etc. Simple to teach when young and makes life so much easier when they are adults. Yet there are many people who haven't done this and come to the vet clinic because their dogs won't let them clip their nails or comb their coat, let alone touch their ears. I can assure you their dogs are much more stressed having to come to the vet's every time their nails are long and even if we can knock them out for examination if all else fails, it is the owners who will have to medicate the ears twice a day for a week or two.
Many dogs actually like to do silly tricks, because they know they will be rewarded. Dogs are born trade union activists, you can get them do almost anything with good enough salary. It may be praising, patting, goodies or a good play with a toy, depending on a dog. Most dogs love doing things with their owner, they love the attention and activity. If they get paid, they don't mind silly tricks.
I have a feeling that Mikael's and Helena's opinion about training in general, moulding one's character and letting all flowers bloom may lead them seeking a supernanny, once their children are a bit older. Children, like dogs, should have law and order in their lives. They will test their boundaries and will become little monsters, if allowed. A client of ours breeds hovawarts. She says she won't sell a puppy to parents whose children run around like banshees and are out of hand. She knows that if people have bad-behaving kids, they won't be able to train a dog, either. Hovawarts are very good at being the boss of the family, if there isn't one already.

Finland is a country of great many rules and regulations, but most of them make good sense. As said before, no dog competitions have prize-money. You can't buy puppies or kittens from a pet-shop (it is illegal to sell them there), you have to buy them from the breeder. This does not exclude puppy-factories altogether, sad cases come to light every now and then, but most buyers pay attention to the conditions they are getting their puppy from and they are encouraged to report any signs of neglect or ill treatment. It is illegal to keep your dogs caged indoors; a cage is for travelling and keeping an animal during a dog show, for instance, but not during your working days. This is probably a rule which many toy breed and terrier owners break if they have a bit too many dogs in their flat. Or I've heard that owners of young dobermanns, Labradors or Belgian shepherds (=active and often destructive large dogs) keep their dogs caged during workdays to have something left of their apartment when they come home, but it is illegal. You should TRAIN your dog to be OK when you are not at home. You can have a kennel building, but separate kennels have to be of certain size in proportion to the size of the dog, it has to shelter the dog for cold, wet and draught. They have to have fresh water at all times, lights on during daytime and dogs need to be excercised or have outdoor pens of certain sizes. Dogs can't be chained onto a doghouse with a short chain, the only accepted chain is what we call "a running chain" (juoksulanka), which is attached to a wire running high above the dog's head so that there is minimal risk for it getting tangled up in the chain. There are minimum lengths stated for wire as well (20 m I think), so as the other end of the chain is attached to the wire, the dog has a decent run back and fort. And he has to have a warm doghouse as well. I would say that unless you were a breeder, the only dogs kept outside your house at all times would be hunting dogs and sled dogs. Very few people keep guard dogs. Basically, if you are getting a dog, you plan to have it living in your house, not somewhere in the back yard. And a fairly new, just a couple of years old rule is that you can't have your dog on a trolley if its legs are paralysed for good. You are allowed to use a trolley for a short-term, for example when recovering from a spinal operation, but not if there is no hope in hell that he will recover. As mentioned, all pedigree dogs and every dog travelling abroad has to be microchipped (it has been estimated that around 80 per cent of our dogs are pedigree dogs, which is one of the highest if not the highest percentage of all countries).
And it is illegal to keep wild animals as pets in Finland, which is great! We have no part in that sad pet trade which endangers so many rare species.

Finished. Old athletes often seem to have hard time retiring from competitions and Mikael is no exception, full of nervous energy. It's good for him to have Arthur and all the fuss that comes with his fame. I wanted to hit him (Mikael) with a hard object when he did it again at the Gothenburg Book Fair - didn't take Arthur out for a pee. Does he find it funny or why does he keep telling these stories about him having to pee inside when he is on his PR-tour?
I thought it odd that the emergency vet didn't put Arthur on a drip when he was weak, not eating and passing blood. Were they so busy, was Arthur too much of a handful without his owner or what? They could have had Mikael in some corner watching over Arthur and his drip, so he would have skipped the pipette routine.
It may not have come out clear here, but I do like animals 😊. It is just that the rescue business from the Baltic, Spain and Romania keep pouring dogs with all sorts of problems, mental and physical, to our country. I'm not choosing to say rescue BUSINESS accidentally; it is a big business. If you ask a Finn why he buys his rescue dogs from Estonia instead of Finland, he will tell you that they don't have toy breed -rescuees here. Does he really think that by chance people in Estonia throw out Chihuahuas, yorkies and papillons and their mixtures? Nope. As they've realized there is demand for these tiny dogs, for which big-hearted and blue-eyed Finns pay much more than local people, they will begin to produce them. No papers, a sad story and nobody comes after you to wanting a refund, if there is something wrong with the dog.
With climate change on the go, exotic diseases keep moving upwards on the map as we get new vectors here as well. Leishmaniasis is an exotic disease and it has been believed that its vector is sandfly only. It is a common disease in Mediterranean countries. It is a zoonotic disease, transferable to humans as well. Most Spanish rescue dogs have leishmania antibodies and the disease can stay latent in them for years, but they never get rid of it. In Britain there have been occasional reports of Leishmaniasis in dogs who have lived all their lives in the UK. Some of those dogs have had a rescue-dog from Spain in their family, but some have been only dogs. So, is there a UK vector we do not know about? If that is the case, also people are at risk. And other dogs, of course. It has been established that leishmaniasis can be transmitted by biting as well. It is diseases like this that good-hearted, well-meaning rescue-adopters expose us to, when importing rescues from elsewhere. Also travellers do it. It's nowadays pretty easy to take your dog with you on a holiday to Spain, but do you want to risk it getting one of these exotic diseases? I would never take my dog to Spain on a holiday.
Without my first dog, the rescue, I would not be a veterinary nurse today. It had diabetes and chronic cystitis, so I had to catch its urine sample every day and inject insulin to it. When other kids were absent of school if they went to doctor's, I handed over "been at vet's" -certificates by the hundred. I loved my dog dearly, I wanted to care for it the best I could and thus became interested in veterinary medicine. By accident I ended up in a vet's family in Dartmoor when I was sent to England to learn the language and spent two "Herriot summers" there, which played an important role in my career choosing as well, but it all began with that diabetic rescue dog...

Forgot to mention the not-so-successful rescue stories we see at the vet clinic. The worst was an old St Bernhard which came from Spain to a lady who had always had giant dogs. The dog she got could not get out from the cage she was flown in. It was so arthritic, eyes chronically infected due to loose eyelids (ectropium) and the skin was also horribly infected. The dog had given up, was beyond help and was put down. The lady was in tears as she had put the animal through the stress of the flight. She never mentioned money, but flying a giant dog is costly and she had also paid the organization.
Then there are so many which have separation anxiety, so that somebody has to be with them full-time or the house will be demolished. Most get better, at least a bit, but it is very trying for the family. And thera are those who have chronic diseases and are costly to maintain. Or have fungal skin-diseases and the whole family, people and other pets, need to be treated as well. Some rescue organizations are better than others.
Then there is the question of vaccinations. They all have pet passports full of stamps when they arrive, but when the Finnish state veterinary lab offered free rabies antibody testing for rescues which had been in Finland less than six months. They got plenty of samples and it was discovered that two thirds had inadequate amount of antibodies or none. So, either they hadn't gotten the vaccine in the first place or perhaps their other health issues or young age had lessen their ability to produce antibodies (a vaccine should be given to a healthy animal and young dogs may need two doses). Similar studies have been made in Norway and Sweden and Norway banned the import of rescue dogs after they had a human rabies fatality, although she was a nurse who had fed a stray dog on her trip to was it Thailand or someplace similar. She had been bitten and didn't seek help before she returned home, which was too late. Once you have symptoms yourself, there is no cure.
So, I am all for rescues from your own country. I'm sure there is enough for everybody without these imports. You also have a better chance to see what you are getting.
But what really needs to be done is to get to the root of the problem - why are there so many homeless pets?

I'm taking part of the Helmet 2021 -challenge with this; a book which tells about love.

I ploughed my way through snow to the post-office today. Arthur should reach my elderly eligible bachelor in the UK by St.Valentine's Day!

Received as a swap. (Sorry I'm not an eligible bachelor, not even male 😂) Heard about this dog but havent read the original book or this one so will be interesting. I do have a rescue dog myself

Enjoyed this book