Remembering MaxDog as the World Cup begins

Who could read or hear the words “2010 FIFA World Cup” and “South Africa” today without thinking of our dear friend Max. MaxDog kindly introduced so many of you to me, and he told us all about the World Cup, the stadiums, the build up, the souvenirs, those funny long things that make noise and so much more about what it is like to live in or visit South Africa through his blog The Adventures of Max Dog in South Africa.

Last April MaxMom posted these photos of Max and Tammy, on Max’s website.  

 

 

 

When I saw Max’s photo I realised that I wanted to be part of his team of animals around the world who celebrate this event. You see Max is my hero because of his attitude to life, his ability to share his world, and the way he and his mom handled tough times together, so I told Max back in April that I was going to post a picture of me supporting my team the day the world cup started.

 

I don’t often get dressed up, but I do keep my promises, so just for Max here I am.

 

 

 

 

Sadly Max crossed the Rainbow Bridge on the 24th of May, but MaxMom has continued to tell us about the build up to the 2010 World Cup and what it is like to be in South Africa through her own blog Living Life to the Max She has shared her excitement with us and it is contagious! My mum doesn’t usually follow sport, but by reading Max's blog and now MaxMom's blog my mum has become interested in this event. 

 

New things have appeared at our house like this ball for me to play with.

  

 

 

I have been having fun training while trying to work out the football rules for dogs - like can I use all four paws, as a Retriever is my task just to retrieve the ball or do I need to pass it on to another player, is it OK to use my mouth (or is that only allowed if I am the goal keeper, and why does the ball change shape when I use my mouth!) and what special food treats do I get if I score a goal?

 

 

In between my training photos are a few thing I would like to tell you about my team:

 

 

• New Zealand are ranked 78th in the world by FIFA, but made it into the 32 teams that are in the World Cup!

 

• This is the second time we have been in the World Cup. The first was 28 years ago in Spain.

 

• We are in group F so play against Italy (ranked 5th), Slovakia (34th) and Paraguay (31st).
 
 

• Our proudest moment, so far, was beating Serbia (ranked 15th) 1-0 last month in a friendly build-up game!

 

• Our team is called “The All Whites” (mum thinks this is a strange name for a team going to play in a country with a history of apartheid).  

 

• However the "All Whites" got their name in 1981 in the lead up to the 1982 World Cup, as black and white (and sometimes silver) are the national colours for our sporting teams. New Zealand's national team names often refer to these colours e.g. the All Blacks (rugby union), Tall Blacks (basketball), Blackcaps (cricket), Black Ferns (women’s rugby union), Silver Ferns (netball).

 

 

 

 

• The fern is a symbol of our country, and the fern logo is often used on our sporting uniforms and appears on flags you will see being waved in the stadiums. There is the outline of a fern on the flag I'm holding.  

 

• Out team usually plays in a white uniform with a small black fern logo (on the top and shorts), but our alternative away uniform is the reverse of this - so the All Whites sometimes play dressed in black.

 

 

 

• New Zealand is ten hours ahead of South Africa, which means to watch our team play live I’ll have to be woken up at 11.30pm or 2am. This is going to be very confusing for me, as once I go to “bed” at night I’m normally only woken up when it is time for breakfast.

 

 

I have my paws crossed that our team will have some good games, and if they need an extra player I’m ready to help them! 

 

Thank you Max for getting mum and me interested in this, and as the World Cup starts I'd like to encourage anyone reading this to visit MaxMom's blog as she is doing something wonderful. She is celebrating the diversity of all the countries involved in the World Cup and encouraging us to learn more about each other. Click on the "Unity in Diversity" button top right of this web page or this link Living Life to the Max for instructions how to be involved.

 

Well Max I know you are watching over from above, and that you have a grandstand view as your country hosts this exciting event. We are thinking of you,

 

 

Love
Riley

Riley and the Koru

Sometimes I know my mum thinks too much. You see when she heard that The Portuguese Water Blog was having a bandana challenge she decided that she would like to have my picture included, but mum wanted me to have a bandana that represented where I live. Now if I was in Scotland, where my Golden Retriever ancestors came from, that would be easy… it would have to be tartan, but I was born in New Zealand.

I’ve never had a bandana before, so mum started thinking about what sort of bandana I could wear. Mum thought about our country, Kiwiana and the Maori culture here, and different symbols of our country. She decided if I was going to wear a red bandana it should have a Koru on it.

So what exactly is a Koru? Well the Koru is a symbol that represents new life, and it can also represent the form of a wave as it approaches land. This symbol has been used for a long time by Maori, and can be found in the curved form of the fern frond.

This Koru symbol appears in jewellery,
 

 
 
in fabric, in logos like for our national airline (on their uniforms and planes),
 

 
it is used by Maori artists, and stylised (like this painting by Gordon Walters),
 

 
 
it appears on the Maori (Tino Rangatiratanga) flag below (which is sometimes flown with our New Zealand flag),
 
 

inside and outside on Maori buildings,
 

on the shirts of some of our sports teams, for tattoos and many other places.


When Korus are used together and they form what is called a "Kowhaiwhai" pattern, and the way the koru (or pit au) are placed also represents things.

So mum looked at various fabrics and the way that the pattern is repeated and used.

Most of your mums and dads would have just picked something red (which was already in your house) and had your photos taken and sent in by now, but mum eventually found a piece of fabric she liked (the background even matches the colour of my nose) and it was time for my photo shoot…

Dog logic = I think this is a bib because...I

drool whenever I see food and mum is waving

food around to get me to look at her...

so I’m starting to drool... so it must be a bib!

I've don't usually get dressed up for

anything, so this is all a bit of a laugh.

I finally have my very own bandana. BOL

If I close my eyes and stick out my

tongue will you stop taking so many photos!

Oh - so this is what you were after!

 
So now, when you see my photo displayed on The Portuguese Water Blog, you will know why I have all those squiggly red lines on my chest and what a Koru is. 
 
If you haven’t already entered your photo there is still time to be part of this fun event. Check out their website The Portuguese Water Blog The instructions are easy, and I'm predicting you'll be much faster at doing this than my mum was!
 
We are both looking forward to seeing your pictures on the 10th of June, and if you have read this far leave me a bark hello, as it would be great to hear from you!
 
Have a great weekend,
Woofs,
Riley

Climbing a volcano - my Sunday walk

Yesterday afternoon I got to stand on the top of my world.  My world was all around me - for as far as I could see there were places that I've visited, and places that I want to visit! Well in the photo I'm actually sitting on top of a volcano (and you guessed right that it isn't an active volcano or I wouldn't be sitting there) but for a medium sized dog like me I was up pretty high in the world.

Mum told me Auckland has many volcanoes – but luckily for me it has been over six hundred years since the last one erupted. However all 48 of these small volcanoes have erupted in the last 150,000 years! This means that I live in a city with many volcanic cones to explore, although many of these volcanoes have gotten smaller (or even disappeared) as they have been mined for the scoria and basalt rock which has been used to make some of our buildings and roads.

Mum, dad and I went to One Tree Hill (also known by the Maori name of Maungakiekie) which  is a ten minute car drive away. One Tree Hill is part of CORNWALL PARK, Auckland, New Zealand. This is what One Tree Hill looked like yesterday. You will see that our trees are now preparing for winter.

I think that the autumn leaves in the park match my colourings very well!!! 

First we walked around the base of the volcano, and then climbed up through the fields. One Tree Hill is only 183m high so this wasn’t a big summit for me to climb, but this volcano is in a huge park with farm animals, and lots of things for me to explore, so I spent about an hour and a half walking around with my family and saying hello to some of the other dogs I met there.

Half way up - this is the view looking back.

I know I saw far more trees than just one on “One Tree Hill” but mum explained that it got its name because there used to be a huge a single pine tree beside the obelisk at the top. The old picture below (off the Internet) shows how big the tree was.

You could see this pine tree from all around Auckland, but this was attacked by a protester with a chainsaw in 1994. Then another attack in 1999 ended the life of this tree. Mum thinks this was such a senseless thing to do, as the tree died and was removed by the city council in October 2000. Our council and local iwi are still trying to decide what the best type of replacement tree will be – so for now there is no “one tree” on our “One Tree Hill.”

One of Auckland’s founding fathers was John Logan Campbell bought the land in the 19th century and gifted this park to Auckland City. He is buried here and the monument is dedicated to him. The red patch in front of the obelisk is scoria. This is were the tree used to be.

Now I can show you what my city is like so click on the photos below if you want to view them larger.

This is looking North, and on the left side of the picture is where our central business district is. The water you see is the Waitemata Harbour, and the island on the right of this photo is Rangitoto Island, which is another volcano.

This is the view out towards the east.

To the south.

And this is to the west. The water you see behind me is Manukau Harbour.

Auckland is build on a narrow isthmus between the two harbours.

Many years ago this hill was a pa where Maori battles were fought. You will see that there are lots of terraces carved out of the hillside. Maori built gardens, houses and food storage pits here in the 18th century– but, as you can see from the photo below, I looked and looked and found that they hadn't left any food for me!

 

I also got to check out some cows.

I've been going to this park ever since I was a puppy, and there is always something interesting for me to find, smell or stand in.

Had you heard of One Tree Hill before? The band U2 wrote a song about in back in the late 1980’s; which appeared on their album “The Joshua Tree” and was dedicated to a New Zealand friend of theirs. I tried to put this video in, but only half the image showed (I'm still new to blogging and don't understand this embedding stuff!) so here is a link to the YouTube page if you are interested. U2 One Tree Hill

Bye for now,
Riley

HELP - the Paparazzi are after me!

If you think you haven’t heard from me for a while, you are right. I’ve been in hiding as I discovered I’m being hounded by my very own paparazzi. Yes the cameras are out to get me - I’ve heard the shutters click and seen the flashes.

It all started recently when Mum got herself a new camera and spent the first day with that camera following my every move “experimenting.”

Dad said something about over a hundred photos of me being taken in one day! You can see some of her first photos in this post.

Mum did photograph other things, but it seems I am going to be her main subject. Did you like how she was feeding me my kibble one piece at a time in all the photos above?

She even started making movies of me so I tried to lie very still so her movies looked just like her photos!

I don’t have to be doing much – just sleeping, running around the yard, playing, going to the beach, going on walks with friends and other dogs, barking at the cats next door, getting pats from small people, etc. which is pretty much my day to day life – but both mum and dad appear with small boxes and try to “capture” me.

Does this mean I’m special or am I actually being stalked?

So far being captured hasn’t hurt, but I’m not sure about the flash thing they do and occasionally and if my paparazzi are taking too long, I give them a bark to hurry them up, but ever since I was a puppy I’ve been pretty laid back about having my picture taken.

So I wanted to ask my readers if you have any tips for a young dog like me as I can see, now that I have my own blog, that this photo thing is going to gain momentum.

Mum will be following me around, creeping up on me when I am asleep or eating, and taking her camera thing with her when we go out. Like she did with this photo of one of the many lamposts I checked on the first day she had a camera.

Even closing my eyes on our walk didn't make her stop!

She was still taking photos while I tried to sleep.

So how do all you dogs and cats out there handle your own paparazzi? Do you find yourself being stalked by a human, and do you have any activities that are just too private for a camera or does anything go for this doggie blog land?

What should I do?

                                                      Riley