Snaps from Denia, 2021.
Self portrait, 2021. Backlit by the sun.
It’s been almost a year since my last post. Oops.
Good morning! 🐶
First day of summer vacations!! 🐕
This weekend we went exploring the forest La Vallesa and the margins of the river Turia! 🐕
Yesterday we celebrated exactly 15 days since Luna joined our family. Welcoming a second dog has been at the same time joy and challenge. 🐶
Here are three things I (re) learned about dogs in those past 2 weeks:
- Rising early and having a routine is essential. With the years, our routine with Astro has relaxed and he’s quite flexible. We could get up late during weekends. Not anymore! I’ve been rising early every day and really keeping the dogs in a bathroom-food-training schedule to help Luna adapt.
- Clicker training is wonderful! It’s been years since I used a clicker with Astro. Now I’m using it to teach Luna and she LOVES it! She’s really smart and motivated.
- Having a new dog is like having an alien at home. It took me a long time to understand Astro and make myself understood. He was my first dog after a lifetime with cats and it honestly took me almost two years, with help from courses, books and lots of patience. Little by little I’m learning to read Luna’s body language and her expressions. She’s more shy than Astro, she doesn’t move her eyebrows or her tail so much, but her ears say a lot.
There have been days where I felt overwhelmed, thinking “wtf have I done?!”, but most of the days have been really fun! Thank you Luna for bringing all those emotions and memories back into my life.
Early risers find the best light. 🐶☀️
Day 3 of Luna. She’s crazy about food. Today she tried to steal a wooden spoon from the sink with rests of omelette on it. The spoon fell with a noise and I caught her in the act. She then pretended she was not at all interested and waltzed out of the kitchen. She also dances near garbage cans and licks her lips when she sees a cat. 🐶
24 hours together. Luna’s a little shy, but she already jumped on all beds and she found a great spot on the couch. She also tried to steal the garbage and has been brainstorming ways to get to the food the humans locked behind pantry doors. 🐕
BOOP!! 12 hours to Luna’s arrival! 🐶
Astro
Astro came into my life in 2013, when I lived in Sweden. I didn’t have friends, barely went out (only for groceries), got a major vitamin D deficiency, life sucked. I considered getting a cat, then realized I’d spend the rest of my life on the couch hugging the cat. A friend then told me how her golden retriever basically saved her from depression and how fun it was and how cute a golden puppy is and that was it. I decided I was going to ger my first dog!
Sweden is a great place to be a dog. Pups are welcome on the bus, on the subway, on boats, at bars, parks… We took Astro everywhere we went. The dog really had a great life rolling in the snow, exploring nature, mountains, beaches, lakes, and chasing ducks (until the day some swans chased us! It was awful!).
In 2016, my husband and I decided we were tired of the Swedish weather (= 2 months of summer, 10 months of darkness and snow?! NOPE! I’m from Brazil, I need my sunlight!). So we packed our car, traveled 3000km south, and moved to Spain. The humans in the family were in extasy, the canine in the family not so much… His favorite thing in life was rolling in the snow.
Astro was supposed to be the one and only, until another friend implanted in my head the idea of adopting a Spanish greyhound. It didn’t take much to convince me… All she had to do was tell me about galgos in Spain, how they’re mistreated and abused. I impulsively started writing to every galgo shelter I found online and in less than a week, I had found Luna. So this is the situation. She is currently being transported from Andalucía to Valencia and I don’t know what I was thinking, but it is what it is, I guess. Now I have a second dog.
Sunny winters in Valencia ☀️
When we first moved to Spain, we rented an Airbnb for the first month in Castelldefels, a small town 30min by train from Barcelona.
Even though we didn’t stay long there, we fell in love with the local people and the city’s relaxed, easy going vibes. It was winter back then, so the next summer we came back to check the beach and yep, it was as amazing as we thought it would be! ☀️
The view from the road, arriving in Sa Calobra! Mallorca, 2018.
A small bed & breakfast inland and a rented car to explore the island. One full week of Mallorca! 🗺️
This beach is called Cala Agulla and it really was as blue as it looks in the image.
The view from the road, arriving in Sa Calobra. Breathtaking.
Last, but not least: Ryanair cancelled our flight back home, the island was crowded and they couldn’t find any cheap accomodation near the airport, so we were forced to overnight at this incredible luxury hotel with a view to the sea, and had and amazing dinner including a bottle of wine, all expenses paid by RyanAir! I’ve never been this lucky, before or after.
Hi, I’m back! I haven’t posted in almost two years. Things have changed. I have changed. I moved to another city. I changed careers! Photography became my hobby and I didn’t know how to deal with it, with saying out loud I’m not a photographer anymore, I’m a frontend developer.
I don’t want my photos to be forgotten inside my computer drive. I have so many beautiful images to share! That’s why I’m back. This one is Barcelona beach, July 2018, the good ol' pre-Covid times.
Astro is not obsessed about anything, EXCEPT for this: retrieving a ball or a stick from the sea.
That’s something he can do for hours. I wish we lived closer to the dog beach or to some quiet lake, so he could get to enjoy summer his own way. In those moments, I miss Sweden (it’s rare though! I’m happy af in Barcelona). // Astro, 2015. Blurry and shot on film.
