Town trip!! Today the humans took us (QT) to town. We were placed outside the cafe and kept close watch on the town square! Oh yeah: we sniffed a tree, strange creations they are, they did not however seem edible so why they would place one in the middle of town we don't know. Today however the tree was emitting light. Quite practical here in the dark season. There were some human pups around who seemed to worship the tree, they were singing and dancing around it. Very peculiar indeed. We have been pulling the sledge for the last 3 days now so today when we came back to the dog yard we had a cuddle session with Rico. Tomorrow the humans go on vacation until January (they say they want to go to a warm place. We consider that utter madness as it ha just gotten down to some reasonable temperatures here). While they are gone Jonas` human Yvonne will take care of us! Well humans have a nice trip and bring back some goodies for us!!

NSQT

The last boat. Today Nord Syssel, the patrol ship of Sysselmanden left Svalbard for the season. Since it was also the first Sunday of Advent the Christmas tree was going to be lighted (Nuna claims that she has seen not just a tree before but "trees" and that they are tall plants that live in great numbers on the mainland and often stand around in packs of 1000s. QT remains sceptical. Uncle Silver was deep in a daydream about the unlimited peeing opportunities a so calleged forest would present and not available for comments). Well the humans took us on a long sledge trip in the morning to the sausage hut (Where legend has it that a kind stranger gave Nuna a sausage in 2004 and we still live in the hope of a meeting that wonderfull man again and thus return to the hut on any opportunity). After lunch the humans and aunt Lisa came back and took the puppies to town. First we went to the old quay to wave goodbye to the ship and see the fireworks. Talik though it was not that interesting and wanted to go for a walk, especially since Qimmiq kept putting her front legs up on his back to get a better view. (Fire and bangs are FUN! It kind of reminded me of the time I went ptarmigan hunting with my mom and the humans It works like this: the humans make a loud bang with some kind of stick and we get the head of a ptarmigan-yummy! Q) After the fireworks the torches were lit we and the humans followed the rest of the town to the town center. It was really interesting to walk among all the humans with their pups (think they called them children) we also met Odin and Savi from the dog yard and their humans and a lot of other dogs. At the town square we shared a cup of gløg with the humans (they got the nasty stuff inside and we got the delicious paper cup TQ). They were about to light the Christmas tree (we still have not seen it, there were so many humans so we cannot say for certain that such a thing as a tree does exist). When they said : "and now we light the tree" it went wooosh! and the town was completely dark. Impressive yes, but is that really what they mean by lighting a tree? It must be very dark at the mainland if they have a lot of trees..... After an exciting day we were driven home to the dog yard and had a big piece of frozen meet. The humans finally listened and from last week on we now get frozen beef and chicken meet every second day! Sweet

Northern light over our cages.

Map of the area around Longyearbyen with key dog localities.