Bandits in the snow

I realised I've never uploaded one of my all time favorite photos to dA. I took this in October 2017 when my dear friend wind-princess (not active on dA anymore) and I where on a mountain getaway with our dogs. I always think that Tokala and Yari look like a pair of cool anti-heros from a real-life Disney movie in this shot.

Also, thank you guys for your kind birthday wishes.

I wasn't feeling very good for the first half of June, but now I'm better. At the beginning of June I innocently took an allergy test. I had no bad symptoms, but for a very long time now half of my nose would always get blocked during the night and I wanted to know if that was because of an allergy, or just my nose.

Well ... the result was a fist-punch in my face, because the only thing my skin reacted to was ... dog dander.

If you're an avid dog lover and have one (or more) as a companion you can probably imagine how that's one of the worst things you could ever be told. And just the knowledge of having a dog allergy brought forth psychosomatic symptoms I never had before: suddenly touching Yari made my skin burn and a week later an uncomfortable pressure developed in my chest and I felt just very miserable.

So I spent hours researching and forming a battle plan and when I was convinced to have found some useful methods, this improved my mental state and therefore also my immune system. I feel very lucky that I've gotten off lightly (until now) because I had to change very little to get things back under control. I do now take a food supplement containing quail egg two times a day. Sounds weird, but the link brings you to a study about this. (To be clear, I don't use the same product as in the study, this is not advertisment, just information) I also got myself a reusable filter mask to use for when I clean and vacuum and Yari doesn't sleep in my bed anymore. _...Mostly.

I can have my beloved boy on my lap again, I can cuddle him, I can play with him, I can stick my fingers into his slobbery mouth to remove pieces of wood after he went mental on a stick. Last week some friends, Yari and I stayed at wind-princess's place for half a week and her two dogs lose hair like hell and I still had no problems aside from slightly itchy eyes on occasion. I just really, really hope, I can keep it that way. Dogs are such an important part of my life.