The Non-furry Friends
Currently we live in Haukipudas, a village about 25 km north of Oulu which is 600 km north of Helsinki, the capitol of Finland, in eastern Scandinavia and northern Europe.
The non-furry friends includes Emma Pirilä who is mostly responsible for these pages. I earn my bread and the dogs food as the Laboratory Chief at the Institute of Dentistry, University of Oulu. I did my PhD in Helsinki in 2003 and my current research involve oral cancer. I also work as a dog masseur from time to time.
My furry life involves both horses and dogs. With the dogs I have tried all kinds of things: obedience, agility, shows, rescue search, tracking and so on. I am a trained obedience instructor and I am also a ring secretary at official dog shows.
I got my hunting license in 2006 and I have hunted actively with the dogs since, mostly birds. I have participated in hunting trials for both pointing dogs and barking dogs. Nowadays I also hunt elk. I am a member of the Finnish Kennel Club and several breed clubs. The non-furry pack also includes Janne Kyrö who works for an international mining company as a public relations coordinator and because of this has to travel a lot in Lapland. Janne has been hunting his whole life and mostly hunts birds with the dogs but also hunts elk. Jannes other passion is downhill skiing in which he has been competing at the Finnish Championship level when he was young.
Nowadays our pack also includes little Ella who was born in 2009. Ella is already used to hanging around with the dogs and she has already tried sitting on a horse as well. On the other hand Ella is currently very interested in two other things: technical apparatus and shoes. Maybe she will be a shoe-shopping engineer in the future…
