The ambassador of the Sofields

If you look at this blog with any regularity, you probably get the sense of a few recurring themes… this post includes two of those – trains and Fiona. It has happened many many times, that a conversation with a stranger will start with "Was ist die Hunderasse ". If I have Fiona, this is usually followed by “Huh, Sprechen sie English?” Most of the time, the people are happy to switch to English and ask the question again “What is the breed?” The second most popular question is how old she is followed by whether she is a boy or a girl. (I can answer how old she is... zwolf Jahrs alt.)

Last Saturday, we were at the World Cup ski races in Davos. A lady in the stands came up and said something in German, then switched to English. She wanted to know the standard things about Fiona (breed, age, sex, name), but kept going. She told us that she doesn’t like dogs, but could tell that Fiona was a kind dog, look at her eyes she said. She proceeded to pet Fiona and shortly tapped her partner on the shoulder to share that she found a dog she liked. When she stopped petting Fiona and went to leave, Fiona skootched closer and sat down against her. The lady just couldn’t leave at that point, Fiona had thrown the bait and she went for it. She spent the next 5 minutes giving Fiona an ear rub that they both really enjoyed!

The ambassador being loved on by someone who doesn't like dogs...

On Sunday, we were on a bus in Geneva on our way to a friend’s house. This time the language was French that we started in, but quickly went to English. An older lady wanted to know what kind of dog she was. After she found out that we speak English, she wanted to know where we came from. Zurich… she asked what Zurich was like (funny thing for a Swiss person to be asking an American). Then she told us where the route map on the bus was, how many stops after hers we would need, where people play outdoors chess in town, where the old University was, that we had to check out the old city center, etc. For 5 minutes, we had a wonderfully friendly tour guide and it started with questions about our ambassador Fiona. The stories don’t always turn out this way. When we got off the train in Geneva, a lovely little lady came up and started talking to Fiona in French, and then she looked at us for a response. We asked her in a combination of German, English, and poor French if she spoke English. She looked at us, shook her head, said something to Fiona in French and walked away. Other people seem to be afraid of her, but those people seem to be either afraid of dogs in general or just caught off guard by a dog– it is often in the train station when it is crowded and they round a corner only to be surprised by Fiona – they make a wide arch around her, keep their eyes on her, or just hesitate when they see her. Fiona has never noticed when this happens, a well trained ambassador doesn’t…

There are so many stories about Fiona and the connections she has helped us make, but the last one for now involves Darrell and Fiona on a train. Last week, they met a couple seated across from them who own a pension in (believe it or not) a skiing valley. Darrell got their contact information and now, it turns out that we’ll be spending part of the Christmas holiday with them (as paying guests of course) – and guess what started the conversation?