Blace is Riihimäki's most famous dog

Omenalaakso's Blaze is a labrador retriever, which is perhaps the most internationally known riihämäkelian at the moment. You can follow the dog's life on Instagram and Tik Tok with the blazethedog account. The dog has 14 followers on Instagram and almost 000 on Tik Tok, and it also has its own Facebook page. The majority of Blaze's followers come from abroad, such as the United States. Blaze's accounts tell not only about the dog, but also about life in Finland.

- In the pictures, we always want to tell something about the environment we are in, says the owner of Blaze Santeri Frilander.

In Blaze's Insta feed, you can see how the dog frolics in the snow, poses next to red wine berries and jogs in the middle of the moss in the forest. Blaze's favorite places can be found in Riihimäki Hatlamminsuo, Käräjäkoski and Vahteristo. During his runs, Blaze gathers eyes and friends, because the dog's black and white coloring is not typical for Labrador retrievers. Even Blaze was completely black a couple of years ago.

- Then the dog started getting white hair, first a small spot in the ear. It is about vitiligo disease, i.e. whiteness, which, however, is completely harmless to the dog and does not affect its health. The disease is rare in Labrador retrievers, there have been three known cases on social media, says Frilander.

Blaze's internet popularity was born about a year ago, when Blaze's picture was featured on the Facebook site Dogspotting Society. The photo received more than 32 likes and was the subject of the "nice topics" news site Bored Panda. Last year, Blaze also joined World of Labs – an Instagram account with over half a million followers.

Blaze has hit a growing trend; pets' own accounts on social media have been on the rise for a while. Indeed, there are influencers in the world who are pets. For example, the Pomeranian dog Jiff Bom has more than 10 million followers on Instagram and the Los Angeles cat Nala has more than 4 million followers. Well known in Finland is, for example, the Pertti-pursuing labrador retriever from Hauho.

Blaze's social media accounts are taken care of by the Frilander family's daughter Emma, ​​and all the family's children take part in taking care of the dog.

- This is cliché, but we wanted to teach children about responsibility. And it's great when Blaze is always happy when we come home.

Blaze also spreads good cheer on social media with his easy-going chats and pictures. - People clearly like looking at pictures of dogs. Blaze's pictures have been published on many social media channels, and the most popular picture has over 300 likes.

Kati Ala-Ilomäki