Today at Kingsford – Raven in the snow

Raven in the snow

These photos are from yesterday. Earlier in the week we got a huge dumping of snow, some 10 inches or so. Dan and I have a little skating rink cleared out on the ice of our lake; now that there’s snow on the lake, we don’t have the freedom to skate wherever we’d like. On Monday Dan cleared the ice of about 4 inches of snow. Overnight it snowed some more, and Tuesday morning we cleared off another 4 inches. It started snowing while we were out there, and by the time we’d finished the first pass there was another inch already in the parts where we’d started. We cleared that off quickly, and then came in. I think at least another inch fell after we left it. I’m hoping we have a stretch with not much snow for a little while.

Ice on branches

However, when you don’t have to clear it, snow makes the landscape look lovely. I took Raven for a walk yesterday afternoon, after the sun had come out. We’d had freezing rain overnight which had frozen on the branches of the trees. Everything was sparkling with the setting sun shining low through their ice-covered limbs. It’s something you just can’t capture in a photo very well.

Raven in the snow

Raven was having a blast. She’d bury her head in the loose snow, then flop her shoulders over and push herself along with her back legs, then flip over and roll around. She’d bound over and about, snuffling and snorting, romping and rolling. Then she’d jump up, pin her ears back and take off with a big grin on her face. Find a new spot, and repeat. Her puppyish energy is very cute, when it’s relieved outdoors.

Raven in the snow

Today we got high speed internet! Finally, the days of dial-up are over! Being out of town, cable and DSL aren’t available, and we’re outside of the range for the nearest wireless tower, so satellite internet was our only option. It’s a little slower than any of the other three high-speed services, but it’s still considerably faster than dial-up. Unless you exceed your download limit, which for our package is 250 MB a day. In an ordinary day’s activities this would not be an issue. But naturally, since the other computer hasn’t been online in a dog’s age, it had to download a whole bunch of updates and backlogged podcasts (which it did without prompting, or we may have caught and stopped it), as did the Xbox when we hooked it up (eager as we were to get everything set up and going), and within a very short window we’d already gone over our download limit. So we enjoyed high speed for perhaps all of two hours, and now we’re back to dial-up speed, part of their “Fair Access Policy” arrangement so that no one user starts downloading huge reams of content and eating up everyone else’s bandwidth. Ah well. Lesson learned. We’ll be back up and running again in a short bit.

As an aside, I and the Bird #90 is now up at Jeffrey A Gordon’s blog – head over and check it out!

Today at Kingsford – Puppy in the snow

Raven in the snow

The last few days we’ve had regular precipitation, which has variably been in solid or liquid form depending on the temperature outside. Temperatures dropped and stayed low enough overnight last night that when we got up this morning there was a lovely blanket of snow on the ground, the first solid couple of inches we’ve had (prior to this, all we’d got were light dustings). I love the way freshly-fallen snow looks, crisp and white, lining the branches of the trees and bushes and giving the landscape a light, lacy appearance. I can guarantee this won’t be the last freshly-fallen snow photo I post to the blog.

I took Raven out for her daily walk, bundling her up in her new coat as much to keep her dry as to keep her warm, since it wasn’t nearly as cold today as it had been a few days ago. When she just goes outside to relieve herself you’d think she was very put off by the snow, pausing reluctantly at the edge of the deck and then stepping delicately over its surface. But put the hiking boots on and head out for a walk, and it’s the best thing she’s ever seen. She tears down the path, then pauses and buries her nose in it, snuffling as dogs do. She flops over, rolls around a bit, then tears off again. It’s great fun to watch, she seems to be having a blast, and it helps to burn some of her inexhaustible energy.

All the wetness she’s been getting the last week or so has started to bring out her doggy odour a bit. She’s never smelled very strongly, the way some dogs I’ve known have, but it has been a month or so since her last bath. The first time we bathed her, shortly after she came home (her mother’s home smelled a little… funny) it took two of us, one to keep her in the tub and the other to lather and rinse. This is her third bath, and each time she’s gotten better about it. Now she looks, if not like she’s enjoying it, then at least resigned to it, and Dan was able to bathe her without having to hold her at all. We’ll make a water dog of her yet!

Raven having a bath

Today at Kingsford

Raven - goin' crazy

Today at Kingsford I am feeling exhausted. It’s 8:30 and I’m just about ready for bed. Boy, I knew that puppies were a lot of work, but I don’t think I was fully prepared for just what we were signing up for. The exhausting bits are those like the above…

Raven - goin' crazy

…or this…

Raven - all tied up

…or this.

Actually, it’s not so much the tailing after her to untangle her or empty her mouth (which I seem to have to do a lot) just in and of itself that’s exhausting, but rather the having to be at constant attention, with one eye always on her, so you can never fully relax or focus down on a project. I’ve read that a puppy can sleep for “as much as” 16 hours a day, and the sources generally recommend letting the puppy rest and not keeping them up. I don’t know what sane puppy parent would possibly be doing that. They may sleep 16 hours, but that still leaves 8 hours a day that they’re curiously getting into everything! I very much value my snippets of downtime while she’s sleeping during the day…

So I’m a little behind on catching up on reading or answering my comments or other little tasks like that. I’m sure I’ll have lots of time to get back on top of that once she’s grown out of her puppyish energy… in a couple years…

Raven - who me?

Who, me? Trouble? Naaah, couldn’t possibly. Look how sweet I’m being…