Monday, February 9, 2009

In Which Bu Takes Me For A Walk

We've been working with walking the Bu-Dawgh. He's a tad bit excitable and very narrow minded. Likes to chase things that move, like rabbits, chickens, deer and leaves (not this time of year, the leaves are hard to chase right now), but you get the picture. He likes to run.

I don't. I will do a fast walk with the best of them, but run? Um, no! Old. Arthritis. Hips hurt. Whatever excuse you can come up with, I've already thought of it. If I'm going to run, it's gonna either be from a house on fire, a wayward steer or on the back of my horse.

Bu-Dawgh, on the other hand, would rather run than anything. And he has no qualms dragging me along behind. Through the woods, on the ice, it's always an adventure.

Enter Cesar. And his method of being the pack leader.

Ok then. Walk, Bu-Dawgh, Walk! As long as I take him for the equivalent of 5.5 hours of walking/running/chasing/dragging every day, he's good, but at this rate, my shoulders are going to give out.

I took him out for a walk the other day through the woods, not the smartest thing I've done in awhile, but it was a beautiful day. Being pulled face first through 3 foot of snow was even exhilarating, reminded me of my days on the sleds when we were younger. But back then, it was fun. Yeah, good times.

So, with a bit of a variation on Cesar's techniques (walk, don't run, don't pull, walk, that's good, ugh, no don't run, ice - slow down) we're getting there.



Weather related, it has warmed up, at least for a few days, we actually saw 50 on Saturday, with bright sun. It was beautiful. Sunday was about 40 and I hung clothes out and They Dried! This is huge. This hasn't happened in a long time. I always hang clothes out, but end up draping them over furniture in the living room by the woodstove to get them to dry.

Supposed to start raining tonight, that will be a fun little mess.



We'll see how that all plays out!

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Snow. Again.

This time of year, snow is a moot point up here. There's gonna be snow. There's gonna be lots of it, and then there's gonna be more snow. It happens. Every year, you can almost set your calendar by it.

End of year, get lots of snow.
Beginning of year, snow starts to not fall quite as hard, quite as often, this is a sign that the big lakes are frozen over (or mostly frozen over).
Middle of January, the sun (remember mr. sun?) makes his appearance again, once in awhile, you know, just for a teaser. There's no heat in this sun, it's just pretty and yellow and mostly deceiving, because it makes you think thoughts of going outside to do stuff like plant the garden (which is under 3-4 foot of snow). Deceiving.
End of January, the January Thaw! where traditionally temps rise above the average for a week or so, again, deceiving us into believing that the winter gods are done with us for yet another year.
But it's not so. Phil lets us know every Feb 2 that we are not to be deceived. If you don't believe him, ask the natives. They get deceived also, but know better. They'll tell you that the snow won't go away until August (they're mostly tired of it by now and view it as a never ending curse).

Me? bring it on. I love it. I love staying inside and looking out at it. I love being outside in it. I just love it, yup, a northern girl at heart. What can I say?

But, even though I profess my never ending love of winter every chance I get, does not mean that I invite head shots with snow shovels, ice picks or skiis. I didn't do it. I didn't make it snow, I just like that it does.
And, I look forward to the thawing of the lakes, so the great Lake Effect Snows can once again dump enough of the white stuff in 20 mins to cover a house.

So what do we do until it starts snowing again, but it's too cold? (cause snow and cold, while seemingly compatible, are not! It can comfortably be 30 degrees and still snowy, what I object to is 75 below zero with a wind chill just short of Mars).
We do as Jeff Foxworthy suggests and go sit on 18+ inches of ice, drill a hole and wait for our dinner to swim by!

Gotta Love Michigan!

Monday, February 2, 2009

If It's February, It Must Be 2009!

Yesterday was a beautiful day. About 35 deg. bright sun, and down in our little hole, almost no wind. So Bu-Dawgh got the bright idea to go for a walk. In the woods. Where's there's about 3 foot of snow. (I may be short, but mid thigh, is mid thigh, and that's right around 3 foot). So I made him lead the way, figured we'd get a head start on making our path for walking to work.
This was fun, he's not tall either, there was kind of a gazelle effect as periodically he would jump up into the air (with me attached to the other end of the leash) to get a look around.
Kind of made the whole path thing hard to follow, but at least he kind of blazed the trail. Kind of. We still slogged through the snow, but it was a nice, if not invigorating, walk.

Would have been really interesting if I'd have gone with my first thought and strapped on the cross country skiis. We'd probably still be out there.

So, lately I've discovered Facebook. This is pretty cool, and I've already connected with a cousin who (whom?) I haven't seen in a coon's age. Most of my brothers are on Facebook too. And my parents. Seriously, don't you people have better things to do?

Apparantly I don't!