a99kitten's Musings

This morning I woke up to lots of fresh snow outside! The trees were covered in fresh, fluffy whiteness, the decks were all white, our driveway hadn’t even been plowed yet! Needless to say, the huskies (well, Angelus) were anxious to get out!

Since the vet had to shave Storm’s belly for his ultra sound, and it hasn’t really grown back yet besides peach fuzz, he is not quite as excited about the snow right now. Imagine your bare skin out there in the snow! So he goes on shorter walks or on completely plowed/smashed down snow walks. I actually don’t wear my gloves when I take him so I can gauge how cold his belly is getting. So no freshies for him :(

Angelus on the other hand cannot get enough of it. He does get tired after awhile of going through the deep stuff. But then he will rest for 10-15 minutes and wants to go again! He is definitely a 9-yr old puppy :)

Every day we have been here for our Christmas vacation, I have taken both of them on a short morning walk and then take Storm back home. Then Angelus and I go out and search out a snow adventure :) And if you let him lead, he will find one!

We finally figured out a weird loop trail/street walk that we couldn’t figure out before. Figured best to do when it was snowing and everything looked the same ;-) But we did it! We started out from our driveway and then took the fire road up the hill which was now just a deep snow trail…up hill…can you say legs burning? But I let Angelus lead and this was the way he wanted to go. Thanks bud… But then we made it to the top (well, the “top” where I decided to turn right) and then took a few streets, a few snow trails and eventually, after about 2.5 hours ended up back on our street. That was the first day Angelus actually looked a little tired. He did find a few spots where he had to dig some snow caves which probably makes him a little tired after awhile :)

But this morning, we walked with Storm for little awhile – I think he liked the snow :) Our street was kinda-sorta plowed. But our driveway was not so they were gliding through it. It really is amazing to watch huskies in the snow. Talk about completely engineered for the weather. We saw our new neighbor and their little dog (who is a little savage beast – what is with little dogs?) Then we dropped Storm off at home when he said he had enough (he sits down and says with his eyes “I’m not going any farther”.)

All of the side streets had not been plowed yet so it was going through a snowfield just walking through all of the neighborhoods. We saw a family trying to push their non 4-WD truck of the snowbank in their driveway – good thing they had 4 teenage sons! But everyone had a smile on their face – how could you not in this pretty snow?!

Then we came upon a guy who was the biggest grump ever! We saw him on one street walking his black lab and I smiled and said hi – he just scowled. Ummm..ok. Then we saw him on a another loop and his dog barked at Angelus so Angelus grrred back (but in his friendly tail-wagging let’s play grrr) and the guy got all pissy! After his dog was barking and pulling first. Whatever dude. As he is literally dragging his barking and snarling dog away I hear him say (in a non-authoritative voice so no wonder his dog was not listening) “no, no, we don’t want to get near that kind of dog” WHAT? Dude – my dog is behaving and not yanking MY arm of the socket. I think I found who Dr. Seuss modeled the Grinch off of.

What made me giggle a couple minutes later was I saw him way ahead of us (Angelus stopped to play in some snow…)

…and I saw 3 off-leash dogs shoot out of trail and onto the street and start running up to that guy and his dog who was now pulling and yanking. The dogs were pretty harmless(ish) but it was sure annoying him. Normally I would agree with his annoyance about the off-leash dogs (and still seeing no people yet) in the street but meh…he was grump.

I mean – it was a gorgeous, snowy day. The kind of day Dean Martin sings about! Everything was so fresh and fluffy and white and pretty and marshmellowey world-like! How could you be outside walking around in that with your buddy and be such a sour-puss??

So the 3 off-leash buddies came up to us and one of them tried to get a little pissy with Angelus but he handled that. And then everyone was fine. Dogs generally figure things out pretty quickly if you just let them.

So we continued on our way and then stopped at the open field and Angelus decided this was a good place to lay in the snow and eat some. So I climbed up there with him and we hung out for a few minutes :)

As we pulled into our driveway, it was still unplowed. So I let him off leash and he jogged down to a snowbank and climbed up there and dug a bit. Then he thought we should just hang out there for the day :)

I got up there with him and we laid in the snow (thank you waterproof clothes) for awhile. Then when I said we should go in…I got mopey face from him :)

So we went in. But we will be going out again for another snow adventure! It’s still snowing as I type. And according to weather.com we are supposed to get more snow today, tonight, tomorrow and Friday. So really – this has been a very merry husky Christmas :)