10k Training

We were supposed to start our training sessions for the 10K Sun Run last week.  Unfortunately the snow ended up causing it to be cancelled, so now we are starting a week late.  Meredith and I did go out last Saturday, when the road had finally cleared off enough, and we tried out the first session.  And it seemed pretty easy.  I do hate to run, but we start out so slow, with our shuffle of a run, that I'm sure that we are moving faster when we are doing the walking part.
This week we do repeats of 'shuffling' one minute, and then walking for two minutes, with a five minute warm up and cool down at each end.  This past Monday was the first official training session.  Our group of 'learn to runners', which consists of about 25 or so, all went out together.  The first session was 34 minutes, and then we did a bunch of stretching at the end.  We are out in the dark, so we have to be pretty conscious of the traffic.  The group leaders are all wearing bibs with reflective stripes on them, and then the rest of us are wearing whatever reflective stuff that we have.  There was some packed snow still in spots on the sidewalks, and the sky had cleared and some of the bare pavement was icy.  Everyone made it back safely though, and it seemed relatively easy.
 We have a group session every Monday night, and then we have to do two more each week on our own.  Tonight Meredith came over and we went out together, again in the dark, and by that point it had started to rain.  We just ran on what we thought was going to be a quiet street in front of our place, but there were still more cars than we expected going by.  No sidewalks and still snowbanks down each side of the road.  I wore a reflective safety vest and Meredith had reflective wrist bands and a head lamp.  Guess it doesn't help when you chose to run at the same time that people are getting home from work.  Most of the time we were able to step over the snow piles and get well off the road. Thank goodness the rain was only light.  Not like yesterday when it was one dark miserable wet day, and we walked the dogs on the dyke in the pelting rain.  Hopefully we can do our next session on Saturday in the daylight.

Vitamin D

It's been more than a week since we've seen the sun.  There's been a whole lot of grey and white and wet.  The snow is taking it's sweet time to leave.  The hayfield, which is a south facing slope, is showing quite a bit of green.  That was no doubt helped along by Pride, who had access to that field last week and kept himself busy pawing through the snow to find the grass.  I hope he clobbered a few moles on the head while he was at it. Mole hills are rife in that field.  The field to the north of us is almost all green, no doubt because it is very open and exposed and when the snow was blowing, most of it blew away.  The neighbour's field to the south is still all white, as is our back hayfield.  The top of the driveway is still a skating rink.

It was pretty exciting to see the sun yesterday afternoon though, and I headed out to the hayfield for a wander.  A couple of weeks ago Luna lost a Flying Squirrel toy out there.  I did mention to the collies that perhaps they could find the toy.

Then I saw Jake tugging on something, trying to pull it free from a frozen clump of snow, and I thought 'Wow, he's found it already, good boy Jake!'

And then I saw what it really was.

He did get a little stick fetching in

And then there was a little mole/vole hunting

If you tell Luna to find a toy when you are outside, that only means one thing.

Her 'soccer' ball.  She ran off and brought it back from somewhere down the driveway.

And the chickens are happy that the snowy is slowly going.  This green is under the fir trees, so the snow was only thin there.

It's the temperature that affects the chickens more than the ground conditions.  Here they march up the snow to see if I've brought them any treats.  We cleaned some stuff out of my mum's fridge, freezer and cupboards.  The chickens are getting some of it.  They think it's pretty great.

And this morning, it's all grey and raining once again.

Mr. September

Remember Chance?  

He was the Lab puppy that my sister in Ontario was 'puppy walking'.  That means that she raised a young pup, socialized it, trained it, got it used to all sorts of different situations, before it went into formal training to be a guide dog.

Here's Chance the day he arrived last March, just 10 weeks old

And Chance doing some of his training at the mall.

And this is Chance just recently.

Cathy did such a good job with Chance, that he has already moved on to formal training.  She spent hours working with him, and just after he was a year old, about two weeks ago, she was told that the time that all puppy walkers dread....had come.  

There was a very emotional handover to her puppy supervisor, and Chance was gone, and he had left a huge hole in Cathy's life.

Not that I thought it would make her feel any better, but I thought I would send her this.  A book bag/shopping bag/whatever bag.  One of those pillow panels sewn on the front.  A late Christmas present/early birthday present/thanks for doing such a good job with Chance present.

And here's the back.

And Chance, well he's Mr. September. That's him in the CGDB calendar. 

And Cathy, she said after a break that she would do it again with another pup.

Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind

And The Freeway Roared

Hwy 1, formally known as the Trans Canada, and which we just call 'the freeway', is about 3 miles due south of us. Normally we can't hear it, but when we have a weather system coming in, or specifically a mild, damp weather system, the freeway lets us know.  We can hear a dull roar of traffic, even though there are hills and ravines and stretches of trees and buildings in the way. This morning the freeway was roaring.  We had been warned for the last couple of days that this cold, snowy spell was coming to a dramatic end.  A winter storm warning, with it's red banner, had been splashed across the weather page.  A warm front was moving in, which, before it beat the cold monster to it's knees, would bring us some more snow, then freezing rain, and then just straight rain, and a lot of it.

We just got a skiff of snow overnight, and it was about -6 this morning.  After we did the morning chores, I went out and removed the snow accumulation from the costco shelter that we have over our old travel trailer. That's the third time I've done it this week.  Then I started looking at other roofs that might not hold up under 8 inches of waterlogged snow.  I pulled snow off the north chicken coop, and then worked on the sheep barn.  A little bit of freezing rain came down while I was out there, but not much.  Sometime in the early afternoon it started again.  By this time the temperature was close to the freezing mark.  The rain was making a bit of a crust on top of the snow, and on a few other things, but it was nothing to worry about.  The road is brown slush.  Water is dripping off the roof. The roar has died, and now I can clearly hear the train a few miles to the north.

Luna says she will be quite happy to have a less icy place to pee.  And I think I'm going to knock the snow off that hedge before it gets all heavy and wet and pulls it out of shape.

Are We Just Wimps?

This morning we woke up to blowing snow,  temperatures of -12 C and a wind chill of -24 C.  Probably seems like nothing to some of you, but I suppose it is all what you are used to. This is unusual cold for us.  Not a record by any means, but probably the coldest we've had it for a few winters now.

I already know that very cold or very hot temperatures affect Calli's back feet, with their nerve damage, so I had booties on her back feet before we even went out the door.  We own two dog coats. I don't know if they actually needed them, but I put them on anyway.  One that fits Jake (barely) and another one that would fit Luna or Calli.  I figured Calli had that good Lab undercoat, and a bit more of a fat cover than skinny minny, no undercoat Luna, so Luna got the coat.  Calli got a reflective vest and a bear bell, so we could find her out in the bush.  She has been wandering off the trail, scrounging up things, and taking her own sweet time to respond to our calls.  

We didn't get very far, and both Calli and Jake were sitting down and holding up one front paw and then the other.  Back to the house I went, and put booties on all four feet of both of them.   The booties are just cheap little things from the dollar store, and they worked well, but every once in a while, one would come off in the snow, and the dog would stop and hold up it's foot.  We did get going, finally,  and Luna started playing with Jake.  That was good, as it took his mind off the weird feeling of wearing a coat AND booties.  Next thing there is a yipe, Luna stops dead in her tracks, and won't put her back left leg down.  I said 'Forget this', and I just scooped her up and started slogging back to the house.  I eventually had to put her down, and she used her leg, so thank goodness it was nothing major.  Next thing Jake stops, one naked foot in the air, and I scooped him up and carried him the rest of the way.  Looks like it's going to be a mostly inside day for the dogs.

So although this story (thanks Suzanne) makes sense,  does it depend somewhat on what a dog is used to?

Luna's Snowballs

She makes them and then she eats them.

There is no way she would have let me pull on those snowballs like she was.  She would have been leaping like a fish on the end of a line if I had been pulling on the hair like that.  I just left her to it, and a bit later she was all cleaned up.

More snow today, about 6 inches on top of what we had left from Saturday morning.  It was a different kind of snow, and it balled up on Luna's hair something fierce.  Jake not so much, but his hair is much softer than Luna's, and of course Calli only got a few around her feet.

It was Jake's turn for the chiropractor today, in another freaking snowstorm like the trip with Luna in November.   We have been noticing that Jake was limping for two or three steps on his right hind when he got up from his chair or the floor.  If you didn't see him get up, you'd never know anything was wrong.  Before making an expensive trip to the vet, I wanted the chiropractor to check him out first.  Dr. Lana said his pelvis was quite twisted, and Jake was not happy when she was adjusting it back into position.  We are hoping that it does the trick.  It wasn't an instant fix, she said it might take a day or two, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Since the University had closed for the day due to the weather, David was able to drive me, since he is the only one with snow tires.  We went from everything all white and snowing at our place, down the steep hill to the valley along the river.  Just past the dyke where we walk the dogs, the snow had stopped, the road was black and wet.  It was like coming into a different world.  Of course on the way back, we drove back into the winter whiteness.  A farmer at the bottom of the steep hill back up to our neck of the woods flagged us down and told us not to attempt it, he said most had failed.  I'm sure David on his own would have tried it anyway, but his dear mother suggested we had better take the safe option.

More snow is predicted for tonight.

And Luna, well she hasn't been this clean for a long time.

Turkey in the Straw

Okay, a piece of raw turkey carcass in the snow, where you can lick your plate and then eat it too!