Winter Stories

(May 2009) Backlog?  Sure we got backlog! How much you looking for?  Hey I got two, maybe three pallets full right over here.  Ya take ’em all, I can give you a real good price.  I’ll even help you load ’em.

The Joys of a Winter Litter

(January 2009) Although our Canadian friends might think that those of us who live south of the border don’t really know what winter is, I believe that having two feet of snow on the ground — what they call a "dusting" up in western Ontario — certainly gives us a taste of the real thing.

Late in the winter a quarter inch of freezing rain on the odd warm day compacted the snow a little and put a nice crust on top.   A crust thick enough to easily support three-month old puppies, and even the adult Skyes, I might add.   The kind of crust that supports a human for about a half-second before it breaks and bone-jarringly drops you knee-deep or further into the powder below.

Now, normally the pups ran in the trails I made with the snow blower, but the crust freed them to wander the yard.   When it came time for them to come in they would get as far as they could from any path and — I swear I’m not making this up — laugh at me.   The only way to get them in was to take advantage of the Pied Piper effect: do something so interesting that they wanted to get closer, and then slowly lure them inside.   The only thing that worked was to drag a broom behind me as I walked the paths; they charged the broom and tried to bite it.   They’d follow the broom right up to the door, and if I got lucky they wouldn’t wander off when I opened it and swept in.

At some point they discovered that they were level with the lower branches of our dwarf cherry tree, and that cherry branches taste pretty good and make fine toys.  Having discovered how tasty trees can be, they moved on to the dogwood and crabapple, and finally on to the shrubs: rhododendron, siberian willow, and every rosebush unfortunate enough to be sticking out of the snow.

The crust didn’t work entirely to their advantage, though.  The adults took up the sport of Puppy Bowling.  Picking up speed as it raced across the snow, an adult would put its head down and plow into a group of pups, sending them flying like furry little tenpins.  This usually resulted in either a game of run-me-round-the-willow or a play fight with two or three pups trying to tag the adult.

Westminster Update, sort of.

(February 2009) As many dog people do, we taped the Westminster broadcast for a friend who doesn’t have cable.  Another friend asked for a copy because they were actually at the Garden, but didn’t get to see the Groups on the first night.   Sure, we said, no problem.   We set up a second VCR and put the WKC tape and a fresh blank in place, hit play and record as appropriate, checked to make sure it was copying correctly and went about our business, smug in our do-good-iness.

We had watched it live, so we didn’t bother to watch the whole tape as it copied.   Just about six hours later we watched as one of our juveniles, Patsy, walked over to the VCRs, nosed the controls and ejected the newly-recorded tape.

Oh my.

We didn’t panic (right) since it was almost done copying and our friend only wanted the first night anyway.   I rewound the copy a little and hit play.   Instead of Westminster, we were watching the Beverly Hillbillies.   Okay....   Rewind the tape a little more and try again.   This time it’s Nash Bridges.   Oh dear.   Rewind it all the way.   THERE’S Westminster.   Whew.   However, just about when the first Group went in, the tape jumped to local news, then some shopping channel, then ....

Anyway, instead of copying WKC we got almost six hours of variety viewing.   Patsy had been nosing the VCR all afternoon and we didn’t realize that she was hitting the "input" control and changing back and forth from the tape to whatever was on-air at that moment.

We *did* get a copy made, but it was with the VCRs repositioned to hide the controls.