January 19, 2024 — Of Snow and Dogs
The universe is out to get me, and no, I am not paranoid.
First, there is work. I’m supposed to be retired, but (as you might recall) I wound up working a fair bit lately. This week started out in a very similar way, working Monday and Tuesday. The person I was covering for was supposed to be back at work on Wednesday, but that didn’t matter because Mother Nature — heavily assisted by climate change — dumped nearly a foot of snow on the area Tuesday night and Wednesday. Everything was closed.
Thursday saw more light snow followed by freezing rain, which continued to fall all night. Since then the temperature has come up a bit (now it’s just regular rain) but it’s still a horrific mess out there on the roads. The snow is melting and trying to go somewhere, with the result that everything is covered in icy puddles of muck.
I spent a lot of time Wednesday and Thursday shovelling snow, despite the fact that it is supposed to melt pretty quickly. Or at least that is what the forecast says, but I don’t trust it. For the longest time it said this set of storms was going to result in 5–10 cm of snow. Call that 2" — 4", give or take. This much was definitely not in the cards. So what things will be like this evening is anyone’s guess. Maybe it will rain, or perhaps the temperature will drop and we’ll get ice again. Fun.
At least I wasn’t trapped in traffic for hours again this week, but I am trapped at home, and there was enough shovelling to keep me fairly busy and give me a pretty good workout.
But being trapped leads to another way the universe is trying to kill me: via Tinkerbelle.
About a week ago she decided that she can no longer go upstairs. That was her decision entirely. She’s still welcome up there if she changes her mind, but at this point if she puts her feet on the stairs to go up she stops at the second stair and retreats. No clue why.
This doesn’t seem like all that big a deal, but being upstairs was where she got to see all the excitement and bark at all the pedestrians and other dogs. So she’s lost all the abdominal exercise of that barking as well as the leg workout of hauling her huge mass up and down the stairs. The snow made things even worse.
She loves the snow, but it makes it a bit difficult for her to relieve herself. She’s picky about when and where she does that, and having nearly a foot of snow in the way meant she simply stopped doing anything along those lines.
Also, that much snow makes it challenging to get to the water feature, which is the only thing she will drink out of except puddles on the ground. She will eat snow, but that doesn’t really do the trick.
And of course given all of that she stopped eating as well.
So we have a dehydrated, constipated, hungry dog who won’t or can’t take any actions to resolve those things.
On Thursday Anne cooked up some chicken and rice which she will eat. It gets some food and water into her. And with some shovelling in the back we did expose two paths to the water feature and she has had a couple of drinks. (Note that she completely ignores the water dish sitting inside the house and the extra one we put out on the patio just for her.)
The last problem is the toughest one to handle, though. If given the chance she will go outside and wander around the back yard for half an hour — in the rain — looking to relieve herself, but she won’t do it. And half an hour after that she will ask to go out and try again, with the same result.
Thursday night she got me up at 11:30 pm, 12:30 am, and 1:30 am. That last time I gave up and moved downstairs to be better able to respond and keep her from waking Anne. At about 2 am, she demanded to go out again and I’d had it. She willingly came in after only about 10 minutes, but still hadn’t done anything useful. When she asked to go out again 15 minutes later I said no and moved my chair in front of the back door and tried to sleep there. This tactic worked. She picked a bed and fell asleep for about three hours, at which point Cruzer got up and needed to go out, so the chair had to be moved, and in pretty short order chaos had returned.
Thankfully Anne woke up at that point and relieved me so I could get a couple hours of actual sleep. Suffice it to say that I am a bit fuzzy today, as is the dog.
Weather permitting we’re supposed to go to a friend’s art opening tonight, and maybe have dinner out as well. I have no idea what we will return to if that happens, and given my lack of sleep I will suggest that Anne does the driving.
Whee.
The highlight of the week was receiving a book of short stories written by Gary Shockley, a friend and artist. Some of you will recall Gary from stone carving class. If you do, drop him a note to congratulate him on getting this published! I plan to spend some quality time with his book just as soon as the weather and the dogs allow it.
Of course other things happened this week but none of them were particularly significant. Those are the highlights.
May your weather — and pets — be cooperative!