Sunday, January 29, 2023

Winter Weather fun

After a mostly mild season so far, Winter finally arrived this week.  It started with a light snow last Sunday, was followed by a heavy and very wet five inches on Wednesday, and then a couple more inches overnight. 


Mina and Peaches have been loving the snowy wonderland in our backyard and have spent lots of time outside playing with the neighbor dogs during my work days.this week.  They run and bark and zoom around the yard until I force them to come inside to warm up,  and they can't wait until I let them go out and do it all again.


Fiona has also gotten her first real experience with snow.  According to Nicol,  she isn't happy when the blowing snow hits her in the face, but she has enjoyed crawling around sticking her face into the snow, trying to eat it. 

She is also spending lots of time standing all on her own and will walk while holding on to anything stationary.  It is only a matter of time before she starts walking all on her own.

The girls and I have been getting out for our three walks per day, even in the snow.  I think that the change from one long walk per day to three shorter walks has helped keep Mina more settled during my work days.  Our longer Wednesday walk in the snow was fun, and the only other people I saw out were my neighbors who were walking their Huskies.  Thus is the life of a GSP owner. 

Mina is back in class, attending her Doggie Do Good class, so we our back to our daily routine of a minimum 15-20 minute walk, 5-10 minutes of training, 5-10 minutes of structured play time, and then meal time twice per day.  Since she is pretty quiet in the morning we've been doing this as a mid-day and after work routine.  Our third walk  of the day is a short 10-15 minutes and varies depending on my schedule. I have to say that I feel like my entire day is spent working and then walking and training dogs.   But it's definitely been good for the girls.  I think they like the routine.

Yesterday Mina turned 9 months old.  It is hard to believe she's two-thirds of the way to her first birthday.  We started the day slowly and took a nice late morning walk.

After our walk, we headed out to visit Nicol, Tyler, and Fiona.  We were expecting some potentially slippery roads starting later in the day, so I wanted to make sure to get this visit in before the roads got bad, since it's been almost a month since I last saw them.

I was too busy playing with Fiona to take any pictures, but Nicol sent me this one a couple days ago.  I also got to play with Picasso, and before we left, I took a short half mile walk in Nicol's neighborhood with the girls.  I figured they could use the change of scenery as much I as I could since we haven't left our neighborhood on our walks all week.

Snowfall had started before we got on the road, but the drive home was smooth and we made it home before the snow started to stick to the roads and sidewalks.  Not knowing what the weather had in store for us, I decided we'd take a nice 2 mile walk while the snow fell.  

After our walk, the girls had a short play session in the yard, got in a nice training session where I learned that Mina loves chickpeas, had a quick game of fetch, and then ate dinner.  By 6:30, Mina and Peaches were soundly sleeping and were quiet for the rest of the night.

I planned on a quiet day at home today and thanks to my neighbor, Bill, I didn't even have to leave the house to shovel.  


The girls have been outside to play a couple of times and we had a nice game of fetch earlier.  We skipped our mid-day walk, but added an additional training session, and they had lunch in the Kong Wobbler and each of them has had a collagen chew.  Surprisingly, Mina has been quiet most of the day. 


I'm not quite sure how Peaches is feeling about our lazy day at home, but it is just what I needed.   I'll be cooking the meat for Peaches' meals for the next couple of weeks, making turmeric paste, getting some chili in the crockpot, and putting together a lasagna, while I catch up on this week's Jeopardy episodes so I have less meal prep during the week since I've now got commitments for two to three night each week for the foreseeable future.

I'm looking forward to welcoming February this week and I'm enjoying the later sunsets and longer daylight hours I've noticed over the last week.  We still have some Winter adventures planned, but I'm excited about the fact that March and Spring are right around the corner!  

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