THE SIMPLE THINGS 2: THE REAL SNOW DOGS

Anyone remember the Disney movie Snow Dogs, starring (and helping with the career downfall of) Cuba Gooding Jr? If you don't remember that's probably a good thing, as its pretty much a piece of dreck. However, a friend gave it to us a few years back. The story involves a border collie who wants to be lead dog of an Alaskan sled dog team. Well, I briefly worked with sled dogs in northern Manitoba and we own a border collie (just the one at that time) so there are moments in the movie that I enjoyed.

But now I have my own snow dogs. One of whom, Terra, got to experience the very first snow day of her life.

Needless to say, Terra seemed to enjoy the cool air and all that frozen water. Because as I've documented in other posts, for Terra, water is border collie crack.

Of course, Miss Hayley is our original snow dog and she too, was happy to quietly express her genteel pleasure on the first snowfall of the season

Border collies love the snow. They are all weather dogs but with those big coats and high energy, they do enjoy the cooler temps. They like to run on/through it as well, I assume it feels good on their pads. And of course, a layer of snow makes them into pirates, sniffing and digging for treasure, even it said snow is covering ground they sniffed only hours before. Hey, its snow, you never know what could be hidden under there.

Above, is rookie treasure hunter Terra, making her first forays into digging. Below, is old pro Miss Hayley, going for a full fledged excavation.

Of course, the one thing snow dogs like to do even more than dig for treasure, is to run ...

Terra really needs very little motivation to run, and Miss Hayley just needs a puppy to chase but Terra is a ball dog and we had some fun with that in the snow. Usually she has launched herself to warp speed before I can even get the ball airborne, so her back is to me as the ball is flying. She usually finds it by sound but in the snow, the impact is muffled. It took her a while to figure out that the ball was on the ground, covered by a layer of snow, sometimes right under her nose. Well, border collies aren't known to be scent dogs. But eventually she got her nose working and learned how to find her ball.

And if you do lose your ball, don't fret, nature is always happy to provide you with a stick ..

And the lovely thing about sticks, they often leave you with little souvenirs you can take home

All Miss Hayley thinks is: Puppy, I don't care what you chase, just get on with it, I need something to herd

So that was our first day in the snow. A simple thing. Just two girls romping around in the white stuff. But yeh, the simple things are good. And I'll keep this post simple as well, and let my girls tell you, that this is the end ..