Paws in the snow

This week has been very cold - I doubt that the temperature has been higher than 1°C all week and morning temperatures have been as low as -5°C. This has meant that although we have had no significant snow since Tuesday, there is still a substantial covering everywhere, and the footpaths are covered in treacherous trodden snow.

The immediate impact is obviously the outward journey. Rover and Amazon are always very keen to get to the point of the walk where they are allowed off the leash, so they see it as their job to get us all to that point as soon as possible - stopping for a sniff aside. I can curb the worst of it, but in icy conditions this has serious  implications if I need to pull them in at the same time as I step on a friction free surface.

Thankfully the upper bridge has been gritted this time, which makes a nice change. Even the section on the far side that gets no sunlight is passable with care. Quite what prompted this gritting is unknown, as it is unprecedented. Although I would like to think that it was gritted by someone involved in the maintenance of the bridge, I think it may be a private act by someone as sick of risking their neck on the bridge as I am.

In the Dene, the walk has been transformed. A good covering of snow brings a more mature, but still very excited response from the dogs. I was watching a documentary about wolves some time ago and remember them saying that it was with the coming of snow that wolves' hunting success increases. Watching Rover and Amazon in the snow makes me believe that something of this has passed down in the genetics of dogs, for they were looking for rabbits with especial interest today, scouting out all of the likely places. Rover would occasionally peel off to run around in circles, and he even jumped up at me, which he usually does not bother to do, so he caught me off guard.

There were few other dogs around today. There was a bull dog that wanted to come when I whistled for R & A (which is more than they did) and I saw twice (at a distance) an Old English sheep dog who is a regular.

As I was turning for home, the sunshine that I had been enjoying all morning was darkened by a rather pregnant cloud which was coming in from the east, and I expected a resumption of the snow (it has been forecast, although it is mostly expected to hit the south, the Midlands and Wales. As it turned out, the cloud passed over and the day is again bright.

Very glad to get back home and put the kettle on!

Rover having a crazy Alpha day

Yesterday was another beautiful winter's day with absolutely clear, cloudless skies. We went out at about midday even though there were other things to get on with in the dash to get everything ready for Christmas. Yet again it was icy everywhere but the sun was doing its best to banish the hoar on the ground. We again set off for what can only be called the standard walk - across the BOF, into the Dene, around by the Lower Bridge and back.

There was a lot more activity than usual, starting with a Staffordshire Terrier who Rover brought to see us. Rover being in unusually boisterous mood then decided that this Staffy was going to be his bitch (actual gender of dog unknown. Faced with an unusually dominant Rover and Amazon being her usual self, the Staffy flattened itself to the ground and then legged it when it heard its master's voice in the distance. We called the terrible twins back so that they did not bully the poor thing any further.

Later we met a couple walking a liver coloured labrador. Everything seemed to be going well until Rover picked up a ball. Rover is normally a gentle, placid beast. However if you introduce a ball into the equation he becomes an obnoxious bully who will do everything in his power to have that ball. He also happens to be able to devote all of the limited mental capacity at his disposal to the complex mathematics involved in catching a ball. When it turned out that this ball was not "just an old ball" as I thought but in fact the labrador's ball, there was nothing for it but to tell him to "leave", put his lead on and walk on with many a longing look over his shoulder.

Rover finished this walk with a hat-trick of crazy behaviour. As we made our way back up the side of the Dene he started jumping up in the air and running around with great excitement, easily jumping high enough to "lick" Cath's face. Lick is probably not a good description of what a lurcher at high speed does, but that was plainly the intention. He eventually calmed down and again both Rover and Amazon appeared at the waiting gate without having to be called.

For the information of the owner of the Staffy, Rover has been neutered. If the dog was in fact a bitch she has nothing to fear from Rover and other than that it was just normal canine dominance behaviour.

A teeny bit of snow.

We were off to fetch home one of the kids from Uni yesterday so the dogs were treated to a nice early walk. There was a bit of wind blowing about, there was a covering of cumulus that had been a mist earlier in the morning and it was cold. Almost immediately I noticed the odd flake of smow - not the big ones that accumulate in no time, it was the very small nearly hard ones that are almost but not quite hailstones. The ground was frozen from frost the night before, so even though it was an inconsequential amount of snow it was actually able to accumulate.

We slipped and slid over the Bridge of Food, which lived up to its name today by having half of a small chocolate bar lying there in full view. We steered Holly (and the other two mutts for that matter) away from this tempting poisonous treat. Then it was down the final slope, which was not fun as there was a noticeable sheet of ice across the path. Cath let Holly wander down off the lead but there was no way R&A would abide by that little agreement so I had to put both leads in one hand and gingerly make my way down the slope with one hand hovering over the handrail, just in case.

As we were going we saw a woman and her dog wandering along the path below us. We know this pair quite well. The woman is nervous and not very talkative. Her dog is about Holly's height but much slimmer and it always had a muzzle on and as far as I am aware it is never allowed off the lead. Cath says that she has talked to her when she has walked the dogs without me, so I'm obviously too scary to speak to. By he time we got off the bridge they had got a fair way ahead along a different path to us, so that was the dogs only interaction with other dogs today.

The Dene was a little sombre on its winter colours. The odd snowflake continued to fall through the trees and here and there enough snow had accumulated to for isolated patches of grey-white. I jokingly sang a line or two from "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" but Cath didn't pick up on the sarcasm. I guess she was too worried about snow actually building up and causing delays on our trip to Leicester. Still the snow did add to the problem of getting up the path from the bottom of he Dene. The frost was bad enough but there was enough snow to cause additional slippage. Cath ended up walking on the grass to get a bit of traction but I managed to stay on the path with a little bit of care and concentration.

The Council did some work to help the drainage on one section of the path south of the Dene. Every winter this bit of path has become a large puddle which has frozen up in the winter and been a bit of a challenge. The work involved cutting three drainage channels through the tarmac, filling them with stones and covering them over with a layer of tarmac. They accumulated large amounts of pebbles and gravel on either side and dug a channel for the water to flow away from. This meant a slip free section here, although there was still a tiny patch of ice where water has flowed down from another path and it had frozen as it flowed across our path. Seems to be a job well done!

The return leg went particularly smoothly today - R&A appeared from their little hunting trip before we had a chance to call them, meaning that we were not waiting around for them for ages. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does it is a nice little bonus. We headed back, avoiding the little bit of chocolate on the Bridge of Food, and got the dogs back just before the tiny flutter of snow began to turn into something a little more like snowfall, with a scattering of big flakes.