Of Winter, Snow and Doggies

Trina and yes she does have one brown eye and one blue eye

As we slowly creep towards Winter in our new home in Virginia, I am eagerly looking forward to real snow for the first time in well over a decade. Yes that is right, you heard me correctly. I am looking forward to the fluffy white stuff (Preferably a lot of it) falling from the sky. Sue me, I like cold weather and I LOVE snow. Which is kind of weird since I come from the very Deep South where snow was mostly a myth or something that fell but never stuck around.

A funny story dealing with my love of snow comes from when my wife and I moved to Omaha, NE for her first job after college. The first snow we had was an extremely heavy one and we only possessed one vehicle at the time which my wife had to use to drive the 20 or so miles to her job. I worked within two miles of the house so I walked every day. So needless to say, I bundled up and took off for work that morning on foot. One of my wife's coworkers asked if she had driven me to work that morning and my wife calmly told him that I had walked. When the man expressed concern over me walking through snow drifts in near freezing temps, she just shook her head and said I was probably having the time of my life walking and throwing snowballs at trees. (She was partially wrong, I was throwing them at signs.) I love the snow!

Okay funny story over with. So now that I am once again able to look forward to snowball fights and snowpeople populating my front lawn, I am also looking forward to something a little more important. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I own two wonderful big goofy Labrador Mixes named Trina and Trellis. We adopted them after a friend told us that they were going to be put to sleep because they were simply too terrified of everything to be the friendly interactive dogs everyone wants. Because they had been horrible abused as puppies (Trellis was beaten regularly and Trina was locked in cages so small she could never even stand up or turn around.), they rightfully didn't trust people. I had a huge fenced in back yard at the time and said they could stay there for as long as they lived.

Trellis and yes she is as goofy as she looks.

Over the years since then, I have worked very hard to earn their trust, but never achieved a lot of success. Generally, if I came into the yard, they would run and hide in the bushes along the fence or in our very bushy dog run. Over time, I got Trina to the point where she would actually come up to me and let me pet her, but there still wasn't a lot of trust. Sometimes I despaired of ever earning their trust and actually interacting with them like other dog owners do. Because of their fear, it was literally impossible to get them inside in bad weather. Rain or shine, hot or cold, I couldn't bring them out of the weather. If I tried, they would just run down into the dog run and hunker down in the heavy brush. Let me tell you that until you try to haul 80 pounds of uncooperative dog out of bushes, over a fence and uphill, you haven't understood the definition of impossible.

For a long time, all I could do was make sure that they had warm, dry shelter and warm bedding to sleep on in the winter and cool places to sleep with tons of water to drink during the summer time. It was frustrating and frightening at times. Some people might argue that I should have done more or tried harder and they may be right. I don't really know if there is more I could have done, but I can honestly say I did everything I could.

Now fast forward to modern day and our new home in VA. Thanks to a much smaller yard and a lot of effort on the part of me and my wife, the Dogs have come to trust us a lot more. Because of this, they are now spending most of their time indoors sleeping on Serta Comfort Doggie Beds in their own room with a padded cover on the floor. They can go out whenever they wish but usually they are very content to sleep in their room out of the heat/cold/rain. I finally can hug them and pet them. I can make sure they get their medicines when they need it and care for them when they are sick/injured without traumatizing either of us.

So now, I can look forward to a nice cold winter with TONS of snow without being worried sick that my dogs are out the cold, freezing and afraid. I will walk out into the fluffy white stuff confident that Trina and Trellis are curled up on their warm beds in their dry room safe and sound. Needless to say this is going to be an AWESOME winter.

Brew Long and Prosper