Happy December 1st!!!

Happy December 1st everyone!!!:) I had already planned on taking the day off of work before I started coming down with the cold. I was REALLY wanting to take the dogs up to the mountain to play in the snow, but I didn't want to push it if I wasn't feeling all that great. I wasn't feeling terrible, but I also wasn't feeling all that great this morning. I decided to just keep going about things as though I were going and then I'd make a last minute decision. Thankfully I started feeling okay enough and I packed the dogs up and we headed out!

Traffic along Hwy. 26 heading eastbound was atrocious!! I've never been a fan of cities, but this is one of those things that makes me hate living near a large city all that much more. It would be incredibly difficult for me to get to the mountain while avoiding all major highways. So I'm stuck with my options. It took me an hour to go almost 10 miles. Yes. A freaking HOUR! I really have no idea why the traffic was so heinous. I didn't see any accidents along the way or hear about any on the radio. Thankfully things got better once we got out of the tunnel. Unfortunately, my normal 1.5 drive took 2.5 hours today.:(

But we made it to the mountain!! And there was snow!! I brought both my cross country skis as well as my snowshoes because I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to be greeted with. The places that I like to go are right around the 4,000 foot level. The normal downhill skiing level is a few thousand feet higher up the mountain, so the ski reports aren't exactly helpful for where I was planning on going. The dogs were VERY antsy to get out of the car by the time I parked. I tested the snow out to see if I was going to need to booty them up, but thankfully it was really nice snow. Though the dogs still have got some toughening up to do with their pads before they're to a toughness that I want.

The snow was also rather deep in our area. Which made for some good entertainment when the dogs first went off the sides of the trail.:) Heffner was doing fine, but Bess had some serious leaping to do! While I didn't take a ton of pictures (it actually started raining on us), I did take a few.



While I had thought that heading to the mountain in the middle of the week would mean that we wouldn't see a single soul, I did not quite have that great of luck. Within our first 20 minutes out, a 12 dog sled team came upon us. I was stopped and busy taking pictures of the dogs playing in the snow and the musher actually had to call out to me to get my attention. I was able to grab Heffner by the collar, but Bess evaded me and ran off to say hi. Ordinarily I really don't like that because if I were in the musher's shoes, I wouldn't be pleased about having a random dog coming running up to my team. And since I'm a bit hoarse right now and my voice seems to crack when I most need it, calling out to Bess was ineffective when I could barely even hear myself. She did eventually come back to me after a quick, and thankfully polite, sniff of the team. And after apologies on my part, the team passed us by. I decided to pick another route though. I didn't need the dogs deciding to rip off ahead of me to go and really investigate that team! We found some lovely side trails that were enjoyable to ski on, but I want to go back with snowshoes to better explore some of the steeper and twistier trails.

About the last half of our outing it started to rain. Not slushy wet stuff, but honest to goodness rain. Looooooooooooovely! That was our cue to head back to the truck. And naturally I brought some props along to get some Christmas themed pictures while we were up there.:) The dogs were actually being quite cooperative. The picture at the top of the post was the best and there were a few out takes.


I also have a little video of them before we started out.:) They had been running up and down the trail for a couple of laps before I was able to get my camera out of my jacket and get it properly functioning.

There is one other thing that I would like to mention. I previously wrote a blog post talking about the different coats that I have for the dogs and what I used each for. I would like to amend two of my statements. After actually having the dogs up on the mountain while it was actually raining and not snowing, I got a better feel for how the Polar 600 coats handle that. Initially they were fine. However, they didn't hold up to over half an hour out in the rain. I would classify them as water resistant and not repellent. I've learned the difference between water resistant and water repellent the hard way with hiking boots. I greatly prefer water resistant! The windhorse coat is actually water REPELLENT. That will probably be my coat of choice for the dogs this season.

I hope that everyone is enjoying a wonderful start to their December!!

P.S. If you have any great ideas for Christmas related poses that you would like to see the dogs in, I'm all ears!! I'm looking for more ideas to try out with them!