Mud Puppy

Our crazy winter continues - the past several years we rarely saw any snow. The past few weeks it has snowed on an almost daily basis. Our average highs for this time of year run about 48 degrees F, which seems almost impossibly warm. We've been running about 15 degrees colder than our average high for the past two months. And even though there hasn't been any significant snow accumulation lately, all our old snow is still hanging around, with additional daily dustings covering my agility field and making it hard to get around outdoors. It is no longer pristine and white and beautiful, but old and dingy and crusty and depressing.

Still, that hasn't stopped B. She has managed to create mud, even when everything is frozen. These pictures don't really do her justice, but I imagine you get the idea. This isn't just mud that has splashed onto her, though - she actually had frozen mud stalactites hanging off of her. She actually rattled when she moved. No mere toweling-off would do the trick - I had to pick frozen mudlocks off of her.


Perhaps she is just giving us a taste of what is to come once the snow does finally melt (I assume that is still going to happen at some point...)

Meanwhile, we have some new work to do. I know I have mentioned before that I am not a talented chef, but somehow as I was making dinner tonight, I generated a copious amount of smoke. We turned on the hood and the cranked the ceiling fans in the kitchen up to full bore. Unfortunately, I didn't notice right away that B had slunk off to the bedroom to hide in a crate. Now she is scared to even go in the kitchen. I know when we had all the puppies here, I tested their reaction to the ceiling fans, but I guess she hasn't seen them running since then, and with the noise from the hood, I think it was too much for her. I'm kicking myself for not noticing her disappearing act sooner.

So, we will give her a little time to calm down and get comfortable in the kitchen again, and then we will begin working on counter-conditioning the ceiling fans, and then the hood, and then whatever else she might have lumped in by association. And just this morning, I was thinking about how far she had come when we drove her in the very loud bumpy farm truck out to Tractor Supply, where she was completely unfazed by shopping carts and automatic sliding doors, and sudden loud noises, like when an employee was ripping lengths of duct tape up off of the floor one aisle over.

So, I'm mad at myself for the kitchen fiasco, but it is what it is, and we will deal with it. In the wise words of Coach K, "next play." There is a fine line between learning from our mistakes, and dwelling on them. So, I'll try to learn from my mistakes and move on.