Snow and Rain

This weekend we had rain, but last week we had our first snow. Well, technically it was our second snow, but the first snow a month ago happened while we were away, so we never saw it. This time the snow fell on three consecutive days, bringing perhaps a couple inches at a time and melting by late afternoon. It also rained a time or two during those three days. My newly transplanted trees stayed nice and moist all week. The rain and snow interfered with training the dogs, but I was able to get three runs in at the end of the week.

I took my newest puppies, Robin and Meadowlark, out for their very first run. I put Robin all by himself in wheel with six dogs in front of him. He took off like a pro and loped beautifully, only beginning to trot and possibly tire a little toward the very end of the five mile run. He was not concerned at all about the noisy ATV behind him, and he merely startled slightly at the truck traffic roaring by when our route went close to the highway, and he very quickly learned to ignore it. Robin is a huge pup, and at five months old, he is already getting too big for my smallest harness. This harness is almost always a bit large on a five month old, and it is often big even on a six month old.

Meadowlark got to run the day after Robin. She is so much smaller that I wasn't sure if my little harness would fit, but it worked okay. She also got to run in wheel, but I put Blackberry next to her. I usually run pups in single file on their first run so they will not be distracted by a companion that they invariably want to play with. However, I wanted to run all my Holly puppies together, and that did not leave me with an extra spot to run Meadowlark by herself. Nonetheless, she did really great with Blackberry and did not try to play or get tangled. She took off great, driving hard and wanting to run, but she also required lots of little breaks to reassure her that she would not be pushed beyond what she wanted to do. She would always wag her little tail at every break and then yip and jump to say that she was happy to keep running.