First Blood

The snow here is not something I considered as being a problem for the dogs but I have learned otherwise in recent days. I'm used to snow from about 5 degrees and below, but here, if it's hovering around zero, chances are as likely you'll get rain as snow. This may seem like a cool thing on the surface but it's kind of annoying actually since the rain hits the snow, melts the top layer and then when it freezes it becomes a hard crust over what appears to be a soft blanket of snow. When you walk on it the crust breaks apart and if there's been a succession of rain and snow then you get a layered crust.

It also depends on where the snow is located. I took the dogs to the school yard and Raimi ran across into the large field and stopped, looked at me and then didn't want to play anymore. He was stepping and dropping through the crust and didn't like it ... so I thought. The other two dogs were fine and although it was tougher going they weren't being sissy's about it.

What I didn't immediately realize was that what Raimi didn't like was not the difficult going, it was the abrasions he was getting on his legs from the crust's edges. I noticed blood on the snow and thought 'Crap!' Sure enough I checked his legs and on the insides of his pasterns and hocks there was droplets of blood forming. I checked the other dogs but so far they were free of damage.

We headed away from the field where the wind had polished the snow into glass and stayed near the forest where the crust was not so thick or sharp. Since that walk we've been a few more times but it's a problem everywhere unless we stay on the service road that gets cleared. I guess that will be our standby when the snow proves to be too dangerous.

This is Leeloo's rear foot - those two spots on top of her middle toes are not her coat color, it's blood coming through the abrasions on her toes. I thought of boots but there is just no way boots will stay on these guys (see wrestling photos from the other day) so we will just have to learn to avoid the bad areas. And Raimi's poor hind foot. That scar is from his dewclaw removal and you can see the blood just in front plus on top of his second toe and along the inside toe. It also seems to be a problem around the nail bed - on Raimi's giant foot here the second toe from the right has some blood on the nail bed. All of the dogs have experienced this now and I'm very mindful of where we walk and what time of day. I like to wait until a little later in the afternoon to allow the temperature to go up, and if there's sun, to allow it to soften the top crust but that means suffering through Leeloo's incessant whining. And when they like to do manic things like the following, it's hard to teach them to be careful.