Saturday was one of those beautiful winter days. Temperatures were cool, but not frigid. And the sky was cloudless. Clouds rolled in late in the day with flurries, but the morning was spectacular. And so we went strolling out to our favorite tree up to Cataloochee Ski and just enjoyed the weather. Hope your Saturday was as nice.
We had a gorgeous day with a high of 48 F (9 C). That was a tremendous break from our weather of the past few weeks and even The Herd seemed to enjoy the weather. We took several walks during the day, but this particular walk was near sunset Saturday evening along the Blue Ridge Parkway. After walking a good ways, Cheoah decided she needed to savor snow in her own special way – the Cheoah Slide:
We went walking on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where our section is typically closed throughout the winter. Normally, we have it all to ourselves, but fresh powder brings out lots of others. Here is who we shared the trail with.
For those of you who do not know the “I wanna” song, Cheoah can be quite vocal when she wants something, which is pretty much all of the time. The trick is figuring out what she wants at that given moment so you can get a few minutes of quiet. I wanna drink of water. I wanna eat something. I wanna go to the bathroom. I wanna go for a walk. I wanna have my belly scratched. I wanna out of my crate. I wanna in my crate. And so on. Experience tells us that she gets louder and louder until you give in. And then you have a little quiet until she thinks of something else she wants.
In this case, she was bored watching the sledders and wanted to keep walking. After a few minutes of crescendo, we caved and kept walking. She has the humans well trained with embarrassment as her motivating tool. Sigh.
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Pups – need your help. Another of us is sick and needs pawsitive thoughts. Please cross your paws and send the best of vibes to Sitka who is being treated at the University of Georgia for a pneumothorax – which basically means a hole in her lungs. As of this posting, she was responding to treatments, but next steps are still being determined. Join The Herd in praying for a full and quick recovery. Power of the Paw!
Most of you already know our friend, Max of South Africa. Max has taken many of us dog bloggers on educational tours of his beautiful country. Knowing Max is ailing, we have invited him to share some of The Herd’s adventures today.
Most of all, Max, we wanted you and your family to know that The Herd is thinking of you every day and wishing you the best. We would like to invite you to be an honorary member of The Herd:
Want to see where all Max has been in the last 24 hours? Here is the list (as we know it). If we left you out, please leave a comment and we will add your blog (we are updating as find them):
Clive – Assistance Dog for Autism
Romping and Rolling in the Rockies
P.S. – Happy Valentines, everyone!
Pups, we have to tell you how hard things have been this week. Can you believe that we went 30 hours STRAIGHT without any winter weather warnings? Whatever is a Siberian supposed to do? But at least some more snow moved in Friday afternoon and we had a great walk Friday night. All was right with the world because it was snowing and, very importantly, we beat the snow plow. Here are some pictures from the walk:
Stay with us for a little bit and the title of the post will become clear.
First – Cheesewhiz. That would be one of the many nicknames for Cheoah. No particular purpose other than the Che sound. We call her Cheesewhiz all of the time and that gets some pretty funny reactions. (In the event you forgot how she got the name Cheoah – the Cherokee word for otter – please go see her page here. Now remember that we live beside the Cherokee Reservation, so people actually know we have a dog named Otter which is as strange as calling her Cheesewhiz).
Now for the stuck part. We use baby gates in strategic places to prevent certain leaping animals from going to places unsupervised. The gazelle of the group – Kiska – is a master at clearing baby gates, so we use a double baby gate at the base of the steps from the den because she has never figured out a way to leap over two baby gates on a curving set of steps. She will some day, and we have a third gate ready to go when that happens. Seriously.
The Cheesewhiz has never tried to go over the gates. So imagine my surprise when I came down the steps and saw this: