Buried in the Snow

I used to have a samoyed and a husky. They were beautiful animals and it just so happened that the husky was probably the smartest dog I ever had while the samoyed was the absolute, without a doubt dumbest. He was sweet and loveable and beautiful though.

They used to go nuts when I would pull up in the wintertime with a fresh bale of straw. They would jump and do backflips and all the crazy things dogs do when they are ecstatic about the world around them. They couldn't wait for me to stuff it into their dog houses and I would have a hard time doing it because I couldn't keep them out while I was stuffing it as full of straw as I could. Once I did finish they would burrow inside and peek through the curtain on their door every so often just to make sure they weren't missing out on any goings on around them.

I would be pleased as punch that my dogs were happy and warm on a cold winters day and so were they. Then I would go inside and wait on the snow. It never failed. Not one time would I look outside the next morning and both the husky and the samoyed in their nice warm houses. Instead they would have dragged every bit of the straw outside and they would be asleep in the snow on top the straw with the snow piled on top them. They were never happier than they were when they had a layer of snow on top of them

I also had an otterhound once. Emily was the clumsiest of the clumsy. But she would break ice in the wintertime to go swimming. When she hit the water she was one of the most graceful animals I had ever seen. She actually looked like a giant sized otter swimming in the water. When she was finished she would come bounding over to me covered in ice cycles. I would have to take her into the house and warm her up and dry her off. Although she loved to break the ice to go swimming, once she was out of the water it was a whole another ballgame. She was ready to come in and warm up by the stove and maybe get some warm milk to drink.

Emily, the otterhound, and my greyhounds made a great team. Otterhounds hunt by scent and greyhounds hunt by sight. Emily would catch the scent of wild game in the air and lumber off in their direction with her nose in the air to catch whatever scent was wafting by. My greyhounds learned to run her down and they would tear off into the woods looking for whatever she had scented. I don't know if they ever caught anything but I do know they had one hell of a good time trying.

I got Queenie when I lived at Frogs Creek. People would stop me and say, "you know, I clocked that dog doing 40 mph!" I would laugh and tell them,"well, when she hits 45 let me know and we'll put her back on the track again."

They would also stop and ask me how she had beat them home when they had seen her on the other side of the mountain. I pointed out that they had to drive around the mountain on a curvy, winding road. All she had to do was come over it.