Tuesday morning we woke up to thin sheet of black ice, thanks to a Nor’easter that hit the east coast.  The driveway, deck, road, front steps, hell even the grass was slippery!  But the Dynamic Duo still wanted their walk. 

Hubby said, “It’s very slippery out, BE careful. I sanded the driveway and steps, but it’s still very slippery.”

I got Thing One and Thing Two ready for their walk and decided I should step outside first to assess the situation.  Damn good thing too.  I almost fell on my ass.

Did I ever tell you we live on a hill?  Well we do.  Not only is our street a hill and we are about 3/4 of the way up the street, our house also sits on a hill. 

The first obstacle was getting to the road.  I figured the best path was down the hill on the grass and so Frick, Frack and I started out.

Thank God one of us knew it was slippery out. 

Because we live on a hill (see above, in case you missed that) our walk is down hill one way either coming or going.  SO I decided the best way would be to head up the hill to start and down the hill for the return.  I was hoping the the ice would melt just a bit and make our return a bit easier. 

News flash, we live in New England and while the weather is titchy, (yes I said titchy and yes it’s a word) the ice hadn’t melted in the fifteen minutes it took me to walk up four houses. 

Fifteen minutes.  To walk four houses up.  It was that slippery. 

Trying to keep Beevis and Butthead on the grass was no easy feat. The town had salted/sanded the roads but that stuff is very bad for their paws and besides, it was only the middle of the road that was cleared.  My luck I’d find the only icy patch in the middle of the street, get pulled down by Dr. Evil and Mini Me and left there to get run over while they found their way home.

Well here’s the titchy (there’s that word again) thing about New England, sometimes the weather changes in a snap and sometimes it doesn’t.  Tuesday was one of those days when it didn’t.  We managed to make it back into the house with minimal slippage.  I promised the dogs we’d have a longer walk in the afternoon.

The Nor’easter turned to straight rain.  I’m not complaining, it’s better than snow or ice, but it was pouring buckets by the time I got home for our walk. 

Personally I love rain.  I’ve loved it since I was a child and sat in the Adirondack chair on the porch with my Grandfather on a warm summer night, a bowl of fresh blueberries and cream in my hands and watched the beauty of a lightening storm.  When my kids were small, we’d put on raincoats and go outside and jump in puddles.  I love the rain.

The Dastardly Duo however, hate the rain.  No matter how many times I remind them they are Labs, they still hate the rain.   BUT if we are walking in it, well that’s an entirely different story.  So I suited up, harnessed Pinky and the Brain and we started out. 

 

You’d have thought we were running a marathon.  Sampson kept trying to run and I can’t even begin to tell you how many times they shook themselves.  We managed to make it around the block in record time and I still had time to get their food out, stock the fire and dry them off before I had to head back to work.

 

 

Welcome to Day 11 of the #Advent4Dogs Giveaway hosted by Kol’s Notes, Dogthusiast, Heart Like a Dog, NEPA Pets & Wag’n’Woof Pets. Today’s give away is sponsored by Pet Lifestyle and You. Enter now for your chance to win XS Big Foot Paw Bed & Fleece Pillow + a pea pod toy, a King Crab toy and a surprise toy from P.L.A.Y.
Open to: US/Canada

I don’t know about you, but trying to get my pups to pose nicely together for a Christmas card is somewhat challenging.

I’m not a big holiday decorator.  I figure, you spend hours setting up the tree and decorating it, packing decorations up so you can add the Christmas decorations and then a month later, you have to take everything down.  One year I had Hubby put lights on the house and when it came time to take them down I said, “Why bother, you’ll only have to put them up again next year.”  So we left them up.

BUT this year. This year I found the cutest decorated lamp posts at the Home Depot and couldn’t resist buying them!

Siriusly, check this lamp out.

I was so excited to get these up in front of the house that I had Hubby set them up on Sunday.  And then brought the dogs outside for a Christmas card photo shoot.

Except:

• I’m not a photographer.
• I forgot about the front door being reflective glass.
• I didn’t bring anything out to cover the ugly concrete.
• I didn’t frame the pictures well and got my house number in most of them.

I decided.  Let’s try some single shots.

Sampson isn’t always comfortable sitting anymore so I thought let’s try him lying down.

Poor Sampson, he looks so sad, and of course there’s that ugly concrete and the door reflection.  Yet the house number is almost covered up.  Maybe if I keep trying I’ll get a decent photo by Christmas.

Next I tried a single shot of Delilah.

Oh Delilah.  She hates being told to lie down.  Notice how stiffly she’s lying there.  And  her expression…well her expression tells me she thinks she’s in trouble.

I finally decided to try and work with an online photo editor and see what I could come up with.  Here’s the finished product.

Cropped the photo and took most of the concrete out, cut the house number off added the snowman to cover the reflection in the door and frosted the edges.  Not bad, eh?

So why then can I not order the cards?  Do you struggle with things like this?  Is it trivial to be so concerned about the Christmas card picture?

Have you been checking out the #Advent4Dogs?  

 

Welcome to Day 4 of the #Advent4Dogs Giveaway hosted by Kol’s Notes, Dogthusiast, Heart Like a Dog, NEPA Pets & Wag’n’Woof Pets. Today’s give away is sponsored by The Company of Animals. Enter now for your chance to win a 2 Mix Max Puzzles.

Today’s trivia question is hosted by Wag ‘N Woof Pets.

 

Welcome to Thursday’s Barks and Bytes Blog hop hosted by 2 Brown Dogs and Heart Like a Dog. The Barks and Bytes hop is for anything at all and all bloggers are welcome. You don’t have to be a dog blog to join. For new blog hoppers, a blog hop is list of links that is shared on multiple blogs. In order to be fair to all participants Linda and I ask you to please use the linky list. If your blog does not support a linky list, please link back to either Linda or I.