Chasing Spring

They say that its been a mild winter this year. They say it will be an early spring. What they don’t have to say (because it is more than apparent to me) is that there’s going to be a whole lot of slush and mud before one season finally gives way to the other.

The place where we walk the dogs is either a quagmire of muck or a slick lane of ice, depending on the day. The result is a jagged frozen mosaic where the ice sheets fragment and then freeze back together again in a pleasing array. The melting has persisted since my last post, but so has the snow. Combine into the mix a little freezing rain and some misty gray clouds and voila…instant misery! At least this kind of weather is good for relaxing inside.

 

Of course mud and melting snow are not purely Northern phenomena. Up Here where the streets have no proper names, or pavement, the transition from one season to the other is particularly painful, especially when one constantly hears of those in one’s hometown wearing t-shirts and flip flops already! My spring-time delights include wiping the dogs' paws before they enter the house and greeting bits of Canadian Shield as they cautiously stretch out from a long hibernation.

 

 

And the dogs…oh the dogs! Nanuq’s seems to be planning a full assault on the backyard, starting with the area near the dryer vent that has thoughtfully exposed itself early due in part to the sun but also the warm air expelled by our laundry. I cling to the hope that there will be a nice patch of grass remaining by the end of the summer. At least he can jump the fence, which means that his digging isn’t completely relegated to our backyard and he can succumb to this need in other peoples’ yards too. Does that make me a bad person? Maybe. A bad neighbour? Certainly.

 

Reina seems a trifle more ambivalent about the coming spring, although she does enjoy romping through puddles on our walks and then ceremoniously sullying the truck with her muddied and matted fur. She also enjoys the plethora of bones that Nanuq finds on his wanderings through the immediate neighbourhood and brings back to share. Sadly for the Queen, her poor hips won’t allow her to make the kind of leap required to clear the fence, but she seems content enough with the results of Nanuq’s quests.

What Reina is not thrilled about are the times when he brings dogs back into the yard to play. She’s chased more than one neighbourhood pooch back over the fence with its tail between its legs, making it quite clear which of our dogs is the guard dog. Nanuq is all play and she's all suspicion.

Of course she has her scaredy-cat moments as well. But hey, don't we all? If only the sun would embolden itself to finish the job it has started we can get rid of that pesky old snow. Well...for six months, at least.