Snowdogs

Thanks for all the birthday wishes! As part of my birthday celebration, I saw a show called “Wits” put on by MPR on Friday night. The performers included comedian Patton Oswalt and musician Grant Lee Phillips (who performed with REM and Pearl Jam, but is best known to me as Stars Hollows Troubadour on  Gilmore Girls).

Sadly, the MPR host John Moe was tiresome and rather than have Patton do a standup act, they did a pathetic monologue that sounded like something they’d dreamed up an hour before the show.

The saving factor was Grant Lee Phillips. I enjoyed his music and he was also funny — a lot funnier than Patton, which I don’t blame on Patton but on the format of the show itself.

Anyway, enough about that, lets move on to something really exciting! I feel like a parent of a newborn, but this is so awesome! Latte slept through the night last evening! And she didn’t whine, bark, or whimper even once! Yeh!!!

To accomplish this feat, we went on a very long walk through the snow, which I think wore me out more than the dogs. I was nodding off on the couch by about 9:00 PM.

We went to the Rum River park again. The paths were a little more tromped down this time, but not everywhere and it was still a lot of work trudging through the snow. My calf muscles actually started to burn!

I think Latte is going to be a tough little dog. I didn’t think she’d be able to go so far without tiring but she just plunges along, trying to keep up with Java and not having any issues doing so.

I’d like to thank the people who took the time to be creative on the trail. All you dog lovers have got to love this — a snowdoggy!

The most exciting part was when we reached a point in the trail that was flooded by the river. The area was somewhat iced over and shallow but you could hear the water under the ice and there was cracking noises and the ice was so slippery that I think the only way to get across it would have been to scoot on my butt.

So we followed footprints that went off to the left, away from the river, assuming that someone knew a way around. Hmmm… I have no photos of what we went through to get around the flooding because I was carrying Latte and fighting for my life amidst nasty thorn bushes tearing at my clothes, branches trying to gouge out my eyes, and there was this little, shallow stream that we had to cross, jumping from branch to swamp grass clump to branch. We survived! I felt so adventurous.

And here are a couple other sure signs of Spring. Yes, that is actually a bug. There were several of these down by the river.