Snowflakes can come visiting at any time now, although I rather hope that I can have a few more weeks without them. It’s not that I don’t like the snow, but rather once it starts it never seems to go away. Every new snow fall layers itself very carefully on top of the last one and with the continual accumulations, together with some very low temperatures, I am generally wishing for spring weather by March. This is guaranteed not to happen, but I can dream!

On the edge of Ray’s local park is an arena which offers indoor ice skating over the winter season so, at this time of year, they would now be getting the ice down in preparation for the ice season. Anybody who is familiar with ice arena operations will know that after the ice surface has been dressed by an ice machine, the resulting accumulation of shavings are generally taken outside and dumped in an appropriate place. The result looks, feels, and behaves, just like piles of coarse snow.

Ray and I were out walking and, by his choice, we ended up downtown. His two favourite places there are TD Canada Trust Bank and Lululemon both of which make a fuss of him and (more importantly to him) give him biscuits! If he was not persuaded otherwise, he would always visit both of them every day, multiple times a day. In fact, I would suggest that he would spend all day at either one of them if he had the opportunity ……..well at least until the biscuits ran out. As a matter of simple courtesy (try explaining that word to a dog!), I only let him visit each location once a week, and he never does both on the same day.

On this day, the staff at Lululemon had the pleasure of Ray’s company after which I detoured in order to avoid a scene outside the TD Canada Trust Bank! We then worked our way home and Ray decided to go past the arena presumably with the intent of going back through “his” park. However, rather than take a direct route via the main entrance road, he decided to go in via an access road which is generally used for service vehicles. Once he turned onto that road, the leash went tight and Ray was clearly on a mission. Looking ahead, I could see a pile of snow on the side of the road and we were heading directly towards it. How did he know it was going to be there?

Ray spends a very significant amount of his time, when on a walk, with his nose skimming the ground however, he now had his head up and was totally focused on the snow pile. Once he reached it, he pushed his head into the snow and went through a series of head gyrations. Was he giving himself a face massage? As I was trying to make some sense of his actions, he stopped and climbed to the top of the snow pile where he immediately threw himself onto his back and then proceeded to wriggle around presumably giving himself the ultimate back scratch/massage. He was loving every moment!

I had forgotten how much Ray enjoyed the snow last winter. I had forgotten how he loved to roll in it, bite it, and generally play with it. I had forgotten how he used to charge around the garden kicking up snow in all directions!  Perhaps his love of life last winter resulted from his very difficult summer however, regardless of the explanation, do I really want a few more weeks before snowflakes come visiting? No ……. bring them on now and make our beloved Ray very happy!