Tired Tawny

We had a little paty for a friend who is moving. Tawny got tired from all of the excitement, and sought out refuge in a corner behind some legs.

Here she is, a few minutes later -- all snuggled up and going to sleep.

Spring is coming

Cracks are starting to appear in the lake.

I cleared some of the ice chunks off the sidewalk. This was about 3 inches thick, and heavy!

Tawny seeks out every puddle she can to play in it, or at least - stand in it.

Tawny contemplating going into the cold water again.

Yep, and here she goes again!!!

Acrobatic Tawny

Tawny sprinting to catch the frisbee (caught it on the bounce).

An all-out sprint to get the frisbee again.

Tawny has just caught the frisbee (it is sticking out of her mouth, on the left side)

About to catch the frisbee.

Both Tawny and Mister Taz are as pleased as punch with their retrieving capabilities!

Mister Taz jumping up in the air, acting like the coon dog he is that has treed a critter.

Both Tawny and Mister Taz chasing the frisbee. (Tawny caught it.)

Tawny sprinting to catch the frisbee ahead of Mister Taz. Notice Tawny is kicking up a pile of snow with her energetic sprinting.

Freda throwing a piece of wood for Tawny. Tawny completely understand physics - she deserves a PhD. Tawny understands the forces of gravity, aerodynamics, influence of wind on flying objects, etc.

Catching another frisbee throw.

The dogs were both exhausted after all the play!

Dog stuff

March 14, 2008 - Tawny and Taz. Tawny sighted something and barked, and Taz joined her up on the bank looking across at something.


March 14, 2008. We received 80 cm of snow last week, and 51 cm of that was last weekend. The lights at the edge of the driveway are almost completely buried, except for the tops of the first few posts. It looks really pretty actually, with the snow glowing red from the lights. These are LED lights so they are cool and don't melt the snow.


March 14, 2008. Taz is a bit of toy hog, except he doesn't really want to play with the toy, but he just runs around hold it in his mouth. So we got him this toy that is a ball with a big red tongue - and it looks very funny when he is walking around with it, as you can see here.

pictures

Snow banks!

March 13, 2008 - pano
The grader went by on Tuesday night - good thing because Freda and I both got stuck on the way home. As a result, we now have snow banks that are about six feet high. I took this photo from the normal place where I take the panorama photos. As you can seem you can't see too much!

This is Tawny and Taz, sitting on the snow banks. You can see where the grader's blade pushed the snow up into the snow bank.

The official snowfall this weekend: 51cm

The official snowfall for this weekend was 51cm. That puts the total snowfall for this winter at 406 cm (depending on which source I use for the 'before' snowfall total). The snowfall record is held by the winter of 1970-71, when Ottawa received a massive 444.1 cm.

First snowfall: Nov. 20, 2007
Number of days since first snow: 111
Number of days with snow: 86 (77%)
Number of days without snow: 25
Number of days with snow cover: 111
Number of events with 10 or more centimetres: 11
Average number of 10-plus-centimetre events: 4

Tawny is walking on the snowbank built by the snowblower. This snowbank is so dense that the dogs can walk on top of it without sinking in.

And it also makes a handy bench.

Tawny loves the Frisbee as well as the Kong.

This is the bend in the road. The guy who plows the road has made (at least) six passes here already, but the snow is so deep it hardly looks like anything has been done.

After 45cm or 50 cm of snow...

We received at least 45cm of snow since Friday night. It was so deep, that I had to shovel the top 18 inches off the snow bank before I could use the snowblower.


I shovelled the steps off only about two feet wide, which is the width of the snowblower.


It took me about 3 1/2 hours to clear off the driveway. There was a pretty strong wind blowing too, so I could only blow the snow in one direction.


This is the back yard. The fence is 5 feet how, and the snow is about 3 1/2 feet up the fence.

Still snowing!

Photo taken about 11pm on Saturday March 8th.

This photo is taken out of the laundry room door. There are four steps down from the porch to ground level. On the left of the photo, you can see the arm of a cedar bench sticking up. This makes the snow drift on the porch at least 2 feet deep. The amazing thing (that you can't really see in the photo) is it looks like the level of snow is about the same as you go out beyond the steps so that means the snow is very very deep there.

As of Thursday morning we had received 355 cm of snow. From the Ottawa Citizen (Thursday March 6th):

About 355 centimetres of snow have fallen in the region this year, second only
to the winter of 1970-71, when we got 444.1 centimetres of snow.

As of 9am today (Saturday), we had received almost 20 cm of snow, and the worst was expected this afternoon. Well, it started snowing about 12:30 and hasn't stopped yet. It would not surprise me if we did receive 50 cm of snow (that's about 20 inches, or almost 2 feet.)

Say 'Hello' to Taz

This is Taz. Please say hello to him. He is very happy to see you. Taz is part Coon Hound, and part something else - we think it is either German Shepherd or perhaps Great Dane. In any case, he is a very friendly dog. He is tall and slender -- that's the hound in him -- and his tail is a coffee table weapon of mug destruction (just like Tawny).

We are currently fostering Taz for BARK -- Bytown Association for Rescued Kanines -- although we may adopt him.


Taz came to us on Friday evening, and spent most of the evening (and night!) trotting around the house and whimpering, looking for the previous foster mum. Of course, because Taz has such long legs, his trotting sounded like running.


Taz obviously came from someone who treated him well and trained him well. When you let Taz in from outside, he will sit and let you wipe his paws without any complaints. It is quite unfortunate that his nails are so long that one of them has actually broken. Freda tried to clip his nails (she clips Tawny's nails every week) but he didn't like it. So we called one of our neighbour's who daughter does dog grooming, and she will come over some day next week and do them for us.

Tawny was the last one to settle down for a nap today.

Weather warning: 30-50 cm more snow

Snow & weather

March 6, 2008 - This photo is of the skylights at work - there is so much snow that the skylights are covered. It made it quite dark inside.


We have a weather warning. 30-50 cm of snow coming in the next 36-48 hours. Ottawa has received so much snow that this 2007-2008 winter is now the #2 in the record books for the all time snowfall record.