Walking the dogs

I was walking Tawny and Taz in the morning (Jan 6th) and Taz noticed something in the trees and starting whimpering when he gets all excited. I couldn't see anything, but I could see some branches moving a bit. I figured it was a squirrel but wanted to check it out.


Here's a close-up of the trees with the squirrel. I circled it so you can see it for yourself. They really blend in but Taz has the amazing senses - eyes, ears, nose - to be able to pick them out from quite a distance.


January 6th was a beautiful but cold day, but that doesn't stop Tawny from wanting to play. We have to make sure that Taz has a "bone" (rawhide roll) or another toy to keep him occupied because otherwise he will steal the toy right from Tawny's mouth. She is a happy dog that is willing to share so she gives it up to him. Silly girl!

It had been cold for quite a time so we hadn't been down to see the horses. As it wasn't so cold this day, we walked down to see Cooper (horse on the right) and his stable mate (don't know his name) and brought them some nice juice carrots. We bought a bag of carrots for their Christmas present but hadn't been able to share it with them because of the cold.

We had snow forecast for tomorrow so I took this photo of Tawny and Taz to document how little snow we really have, which is really just a light dusting...

Sunset pano Jan 5/09

January 5, 2009 pano

Sun is starting to set. It was clear cold day. Not too much snow on the ground. We could use more so we have sufficient runoff in the spring, but we have some time I guess.

Dog play

January 4, 2009 pano

I took another pano this afternoon, on our way back from a long walk and play. The dogs are exhausted and have been laying down sleeping ever since we got home (sleeping all the time except for eating their supper, that is). Tawny was playing with her ball and Taz was carrying his "bone" (rawhide roll) around - you can't really see it in this photo because it is a panorama. You can see that I didn't take enough photos for this panorama, as there is black areas in the sky. (I am experimenting with different software to try to fill that in, but am not expecting anything.)

This is a close-up of Tawny with her ball. It is actually a ball that came out of a well-used Water Wubba. Basically the material holding the two balls together (a tennis ball and this ball) were the things that made the Wubba float. We can't quite figure out why Tawny likes this ball so much - maybe it's the texture? or that it makes a wheezing sound when she bites on it? or that it is so big that she has to keep her mouth open wide (like at the dentist)?

Here's a photo of Taz carrying the rawhide. Pictures of Taz don't turn out too well except in quite bright light conditions, as you can see from this photo.

I discovered this morning that we had another bit of roof damage from the high winds last week. You can see a tab of the shingle is missing below the first leg of the H in "Here". I guess I will need to purchase another tube of that roofing repair stuff. I think I still have a tab from another shingle that I can use to fill in the gap.

Hockey Night in Carp

Some good friends just down the road had an urgent road trip come up, and asked us if we could look after their daughers on Saturday evening (Jan 3rd) and take one of them to her first hockey game. We were very happy to help out. Things were a bit rushed for supper, but there was no problem because we had already planned to have pizza, so we ordered it a bit early, ate, and then started to get ready for Maddy's first game of the season.

Here is Madelaine (or Maddy), getting her equipment on (aka armour!) at home before we left. Those disembodied hands are Maddy's mom helping with the straps.

Here we are at the rink. Maddy has her skates and her team's jersey on, and with the exception of her helmet, is ready to go... I think she's pretty happy about it -- what do you think??

Here is Freda and Emma (Maddy's sister) fooling around while waiting for the game to start.

All the players' names were announced, just like in the NHL. It was very very fun to watch the game. There was a big size difference (maybe 18 inches in height!) between the smallest and biggest kids, but they were all having fun and enjoying themselves, skating and playing hockey.

I tried to take some photos of Maddy when she was on the ice, but they were all very poor because the lighting wasn't bright enough for a good photo, and the camera flash isn't powerful enough to illuminate the scene. Nevertheless, I was able to get a few passable photos. This is Maddy, on the left with the pink laces and blue/white socks, driving to the net with the puck

It was quite a cold evening to be at an outdoor rink, but it just made the hot chocolate from the canteen even more delicious!!

Flowers don't do so well in the cold....

January 3, 2009 pano

Our neighbours kids were out clearing some of the snow off the ice so they could skate and play a bit of hockey. This is a pano so you can't see the kids activities too clearly.

Here's a better view of the kids clearing the snow off the ice surface. The ice was very very smooth because we had a melt a while ago and then it froze quite quickly with not much wind. If it freezes slowly, with windy conditions, the ice gets a lot of ripples on it and is not easy to skate on.


After we took the dogs out for their morning play/walk, we went to get some groceries. When we were going to take the dogs out in the afternoon, we found a basket with some flowers on the porch. The beautiful plant was frozen solid! This photo was taken about five minutes after we brought the flowers inside, you can see the flowers are quite limp here.

This photo was taken after about half an hour. We need to cut off all the limp/broken stems to see if anything survived the deep freeze situation. I doubt anything did, but we have yet to see. Freda called the neighbours to thank them for the beautiful flowers and found out their girls had brought them over. I guess the girls don't know that cold can kill plants. I suspect that the cold just from carrying them over would have done them in, since it was -17C or something like that.

At least it wasn't -42C here today like it was in Edmonton!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody!!

Update to some earlier stories about coyotes: we found out that these were not coyotes but are what are locally known as brush wolves - they are larger than coyotes and smaller than the classic wolf. Apparently coyotes don't get any bigger than 35 lbs around here.

Update on wind damage etc

We had some neighbours over for supper on Saturday. They are going to Florida for a trip in a week and had asked Freda a while ago if we could dog-sit their little schnauzer named Max. Max gets along famously with Tawny and Taz - it is actually quite comical to watch. When they were over they mentioned this and e had forgotten. Actually, one of the grandparents had wanted to watch Max and Freda thought that was the new arrangement. Because of this oversight, Madelaine stuck notes up all over the house to remind us about Max. We have left them up because it is so comical!


We lost a piece of fascia in yesterday's high winds, but Freda found it today when she took the dogs out for a play. It is a little bit bent but is not damaged too much. I will straighten it out and put it up today. The weather is pretty nice today, -2C and no wind. It was quite tricking lifting the ladder up in yesterday's high winds.

A crazy weather day

Dec 28, 2008

This morning came in with Calgary like Chinook weather. The warm front that started coming in yesterday had settled in overnight and the day dawned with +11C. It was a beautiful morning for a walk.


Of course this meant that most of the snow had melted already.


Dec 28, 2008 pano

Most of the snow on the hill had melted. The lake iscovered with water. The dogs wanted to run down to the lake so we kept them on the leash for the whole walk.

After we got back, I checked the weather channel to see if it was going to stay mild all day. The forecast was that it would drop to -3C overnight, and there was a Wind Warning:

SEVERE GUSTY WINDS ALONG AND BEHIND A COLD FRONT.A STORM SYSTEM IS MOVING ACROSS NORTHEASTERN ONTARIO WITH A FAST-MOVING COLD FRONT DRAPING SOUTHWARDS FROM IT. THE RAIN AND UNSEASONABLY MILD TEMPERATURES HAS COME TO AN ABRUPT END WITH THE PASSAGE OF THIS FRONT. IT IS MOVING THROUGH THE EASTERN CORNER OF THE PROVINCE EARLY THIS AFTERNOON. WIDESPREAD WIND GUSTS OF 90 OR 100 KM/H ARE OCCURRING ALONG THE FRONT AS IT SWEEPS ACROSS THE LOWER GREAT LAKES. WINDS IN EXCESS OF WARNING CRITERIA WILL LAST FOR A FEW HOURS BEHIND THE FRONT AND THEN EASE SLIGHTLY BUT WILL STILL REMAIN QUITE STRONG FOR MOST OF THE AFTERNOON. THESE WINDS ARE CAPABLE OF BLOWING TREES OVER AND BRINGING DOWN HYDRO LINES AS WELL AS LOCAL DAMAGE TO SOME STRUCTURES THERE ARE NUMEROUS REPORTS OF POWER OUTAGES ACROSS MANY PORTIONS OF SOUTHERN ONTARIO. ENVIRONMENT CANADA CONTINUES TO CLOSELY MONITOR THIS SITUATION. PLEASE REFER TO THE LATEST PUBLIC FORECASTS FOR FURTHER DETAILS.

I highlighted the interesting parts of the warning.

We had lunch and then went out. We saw lots of branches down all over the place. The wind was incredibly strong - it blew the Christmas tree lights out of the tree.


When we got back, we looked to see what had happened to our house because of the wind. We saw that we lost a piece of fascia and another piece was flapping, some of the soffit had come loose and was bent over but still there, and some shingles were flapping in the breeze. Fortunately I had a tube of black gooey stuff for repairing roofs and so I went up on the roof and glued down the flapping shingles, and put a nail in a couple of them for good measure. After that, I moved the ladder over and put a couple of screws in the bottom end of the fascia so it stopped flapping. The wind was so strong that it almost blew me off the roof, and the ladder wasn't quite long enough to reach to do any more so I left it for tomorrow, when hopefully the wind will be non-existent.

We got off easy - our neighbour lost a section of his roof about 10' long and 6' wide.

Boxing day barking

December 26, 2008

On our walk this afternoon, Taz smelled some kind of critter up this tree and took on the classic "I found it!" coonhound pose, accompanied with barking, of course. Tawny was doing her classic activity of liberating sticks from captivity by those awful tree creatures. :)


We also saw the remains of a large dead bird on our walk - we believe it was a wild turkey. The dogs were quite interested in all the smells, of course. Don't click on this photo to see a large version if you don't want to see Mother Nature's work.

Christmas Day - pano

Christmas Day 2008 panorama

On Christmas Eve, we had rain, quite heavy at times, and it melted quite a bit of snow. We can now see the grass appearing, and in places the ground is bare of snow. Christmas Day came with a bright cheery sun and nice temperate normal day.

In this photo, you can see that the guys who like ice fishing have been down to the lake and have already been doing some of that - you can see a few holes and disturbed areas on the ice in the middle of the photo by the shore of the lake.