Posts Tagged ‘zoomies’
Icier Still
Hydrostatic pressure pushing water to flow in the dead of winter remains a mystery to me. It doesn’t seem like liquid water should be able to make its way to the surface of a frozen landscape.
When we delicately make our way to the paddocks with temperatures in the single digits (F) in the morning, it surprises me to see new evidence that overnight water moved downstream in the typical routes it flows all summer, but it is somehow doing it as a glacier of flowing ice.
Did I mention that it’s like we live in a science lab?
We didn’t receive enough new flakes of snow yesterday to offset the loss of ice occurring through sublimation along the edges. It definitely didn’t provide an improvement in traction on the slippery surfaces.
The next weather system offering chances of new precipitation arrived overhead while we were tending to the horses.
I hauled a few loads of dry firewood in preparation for snuggling in front of the fireplace in the next few days. That’s one of our preferred ways of enjoying the sight of falling snow from our cozy indoor perches. I’m hoping to find fresh snow on the ground when daylight arrives this morning.
Asher spent much of his outdoor time yesterday gnawing on the dessicated carcass of a rabbit he found. It didn’t take long for Cyndie to decide he needed to be done with that pursuit, which led to us scraping up the furry bits that remained stuck to the icy snow to be bagged and disposed of in the trash.
To his credit, Asher didn’t fret too much over the cancellation of that fun and quickly turned his attention to the Jolly Ball with a frozen rope through the middle, ever-present in the yard. He played long and hard with me until finally bailing on the ball and racing around in zoomies mode.
He knew Cyndie was in the barn and kept checking in that direction while we were playing. After his last pass of zooming, he sprinted as fast as I’ve ever seen down the driveway, getting out of my sight for just a moment. I immediately began walking after him, noticing he was no longer on the driveway. I scanned left and right, but figured there was no way he could have made the sharp left turn at the speed he was moving.
I kept walking along the driveway, wondering if he was around the hay shed. Then I noticed the door to the barn was not fully closed. It seemed unlikely that he would have been able to slow down enough on that ice to make his way around to the open side of the door before I would have been able to see him, but he was nowhere else to be found.
Checking with Cyndie, I heard her confirm he was in there with her. You’d think by now I’d realize how much faster he can move than my sense of time and space perceives as possible.
PS: It is not lost on me that we are having ice problems at Wintervale at the same time the Twin Cities metro area is inundated with ICE agents in their masked cosplay costumes of military tactical gear. ICE goons give our ice situation a worse reputation than it really deserves.
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Irrepressible Digger
Our dog, Asher, runs with a hop that conjures thoughts of a bunny or a leaping whitetail deer. Someone suggested his bouncing down the trail reminded them of Tigger from “Winnie the Pooh.” That struck a chord with us because it precisely describes how his energy looks as he springs in the air. His nickname could easily become, “Tig” because of the way it rolls off our tongues when we see him prancing out of the woods to join us on the way to the barn in the morning.
However, even more than being like Tigger, Asher is 100 percent a digger. He LOVES to dig and he is very, very good at it. When he gets manic and explodes into hyperspeed zoomies, his antics are often punctuated with what looks like an uncontrollable need to dig between huge figure-8 lap rotations.
He pauses for just a second or two and unleashes several strokes against the earth that send turf flying, instantly creating a hole deeper than the trenches made by the resident moles.
Trying to stop him is worthless because the digging is over quicker than words of admonishment can be uttered and then he is off again with another race around some imaginary track.
Maybe his nickname will become, “Dig.”
Yesterday, I was working on a variety of projects that had me moving between the shop garage, the manure composting area, and back near the labyrinth. I came out with Asher and we wrestled in the front yard for a while with his favorite “Tug-N-Toss” Jolly Ball before I wandered off to accomplish whatever I could. He didn’t follow me.
I figured he would run through the woods for a bit and then either return to me or head up to the house to lay on the front steps as has become common of late.
He remained out of sight long enough that I figured Cyndie had let him back in the house but as I came around the barn one time we practically bumped into each other. I immediately noticed his hackles were raised but I didn’t know why. It was clear to me that something was up.
Stepping into the barn, it was easy to see what he was excited about.
He had dug after one of the many burrowing critters that frequent our barn. He dug so much, he turned up two rubber mats and completely dislodged one of the bricks supporting a wood cabinet.
There was no evidence that he achieved any reward for his effort. If there was a rodent in the immediate vicinity, I’m sure it got the message there is a new sheriff in town.
As fitting as it would seem to call Asher, “Dig,” I hesitate to use that moniker because it sounds too much like a command to do exactly that. He doesn’t need any extra encouragement from us in that regard, that’s for sure.
I like it a lot better when he looks like he’s having “fun, fun, fun-fun-fun!” leaping with that big bounce down the trail.
That’s what Ashers do best. Hoo-hoo-hoo!
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Relative Something 