How Cold Was It? – Sometimes It’s Too Cold for a Dog!

By Chris Robinson

There is something that borders on masochism about living north of the 40th parallel during the period from say mid- November through the Ides of March and sometimes even later. It is during these months that Boreas, the purple-winged god of winter, sweeps down from the mountains freezing the air with his icy breath.

As a kid, I adored winter. It was snowball fight, snowman and snow fort building, snow angel making, ice skating on frozen lakes and ponds, skiing and sliding down snowy hillsides time. However, with advancing age and its attendant decline in one’s circulatory system along with the development of arthritic joints, does come some wisdom. What signaled pure bliss for a kid is viewed with considerably less enthusiasm by an adult especially after an Alberta Clipper has dropped four or five inches of snow on the frozen land- scape followed by temperatures plunging to depths that fill Boreas with glee and make Vulcan, the god of fire, head for the hottest depths of hades just to warm up a little.

But, on those days when the mercury struggles to get above zero, the National Weather Service is issuing warnings about dangerous wind chills and the sensible thing to do is turn up the thermostat, throw another pine log in the fireplace and mix a hot buttered rum, there is the problem of the dogs. No matter how brutal the temperatures, they still have to go out and what’s more, they expect you to go out with them and play with them. This leads to a lot of bad jokes later on when dog people ARE sitting in front of a crackling log fire sipping toddies, mulled wine, Irish coffee or brandy-laced cider and telling you just “how cold was it…”

A friend of mine has a brace of Beagles that are absolute bunny hunting demons. Winter is the best time for bunny hunting because when there is snow on the ground it is easier to spot cottontails against the white snow. Of course, that also means the temperatures are frequently far from balmy for any hunt so the beagler was accustomed to a chilly atmosphere when he and the dogs went afield in search of what would ultimately become hassenpfeffer, rabbit ragout or rabbit pie. Chilly is one thing but on this particular day, he said, it would have needed to warm up considerably to get to the level of “damned cold.” Still, the dogs were driving him nuts in the house and he thought a short hunt in an area close by that was always a good place for the dogs to jump rabbits would burn off some of their energy with its attendant silliness and demands that he play with them. In short, he figured a hunt would create a desire to snooze in the dogs rather than having them bug him.

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Posted by Alex on Mar 26 2018. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.