Fuzzy Feet and Stupid Winter

All weekend long my number one goal was, "Shave the dogs' feet." We are running on the turf at FDC this weekend, and on mats this Friday, so I knew I had to get them cleaned up a bit. I'm pretty sure nobody has been touched since the beginning of December, so it was time.

Unfortunately every time it crossed my mind they had either just been outside or would go suddenly dashing out the dog door. Wet feet are not fun to shave, so I kept putting it off. Tonight we are back to being stuck indoors thanks to another "polar vortex" going through, so I made sure to bring out the clippers as soon as I finished up with everyone downstairs and before they'd have a chance to go outside.

Apparently I lost the before picture of Secret's hind feet, but the after sure are pretty.  :o)  Granted, Secret's back feet don't get nearly as bad as her fronts for some reason. I swear she's like a yeti with those front feet. She's got hair coming out the top and bottom on all four. It's so bad that the little toe clumps will actually get matted, so I whack them off, too.

Kaiser's feet are not nearly the abominable snowman scenario that Secret's are, but I've always said he gets little hair slippers. It grows from the middle and curls up over his pads. So that, too, must come off. At least I don't have to deal with the tops of his feet.

And yes, I am completely embarrassed by the nail length. I was all set to trim those tonight, too, but I decided to save some fun for tomorrow since we will be stuck indoors all week.

Klee Kai feet are the cutest. Like Secret, Kaiser's back feet don't get quite as bad, but I still try to trim him up as well as I can because he really loses confidence when he slips. I tried not to go overly short with anyone this time because of the cold and snow outside. They seem to do fine.

We got another 6" of snow on Saturday. Seriously. I'm so done with winter. At least it got up around 30 degrees on Sunday, so we were able to go for a run for the first time in almost two weeks. The roads were sloppy and loose, though, and it was not terribly fun and I definitely felt that I've been pretty lazy lately! Yesterday it was only about 15 degrees, but I still managed to sneak in a walk with everyone before taking Secret to her (long overdue) chiropractor appointment.

I'm pretty sure that when you run out of room to push snow off the deck, that means it needs to stop snowing. It's not quite up to the deck on the side, so I guess I need to start pushing that way more often. The dogs don't mind it a bit, although I'm getting tired of digging out the gate and trying to get it closed every day. It stopped latching a while ago, but I'm able to get it wedged shut most days. Last winter I just left the gate open all winter, but I just don't really want to give Kizzy and the crew full run of the yard every day. Not only do I prefer having that extra fence between Kizzy and the outside world, but Secret has kind of proven to me that she has the tendency to go overboard when given too much room to romp and play with the littlest member of the household. I don't think they get so amped up when confined to the small space.

Kizzy is doing well recovering from her bout with Lyme disease. She is enjoying the twice-daily treats (peanut butter or canned food) that come with her pills. I pulled her off the Tramadol after a couple of days because she was doing fine, so we have a small reserve of that to keep around for whomever now. Whatever was up with her right front resolved itself along with everything else and she's been moving great. We've played in the basement several times and she hasn't had any issues with jumping or weaving, so we should be good to go for this weekend.

I've really been working with Kizzy on the whole coming to the leash/harness deal, so we'll see how that goes. At least we can tug at the AKC trial, but we'll have to see how it goes at NADAC.

It will be a busy weekend! We're driving over to Oshkosh on Friday (11 a.m. start, so we don't have to leave home until 7:30, hooray) where Kizzy will run in Novice FAST (hahahahaha, new for both of us!) and Secret and Kaiser will both run Standard & JWW (Kaiser just needs one more JWW Q to move into Masters!). Then we drive home and try to get ready and get some sleep to go play NADAC on Saturday. Luke is running a few runs per day with a friend. Kizzy is entered in Reg 1 & 2, Jumpers and Tunnelers on Saturday and then swapping in Numbered Hoopers for Tunnelers on Sunday. Kaiser gets to play in his usual four core classes. I felt guilty and stuck Secret in Reg 2 and Jumpers on Saturday, but nothing on Sunday. There's no way she'd want to run three days in a row anyhow, so I'm giving her a break.

I elected not to send entries for the AKC trial in Oshkosh on Feb 8 & 9 due to the recent unexpected expenses (pretty much all Kizzy-related, between her new harness and the vet bills, lol). That means we'll have another big break after this weekend.  :o(  Boo.  I hope spring comes early this year so we can at least get back to playing agility at home again.