Sparky has adapted to our cryogenic winter. It was -2o F when we went out for night recon at about 11 pm yesterday. Earlier in the day, after plowing the driveway, I also plowed the loop through the back yard, down the hill, up the hill, through the orchard, woods, parking lot and poor house, then back to the deck. Sparky didn’t care. He walked a hundred feet, crapped on the path and waited for instructions.
Sparky doesn’t complain about the cold, and often goes to some effort to show me that he has contempt for the weather. Like when he slides down a snow chute to reach the frozen creek. Last week, he pooped in the creek on four consecutive days. Once, just a short time after taking a dump earlier in the walk. I don’t know how he does that. The creek dump was substantial.
Yesterday, he was hot-footing it as he waited for me to decide where we were going. As he stood there, he lifted alternate legs to get them off the snow pack. I don’t need to prove anything, so we headed back to the house. Sparky didn’t sprint to confirm that I was the pussy, and he’d be happy to be outside all day.
As we walked, Sparky was prancing. When I asked, he denied that his feet were cold. He said that all the snow reminded him of the white Lipizzaner stallions he used to play with in Andalusia. Sparky communicates with his expressive eyebrows, but I swear he pronounced it as “Andaluthia”, with the Madrid lisp.
I don’t know where Sparky gets these crazy stories, but I told him that he looked more like a mincing Danny Kaye, then a high stepping Lipizzaner.
The point is that Sparky no longer shits in the house when there is snow on the ground, as was his custom prior to joining my household.