A snowy day

Snow in Willesden, London. 2 February 2009. Sphagnum

You wouldn't put a dog out in this weather, would you? Our other dog, Minnehaha (a Yorkshire terrier) has long hair which gets matted with frozen snow and needs emergency treatment when she comes in bedecked with snowballs. Zoltan seems much better coated for it. He has two layers, with a repellent, glossy/wiry outer one and a downy undercoat - and prances around quite carefree. The Yorkie only has one layer of long hair, rather like human hair and it gets frozen with snow around her twiggy little legs. One of our neighbours leaves a large German Shepherd out, as you can just see in one of the pictures above, though it has a sort of shed where it can shelter but it still barks and scratches to get into their house. (It got into Herald House a couple of times, but that's another story. It's somewhere in the back pages, a search for Cujo should find it.) Cujo (not his real name) howls pitiably sometimes, particularly when ice cream vans pass by playing their jingles, not that that's likely today.

Ossian