Heat Hogs

Okay so this week I am going to show you how dogs and cats do in fact learn from each other. As I mentioned earlier this month on my other blog, our cat Sophie has started to creep off the sofa a bit and onto the pet stairs in order to place herself more directly into the path of the space heater we use.

We were entertained by this of course, but were really surprised when last night, we witnessed an old dog demonstrating that she learned a new trick. See for yourself. Louise thought that if it was good enough for a cat, then there must be something to it. She started to step out onto the stairs, also to get more heat from the space heater.

In her defence, she had just come in from outside and quite frankly, she isn't really feeling the colder, damper weather. There have been days where she will flat out refuse to go for a walk, or she at least needs a lot more coaxing to get outside. Even when out, Louise will now sometimes 'abort' the walk. She does this little protest where she will not move an inch unless we are going in the direction she wants (usually back inside).

There are a few exceptions to this. I can tempt her to continue if we are headed to Bosley's (our closest pet food store) or possibly to the dog park. But even a walk to the beach is a vain effort if the wind is too cold, or there is a lot of salt on the sidewalks.

Oh don't even get me started on the salt. Every year seems to be worse than the last! Vancouverites are salting walkways in the remote chance that it *might* drop to freezing. I couldn't believe it when Louise's paws started to hurt from the salt already. Normally that is something that happens in combination with really cold temperatures, or at least it used to be that way. We may have to take another look at doggie bootie technology and see where it is at now. (Our last attempts were failures because the booties would slip off after only a few yards.) For now, we walk on the grass for the blocks that are heavily salted.