Over this past weekend, we experienced a couple of jabs from Mother Nature. First, she sent us a delivery of about 4-5" of snow. Then, it rained for a while, shortly thereafter followed up by high winds and freezing temperatures. As you can imagine, this led to ice-covered trees, fences and roads, the former two revealing picturesque landscapes, the latter wreaking havoc for motorists and anyone venturing onto the ice-encrusted ground. And with this seque I'll lead into the story I'm gonna share with you.

Because of the nasty weather our five dogs didn't get too much time to play outside on Sunday. The next day, Monday, I had to go to work and didn't get home 'til around 5:00 p.m. or so. I sat down to dinner, dutifully surrounded by our four Shelties and big Collie that always accompany me on such ventures. After all, who can tell when a prized morsel of food just might "accidentally" fall to the floor right in front of one of my expectant friends?

Follwing established tradition, after dinner I arose and put leashes on all my canine companions so we could go out to our large yard and play for a while. Immediately preceeding this I had to go out and see if I could force open one of our 10' long gates that the Presto Dog bride had informed me had been impossible to open as it was stuck by the ice. I went outside, put my shoulder to the gate & had no trouble forcing it open about two feet so we could all get through the gate & into the back yard.

A little lesson in the topography of the home we dubbed the Phunny Pharm. The rear expanse of our property slopes gently downhill. This can be evidenced by the large balls we have on hand for the dogs that always wind up down at the bottoom of the property after I'd brought 'em up to the top. They make their errant trips after the dogs push them or the wind prods them along. Now, it's not a steep hill, one that's not real difficult to traverse. Rather, it slopes on I'd say about a 20-25 degree angle or so, just enough to give one a pretty good cario-vascular workout if you walked from the bottom up to the top.

Geting back to our story, leashes were placed on all the dogs and we made our way out to the gate. When I had all the dogs inside the back yard, I closed & locked the gate & took the leashes off the dogs...and that's when the fun began. You see, each dog then proceeded to gently slide down the hill, slowly of course, since the ice-over grass offered no traction for their paws. After a few seconds, each of them stopped their journeys as they reached a more level stretch of our property. I suppose they didn't think too much of it as they then proceeded to do their "business." At least that's what I thought until I realized none of 'em could make their way back up the hill when they were done!

I had to carefully make my way to each of the dogs, falling myself several times on the slippery ice, and placed their leashes around their necks again. We then made our way carefully back up the hill, with me being ever so mindful that I'd need to immediately release the leash in the event any of the dogs slipped.

At one point the Presto Dog bride came out and I alerted her of our problem. She came into the back yard & heard Dougie, our Collie, crying to be recued! She tried to get to him but she slipped on the ice & ever so slowly skidded down the hill about 20-30 yards or so. It took us about 15-20 minutes to "rescue" all our dogs.

I think  it's going to be cold for the next few days. Therefore, we're probably not going to make any of our after-dinner romps in the back yard until we're all able to obtain some traction.

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About three-four weeks ago, hunting season opened in the rural area we moved to seven months ago.

To be certain our dogs weren't mistaken for wildlife, each and every time they ventured outside we'd put day glow yellow vets on them. The Presto Dog bride found these valuable items in a store where we used to live, when we were preparing for the move to iur new home.

Here's a picture I took of our four Shetland Sheepdogs in our living room right after we put the vest on them, just prior to going outside to play: