I'm Sorry I Failed You....

It's been a rough week. With 8+ inches of snow covering the city, it puts a damper on our physical activities. Taricha is utterly bored in the house, I could train and play games all day indoors with Taricha and she would still want to do more, outside. She needs something outside every single day.... The only place you can even walk is on the half-plowed streets between traffic and most of them have too much salt or sludge on them to be a safe walking zone.

With 10+ more inches of snow predicted tonight or tomorrow.... I tried to take advantage of today's sunshine and get the hell out of the house.

I stop at a park around the street, huge open field of snow. We hop out of the car and with the help of a squeeky Kong, Taricha is on her way to getting worn out. Only 15min in, she goes for a fetch, grabs the kong and hi-tails it for the car. I yell for her to Stop, a common command she is good with long distance and she completely ignores me. She's at the car door waiting and Im running to catch up.

In the car I find out why she was so done... and it's my own damned fault.

Her legs and paws are slightly bloody.  Cold burns.... !
Yeah know where it looks like a red rash... its the skin simply tearing apart.

The snow just about everywhere is up to Taricha's chest with more in drifty areas, this is the first winter she's seen this much snow at once. While she wears hoodies and hats for ears and chest, it never occurred to me that her legs and belly were extremely exposed. She's got the thinnest fur if no fur at all.

Her skin is very pink, always is and the brown spots are just spots of skin color. You can even still see the blue tattoo she received when she was spayed years ago. Thinnest fur ever.

Even between her toes there is barely any fur. Little scatterings  While her legs look like they are white with hair, its so thin and fine that it is zero protection against wet snow.

The whole drive home, Im apologizing to Taricha about her legs. It looked plain awful, it was bad enough for a few drops of blood to start trickling.

This evening I can barely even see a thing on her legs or belly, its either not as bad as I thought or she heals extremely fast! I have learned my lesson though, Taricha doesnt like the deep snow and we simply have to keep our outdoor sessions quick. 10min seems to about her max.

Ready for spring!

On another note..... Taricha and I have BIG NEWS to share.
I can't contain it too much longer.
Infact Im counting down the days...
7 more of them....
until......

WE GET A PUPPYYYYYYYYYYYYY.


Long story short, we fostered recently to simply figure out if we wanted a second dog around. The answer to that is yes. We are getting a gorgeous black pittie through a local bully rescue. It was a hard choice to get a puppy, as I know so many loving adults need a good home, but I fell in love with this guy and want him to grow up with us, to get a  real solid bond, to start training off right (I missed so many things while Taricha has a puppy.) So here we go... a GRAND new adventure begins soon.