Certain winter conditions can be damaging to paws. For example, if there is an icy crust on snow that is hard but does not quite carry the weight of the dog, the spur (dew claw) of some dogs may suffer. If there are glass-like hard ice bits in snow, pads may suffer.
There are differences between individuals: some dogs do not seem to have problems while others suffer.
Some dog owners use footwear for dogs in such conditions. Others regularly grease the pads of dogs during such periods. Many owners do not take the dog to such conditions, at least not to long walks or hunts if the dog is not willing to use footwear or the footwear does not stay well around the paw. For example, our dog gets rapidly rid of any footwear because she does not like them.
Yeah, there’s a real chance of another pandemic in the next couple of years. If it happens, it could be anything from a mild flu (like the last swine flu) to a new Black Death. Seems like a good time to be gutting public health in the US…
It’s, uh, some plant or other in the bed near my driveway – my horticultural knowledge is limited. I’ll see if my wife knows, since she’s in charge of that sort of thing.
(I tend to look for things to photograph right along the driveway: it’s got retaining walls, so I can set up photos without a lot of pesky bending over. Macro photography is often hard on aging legs and backs.)
Once in grad school several of us went for a five-mile run the moment we woke up to eighteen or so new inches of snow, on the premise “It’s only going to get harder!”
During the winter months in grad school ice-skating took the place of running except for some cross-country type trails.
One of my grad school professors, despite being 81, always took his dog for walks in freshly-fallen snow, or broke ground for him through accumulated snow, to make it easier on the paws.
I just saw this. Our temps are thankfully back with lows of mid 50s and highs of mid 70s. Work has ■■■■ back up too. Not to much but back to 5 12 hour days. 3am-330pm. Though Friday I’m leaving at 2 because I have an appointment with a vet for mt cat. Hopefully they can do something. Bit annoyed about the last visit. Was $120 for the appointment and $70 for a steroid shot and then told me they don’t know anything really about skin issues and they can refer me to some pet dermatologist. But it’s whatever but part of me was like hell I could have asked someone randomly an “I don’t know”. Especially since I went before for this and it was $120 and they said maybe it was a kidney infection and $120 for an antibiotic shot and $250 for blood work. So it’s been several hundred dollars and got me no where and he’s doing worse. So got an appointment with a doctor who specializes in skin care, but is not an official dermatologist. But it’s $500 for this appointment and if that goes nowhere then it’s around $1800 for a referral based veterinary dermatologist about 2 hours away.
This was from last night or either the night before. Took a nighttime shot though of some snails that was eating a mushroom. There was actually like 6 around it with 2 on top. The cricket was on top when I took the pic and by the time the flash was done they were a few inches away. I wonder if they ever stress while eating mushrooms underneath the constellations lol.
Until the moment I noticed the color I didn’t realize how late in the day it was, then it hit me and I realized that the sunset was coloring the falling little clusters of ice crystals! Sadly my phone didn’t show a thing when I tried a pic.
That’s two fun things with sleet today; the first was thunder with sleet (my buddy’s dog has issues with sleet anyway; sleet with thunder drive him whimpering for cover).
Digging young trees in the snow was a new experience. I like getting them with their native ‘soil’ around the roots, and the presence of ice crystals actually made a lot of that stick together better.
It’s supposed to be a totally natural area, but some idiots had been driving a large pickup around, marring the beauty – the weird thing is they didn’t drive in off the highway there; I’m going to see if I can find a recent aerial view to learn if there’s some other way in.
I also noticed that there are patches of European beach grass popping up from seed blown by the wind, carried all the way from the beach. I should contact the US Forestry people; they’re supposed to keep out non-native species.