Daddy Dog rescues Lilly

If you know us you know that we have a little lap dog name Lilly.  She weighs around 15 or 16 pounds, and none of it is fat.  She keeps all her fat ran off chasing squirrels she never even gets close to.   This weekend we are babysitting Osho,  the dog of Robin’s son.  Osho is a tad larger, probably weighing in at 60 or more pounds.  The two are them are best buds which frequently causes me to refer to them as Mutt and Jeff.  Unless you are of a certain age you probably do not remember Mutt and Jeff, but they were two characters in the comics that the newspapers of antiquity used to run.  One was short and the other was tall.

This weekend we had 10 inches of snow at our house.  Some areas close by got more snow. When the snow first fell is was soft and loose.  Lilly had a bit of a problem getting through, but she could do so by hopping from one place to another.  Osho just plowed through the snow. On Osho, the snow came up to what would be the elbow on a human.  On Lilly, the snow was past her shoulder.

This is the third day the snow has been on the ground.  With thawing and refreezing it has gotten a bit crusty on top.  Plus we have had another inch or so of snow.

Lilly saw a squirrel from the back door and wanted out desperately. I let her, and then whistled up Osho as I figured he should go out also.  On Lilly’s initial foray to the outside in her ambition to corner the squirrel she followed the path the dogs had worn from the patio to the dog house under the tree where the squirrel was mocking my poor, sweet, little carnivore.  Osho followed her, but his hunting style is to tree a squirrel and sit patiently at the foot of the tree.  I think he expects Adam to come shoot the squirrel out of the tree. Lilly, on the other hand, will circle the tree barking incessantly.

Once they had tired of this activity they followed the beaten paths, doing what dogs need to do when they are sent outside to the back yard.   Osho remained close to the doghouse and paths.  Lilly had somehow wandered along the fence to a cedar tree that the snow had broken part of its branches.  Osho decided he wanted to come in and came to the back door.  I let him in and stuck my head out the door to see if Lilly was ready for rug and hearth.

Dogs being dogs, she wanted to take a direct line from the cedar tree to the back door.  Unfortunately, there was no path, simply 10 or 11 inches of crusted snow.  She fell through the crust and was stuck. She valiantly tried to extricate herself, only to fall through again.  Being the well trained owner that I am I walked out to her position of peril in my bare feet, picked her  up and carried her to the path they had beaten.  At which point I sat her down, and she beat a path to the open back door.