When will it stop snowing?

It's snowing again! The Yukon has been bombarded with snow this year. The snow is so thick on the deck that my poor dog can't make it into his doghouse. While this means lots of great skiing and a great insulating layer for my perennials; it also means a lot of shoveling. Or more precisely, a lot of me nagging Tony to go outside and shovel.

In the past 5 months and 5 feet of snow, I have shoveled exactly zero times. Thankfully, in the past 5 years and 50000 flushes, Tony has cleaned the toilet exactly zero times, so I don't feel too guilty. Despite the fact that I don't actually shovel snow, I still hate everything about it. While Tony doesn't exactly enjoy shoveling, there is one member of the household who does. Unfortunately, he doesn't have opposable digits, so his love of shoveling is largely wasted.

While Starbuck can't exactly contribute to the clearing of the driveway, he does provide lots of entertainment for Tony. The great thing about the dog is that he has the acute ability to look at every situation as an opportunity...to fetch. While you or I might think of shoveling snow as moving an unwanted item from one place to another, Starbuck sees it as someone throwing a million mini white sticks all for him to fetch. By the end of the driveway Starbuck has eaten 2 pounds of snow, run the length of the driveway a million times over and inadvertently knocked half the snow back onto the driveway.

Trying to get a picture of the beast at work was difficult, as he was much more interested in jumping behind clouds of snow then posing for my pictures. Although I couldn't quite capture the full hilarity of the situation, these might help.

Here is Starbuck getting ready:

Catching the snow:

Doesn't he look proud of himself?

Sierra posted this on Mar 16, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link