Had a ball -

A snowball, that is. What a day! We drove to Tahoe's south shore on Saturday afternoon in a precautiously but unnecessarily rented AWD Subaru. No arm rests, so not as comfy for a dog on a lap, which is where he ALWAYS is in the car, until we get a wagon, but it did the trick. And speaking of tricks, not only can we play fetch on sand and in water...but we've added a great new surface to the repertoire: snow! Sort of. Balls get buried, lose their scent, and the humans do a lot of fetching themselves. But it's fun nonetheless. So, last night we enjoyed a little introductory meadow-romping at dusk, followed by some pretty great sushi at Naked Fish. [Excuse me, I've been corrected by a glance from some glossy amber eyes. I meant "followed by some pretty boring dog food at the house."] Then today we enjoyed a long and lovely trek through Hope Valley - with two humans on snow shoes and two on x-country skis and three dogs on twelve paws. Our friends' dogs were used to this; ours wasn't. But it didn't seem to matter. For 4+ hours he ran with the pack, mostly trying to chase a ball he couldn't smell in the snow. Racing against the skis was fun, too. [Though the latest theory is that he ran along not to race, but to try and "save" us from careening into trees and breaking our necks.] Now he sleeps, all three dogs are pooped, and - frankly - so am I. Time for dinner!

By the way: snow crusts on fuzzy paws MUCH more slowly if you smear Crisco on 'em before heading out...thanks Emily!!!!