Sniffin' in the Winter Wonderland

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, I've had my fill o' snow this winter. I was hopin' the snow was done fer the year. Partly on accounta all the dang shovelin' but mostly so's ol' Spot would have a few months to fergit this new obsession he's gotten into. Seems he's got a footprint fetish.

But dang it all, it was snowin' again when I went to bed last night an' I had to push some of it around this mornin'. After I cleared some sidewalks, I took ol' Spot down to the soybean field. It sure was a beauty-full sight with that snow all stuck to the trees.

I took a couplafew pitchers. Here's one I kinda like:
Here's one of the same place with ol' Spot backtrackin'.
Ol' Spot's got me a bit worried. Border Collies is kinda known fer obsessive compulsive behaviour. Up til a coupla weeks ago, Spot was pretty much normal. Then one day, he all of a sudden started in with some obsessive sniffin' at the snow. At first, I thought he was on the scent of some critter. What I've since discovered is that he's become obsessed with the scent of his own footprints.

When he gets into the obsessive sniffin', he don't listen to anything. He won't do stuff he's known how to do fer years, like "sit" "come" "stay" "fetch the stick/ball/frisbee." He's like a cat on catnip when he's on his own trail. Worse yet, when he's backtrackin' an' sniffin' his own tracks, he's makin' new tracks an' he starts sniffin' them, too. I reckon that's called a positive feedback loop.

I been doin' my best to discourage the obsessive sniffin'. He's startin' to respond to "No sniff!" We had a coupla wrestlin' matches out in the snow over it an' he's not so oblivious to me when I'm givin' him some basic commands. I did some googlin' lookin' fer other dogs who maybe was similarly afflicted but I didn't find nuthin'. Nobody I know's ever heard of this sorta nuttiness, neither.

Yesterday, there weren't too much snow left in the beanfield an' he didn't get into any obsessive sniffin' on the bare ground. Fer the sake o' Spot's an' my mental health, I'm hopin' fer a big melt soon.

JimBobby

Tracks in the Snow

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, Ol' Spot an' me been doin' a fair bit o' walkin' down to the soybean field lately. The mud and water's all froze up so Ol' Spot don't get too dirty.

This mornin', I was especially proud of Ol' Spot. He was a ways ahead o' me -- about 70-100 metres, or so -- when I seen him light out after something. I hollered fer Spot to stop an' danged if he didn't do just like he was supposed to. When he stopped, I seen three good-sized white tail deer headin' fer the old railway track bed. They was closer to Ol' Spot than I was.

If Ol' Spot had chased after them deer, he'd probbly still be runnin' an' I'd be out huntin' fer a lost border collie. Ol' Spot's growin' up, I reckon. He oughta be. He's about 4 an' a half, now. Here's a pitcher of ol' Spot right near where we seen the deer this mornin'.

Ma was readin' in the Brantford Suppositor how to tell coyote tracks from dog tracks. We got quite a few coyotes around here so that's a handy thing to know. The coyotes walk puttin' the back foot right exactly where the front foot went. That means they make tracks that look like this:

I was in the fresh snow when I seen these this mornin'. There weren't any human tracks nearby. These were from early this mornin' and from a dog-like critter about the same size as Ol' Spot. I'm callin' 'em coyote tracks.

Here's what dog tracks look like. There's 4 footprints fer every two from the coyote. Ol' Spot's about the same size as a coyote.

Another kinda track I see out in the soybean field is mouse tracks. Here's some mousie footprints:
An' then there's the all terrain vehicles an' snowmobiles. Here's some quad tracks:
Looks like the poor little mouse wasn't fast enough. Some critter'll come along an' make a meal outta the little feller, I figger. That's a JimBobby track at the lower left.

JB