As bitterly cold yesterday was, today is even more so. Environment Canada confirming that a winter storm is on the way, to begin in the late afternoon. The high for today is minus-17-degrees centigrade, and with the wind chill it will feel like minus-29-degrees. But because we're expecting fifteen centimetres of snow overnight and another ten or so tomorrow, with continuing cold, it's unlikely we'll be able to get out for our usual ravine walk tomorrow. All the more reason to do so today, before the storm enters.

Yesterday it was cold enough, the high at minus-14, the wind making it seem much, much colder. Even so, there was Heckle and Jekyll out prowling around their home territory on the large old pine sitting at the foot of the long drop into the ravine. With them now is another little squirrel, a small grey, that appears also to have made his abode in the pine. We didn't see too many others out throughout the course of our frigid walk.

We did come across a ravine acquaintance walking his sibling border collies. The female being the one who, a month or so ago, lost her tail when it became catastrophically entwined with some underbrush, since nicely healed and she with a portion left of her tail. Only this time, he had on leash another little border collie, complete with muzzle. This, he told us, was a litter-mate of his own two five-and-a-half-year-old border collies. It had been adopted by his daughter and son-in-law. And they had to surrender it, no longer able to cope.

The little dog's needs had been ignored, kept isolated for much of the day in a mudroom of his daughter's house. A stay-at-home mother, she had her hands full looking after three small children, with a fourth on the way. They had almost surrendered the dog to a farmer after it had bitten their oldest child, not yet attending school. They knew it wasn't the dog's fault; the children were merciless with the dog, forever pulling its hair, tussling with it, climbing all over it.

So the man and his wife, who is no longer out in the workforce, took the little dog in, rescuing it from both the neglect of their daughter's household and the fate of being a neglected farm dog. Gradually, they're earning the trust of the border collie, which is beginning to reciprocate affection, and taking some mentoring guidance from the other two border collies, his very own siblings. But the muzzle must stay on, because of the dog's reaction when it is feeling particularly frustrated. They've set out to give the dog what its former life had lacked.

It had been bereft of the company of other dogs and people, continually confined, and rarely given exercise, let alone any kind of sustained attention which such intelligent dogs crave. We watched as he took the dog off leash, and it dashed madly over the snowy trail toward where it had obviously seen something move in the distance. The three dogs become activated by one another, working as a team to herd both one another and any prospective movements in the landscape. They are, after all, bred as working dogs, and recognized as the most intelligent breed of canines.

It's beyond sad to see their talents and their intelligence not recognized and given their just due.