What a weather roller-coaster, a mixed-bag of nature's capricious tricks this past several weeks has been. We've hip-hopped from seasonal-premature icy temperatures to mild days with plenty of snow events, and on to today's blip of minus-9 C. with freezing rain. Everything is covered with a crust of ice. No doubt people out frantically shopping for Boxing Day miracles are cursing the condition of the roads.

Only yesterday Jackie and Jillie were having fun in the ravine on a moderate-atmospheric day with a friendly Weinmaraner, all of them loping about in the snow-packed forest, challenging one another to award of the most fleet-footed, and today our little fellows are looking at us as though we're denying them their quotidian measure of exhilarating exercise posing as an opportunity for social entertainment.

Questioning Jackie

But the thermometer has been stuck at minus nine degrees, give or take a point or two of a degree, with ample wind to exacerbate the cold, interspersed with random frozen droplets of pinging rain pellets. Presenting us with little choice but to pass on this day's ravine ramble with our two little companions.

Forlorn Jillie

For one thing, in this type of deep cold with wind, they need boots to enable them to stay out for any length of time. And those boots will not grip the ice as well as their clawed paws have the ability to do, leaving them slithering backwards in trying to ascend any of the ravine  hills. For another, though their humans have the option of wearing cleats over their boots, the combination of freezing rain and icy winds is somewhat less than appealing.

All the more so as one of us is still recovering from open heart surgery and the more atmospherically miserable it is out, the more hazardous it will be for him in terms of well-being in his recovery even though we've both taken pneumonia-preventive vaccinations. In this instance caution is much, much more the better part of valour.