When we saw the little Schnauzer running toward us yesterday afternoon as Jackie and Jillie ran helter-skelter toward it on the forest trail, I recall thinking 'finally, they liberated the little guy from that stupid rope'. But as the three dogs met up and continued their romp together back toward us it became all too evident that the little dog his humans named 'Tim-bit' was still trailing that bloody rope.

He's now the same age as Jackie and Jillie, three heading toward four. If they were concerned that he might get lost in the ravine, they chose a strange way of 'protecting' him, since out of their sight that rope could at any time strangle him if it were caught on some protrusion. In any event, the rope is also a danger to others since Tim-bit excitedly runs about in circles all around people and other dogs, entangling both so that everyone has to be alert to extricate their dogs' legs or themselves from the tightening rope as the little dog runs off.

I've asked Tim-bit's people why they continue to keep him connected to a rope. It must be at least twenty feet in length, and makes no sense whatever to encumber him and others constantly. A blank look resulted, along with a shrug. They can't articulate why in any meaningful way as an explanation. Merely habit. They previously had another little Schnauzer, even smaller, a saucy little female and she was a true treat of a dog. The bark she emitted was a high-pitched whistle, and she was always excited just as her successor was, to see friends. She would dance about, squeaking her happiness, and sometimes had her favourite toy with her, a ball, which she would let loose down one of the hillsides then scramble after and triumphantly retrieve.

Dogs are priceless. People are strange sometimes.

We're still walking tall on the snowpack through the forest trails. The bridges over the now-freely-running creek down in the ravine, remain packed with snow and ice, though the central portion remains at its level of height that brings us a good two feet above normal, while the sides, not as packed down, have begun melting and crumbling away.

It was -2C yesterday and in the ravine more like -6C, given the cold-radiating effect of the immense amount of snow that remains in the forest. Though the 'wells' of disappearing snow are widening around the base of trees, the forest floor remains deeply buried in a season's-worth of snow and ice.
Without a lasting switch to warmer temperatures -- certainly warmer than the average -6C we've been having overnight so far -- serious melting won't take place any time soon.

Last week our younger son went on a kayaking-camping trip on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, where he lives. Not that Vancouver gets much in the way of snow in any event. But there the cherry trees are in bloom. And on photographs he took of his campsite on South Thormanby Island you'd be hard put to identify any signs of winter...