Our little toy poodle Riley loved paper. From the time he was a tiny puppy to his elderly years if he had the chance to rip into facial tissues he never passed it by. Our miniature poodle Button never developed a taste for paper, but Riley got into enough trouble for both of them. At first, tiny as he was, if toilet paper were hanging low enough he would grasp it and run with it with predictable results. If we weren't careful he would somehow manage to find tissues to wrangle with, tear up and leave the evidence just about everywhere.

When we first brought Jackie and Jillie home as sibling puppies they were into everything, and paper was a favourite. Whenever we'd find a trail of well-chewed and -distributed paper we would automatically think it was Jackie, rarely attributing that kind of behaviour to Jillie. This went on for years, Jackie the little imp, Jillie the good little fairy. Until we realized it wasn't Jackie at all, but Jillie who was passionately invested in sniffing out tissues and getting her little paws and muzzles into pockets to draw them out. She still does, given the opportunity.

This morning there was a real mess on the rug beside my bedside table. Thick wads of tissues strewn about everywhere. I sighed and said, 'oh, Jillie!'. And for the first time she looked at me, then popped her front half under the bed, little rump sticking out in full view. She's never done anything like that before. Usually she doesn't evince any concerns, while Jackie would, if they're ever admonished. We thought her reaction this morning was pretty hilarious, well worth a good hug.

We'd had more snow overnight. Not an awful lot, just a few centimeters, but on top of the eight inches already acquired the night before and throughout the day it made for a bit of an accumulated burden sitting atop the sheet-metal canopy on the deck, which isn't supposed to bear more than six inches for danger of collapse. So after breakfast my husband went out with a ladder and the extendible rake meant for just such purposes, and raked the snow off the canopy. Difficult to do actually, since the snow was of the wet variety that we usually call packing snow; dense and thick and stubborn. It's an issue, all right. 

We're starting to see the area temperature falling from its moderate just-at-freezing conditions, so when we went out for our usual daily turn through the ravine, the temperature had begun its plunge to -2C at that point, with a sharp wind and heavily overcast stormy-looking sky. Although we'd watched, as we waded through the trails yesterday, snow steadily dripping and drifting off the forest canopy, the overnight snow had replaced the snow that had fallen, and the trees still looked radiantly lovely, frosted with snow.

Surprisingly, although it's Sunday there were few wanderers about, a special treat for us, if not them, this day. There were a few bottlenecks at some points, but for the most part, we had the trails to ourselves, unencumbered by the presence of others. From the evidence on the snow there had been skiers and snowshoers out at some point, but not while we were out. We've also seen a fair number of people out pulling infants in sleds, and that brings back memories of when our granddaughter, now 25, and at that time in our daily care, became accustomed to being hauled along the trails in a little sled when she became too big and too heavy for me to haul her on my back in a child backpack.

Before we left the ravine, when we had gone through the forest interior and returned to the creek and the last long hill we would ascend to street level, we saw a small group of robins flitting about down at the water level. And then we saw a tiny Eastern Downy woodpecker on the large old pine at the foot of the hill, busy at the bark, paying no mind at all to the poster warning of the presence of coyotes.