Our puppies are on the mend, feeling quite a bit better today than yesterday. We couldn't do enough yesterday to comfort them, they wanted attention constantly, to be petted and consoled over being so under the weather so to speak, that they were unable to eat. Mind, by dinnertime their empty stomachs got to them as we hoped would happen. Nothing wrong with their olfactory senses; from the family room as they languished on the sofa they could smell chicken being cut up into their bowls. I decided to forego their kibble and just give them chicken dampened with chicken soup.

And I prepared their after-dinner salads as usual; cauliflower (briefly 'cooked' in the microwave) with snowpeas, bell pepper, cucumber and grape tomatoes diced over. They were definitely interested, warily circling their bowls. Jillie succumbed first; a nibble, then a pause, and before we could blink her dish was emptied. Same thing with her vegetables.

 

It's always different with Jackie, he seems to play little games. He will deign to eat if he's hand-fed little bits of chicken. Then he waits for more. By which time if he doesn't lap his food up on his own he won't be getting any more, and after closing in, then distancing himself in a rotation of indecision, he finally eats his dinner too, and most of his salad.

This morning Jillie was game for her pre-breakfast cheese bits, but Jackie played his distance game. Jillie gobbled her breakfast and Cheerios with milk afterward as a regular treat, and Jackie, while sniffing furiously, obviously arguing with himself over the outcome, opted to leave whatever was offered him. It's a regular routine; he genuinely doesn't feel up to par, and won't eat, but usually by dinnertime he's ferociously hungry.

The snow that fell throughout the day yesterday was light in texture given that the thermometer didn't budge above -8C, and wind had done a fairly good job of shifting the shovelled snow back onto the walkways again, so that was Irving's pre-breakfast task re-clearing the trails. The twins went out repeatedly to the backyard, Jillie inviting her brother to a good rumble, but he wasn't interested. Both of them busying themselves sniffing about vigorously; unseen to us but known by them the scent of rabbits and raccoons at the very least.

When Irving sees rabbit pellets in the backyard he picks them up to flush them down the toilet to ensure our food-conscious connoisseurs don't consider them edible delicacies. Their idea of 'treats' certainly doesn't reflect ours.

And my choice for a dinnertime dessert treat today was lime cheesecake. I had bought a bag of limes and mean to use them in various ways. I thought a cheesecake flavoured with lime would be a little different; pairing cheese with lime seems like a natural to me. After I finely grated the peel for inclusion in the filling, Irving obliged by squeezing the half-limes to extract the juice and I was away to the races. Cheesecake is so simple to put together and so delectable as a treat.

I used a package of cream cheese, about 250 grams, a half-cup of really thick sour cream, 2/3 cup of granulated sugar, 3 large eggs, the lime zest and juice for the filling, a cup of graham cracker crumbs mixed with a quarter-cup butter for the crust which I briefly baked before filling it. I sprinkled white chocolate chips over the partially baked crust, poured the filling over and baked the cheesecake for an hour at 350F, and that'll comprise dessert tonight.

We went out with the puppies around three in the afternoon. Figuring on a cold Friday, overcast and slightly windy, there wouldn't be too many people going through the trails, and we were right, not too many, but enough to make it awkward at points where the trails narrow and the forest vegetation is too thick to permit standing off-trail, particularly going uphill. 

The landscape is stunning in its thick mantle of snow. This latest layer of snow isn't the packing type such as what we received a week ago when the temperature was more moderate. With this colder weather the texture of the snow tends to be lighter, it tends not to stick, so ascending and descending the hills in the ravine can become a bit of a challenge. The crampons we wear over our boot soles help immeasurably to keep us from continually sliding downward.

Jackie and Jillie came across their share of 'others', in the presence of a wide variety of dogs accompanying people. Some they know and since they're familiar with them, they behave passably well. For the dogs they've made no previous acquaintance with they reserve special treatment, challenging and hostile to their presence. Not the kind of civil behaviour we expect of them, but they've proven to be fairly incorrigible so when we urge them to stop barking, it accomplishes nothing. A breed-specific trait.