I survived nineteen winters in Nebraska and five in Tennessee (which can be worse than one might imagine). I got plenty used to power outages and feet of snow; one year in Omaha was so bad that most people moved into hotels with emergency generators. My mother stayed vigilantly in our house, keeping the pets warm by staying with them in the bathroom, filling the bathtub with water heated over a fire.
Perhaps this is part of the reason I moved to Southern California. We don't get snow by the beach here, obviously, so Daisy's never seen snow before. For New Year's, my boyfriend and seven of our friends rented a cabin in north Lake Tahoe and we decided to take Daisy with us. We got quite a bit of snow the first night, and the next morning was magical for her. She rooted her snout down to the ground, flipped up a snowball, and then chased the snow where it landed. Hikes were fantastic. Unfortunately, we lost power, and therefore water, so by the third day we were getting a little anxious (no water = no toilet . . .). Daisy was the only one for whom this was normal.
On an unrelated note, my boyfriend built Daisy a doghouse for Christmas. It's a miniature ski chalet that he designed and built himself. And I was worried that he wouldn't accept a dog in the family.
happy new year
j+d
