Rescue dogs to the rescue!

Quick!  Tell me NOW!  What do you get when you combine:

• Snow day with heavy WET snow
• 3 children who want to sled down the hill, one close to a teenager in age and the other two, in grammar school
• 2 rescue dogs
• Snow that turns into rain
• Children gloves that become more soaked than a typhoon

and….

• a long cold walk back home with kids shivering in their boots?

A heroic tale of rescue of course!

You see, long long ago, back before the earth’s crust cooled (ie, last December), I adopted Grif Pendragon Ling, the white husky/GSD mix from a more-local-than-the-state-of-Kansas shelter.  You can read all about this wondrous doggie over here.

Well, Grif adores anything and everyone, 2 legs, 4 legs, inanimate furniture, etc.etc.etc.  So we decided to get him a doggie buddy which turned out to be Khan Balto Ling, a Malamute/Collie cross who is virtually the size of a moose.  Okay, not quite that large….but wow, he’s huge compared to Grif!

I’ll write more about him in another post.  Both doggies adore each other, and will happily chomp for hours on end on various body parts as they play.  Recently, we found a local park that has an enclosed baseball diamond, and we now will run the dogs there in the morning when nobody else is around.  Grif zooms about like a white rocket while Khan lopes more like a stealthy wolf; both dogs will end up intersecting each other’s arc and bowl one another over.  It’s great fun.

Enter this morning!  My kids decided it would be super peachy neato fun if they took the sled to the park while I ran the mooses.  Now, it was the kind of snow that was heavier than falling wet laundry rags but no matter – my kids were on a mission!  They bundled up in double layers, grabbed the sled and followed me to the park.

Once there, the mooses had a perfectly jolly time trying to surpass Mach 3 (failing, of course, but not for lack of enthusiasm!) while the kids discovered that wet heavy snow is supremely lousy for sledding.    During the interim, however, the younger two totally drenched their handgear and decided it was to bravely head for home.

Enter our dilemma!  Little boy hands get awfully cold awfully fast…so my girl offered each boy a glove and she tucked her hands into her sleeves (idjut me never wears gloves as I simply use my coat sleeve as well).  We started off for home and I noticed….both boys were more tired than NYC marathon runners, and we still had a rather long distance to cover! 

What could I as the all-powerful mother unit do?

Enter the mooses!

Grif and Khan are northern breeds of dogs – dogs who like pulling (which makes leash training more difficult than teaching parakeets to snowboard, but that’s another topic for another post)!   So I handed Grif’s leash to my girl and told one boy to hold onto her other hand, told the other boy to hold onto my hand (which was holding Khan’s leash), and then told the doggies:

Okay doggies!  Let’s go for home!  Pull!

And my rescue dogs pulled like champs…and helped me and my 3 kids make it back home before we froze more solid than a petrified icicle. 

For the life of me, I will always remember holding onto my boy while being pulled up the hill and also watching my other boy and girl be pulled by Grif. We all got home safe and sound and I made the dogs a big huge hot stew of their favorite meats (which they inhaled in about 27 seconds flat.    ).

The morale of the story?

When you integrate your doggies as members of your family, you’re bringing in a wonderful helper whose strength can just drawf yours during times of need. 

Grif and Khan are now happily sprawled out in front of my door, totally and happily exhausted.  My kids took a hot bath while I brewed up 23 gallons of coffee to warm myself up as well.   

Life is certainly good.  And how has YOUR Wednesday been? 

Enjoy,

Barbara

ps – speaking about rescue dogs, have you seen: