Snow Dog

Last night it snowed and this morning we woke to a winter wonderland.  Beau has never seen snow, he was born in May of this year, and so instead of his usual morning run, we took him and Blue down to the elevated garden for a romp in the snow.

The elevated garden where we played

Living in an apartment complex, as we do, we don’t have the luxury of a back yard for the dogs to play in so we have to pick the times when we can use the open areas around the estate for the dogs to play off leash. At 7 am on a snowy Monday morning there was no-one else around and the elevated garden was the perfect place for the dogs to play.

We took down a ball and tossed it then watched as the two dogs chased and wrestled with each other for possession of the ball – what a way to exercise dogs in the morning.

For me though it was a perfect opportunity to watch how Beau reacted to the snow. As many pups his age, he is fearful of new things and the snow falling from a darkened sky was definitely new – it had changed something very familiar to him into an alien world. By introducing it through the element of play, I hoped we could make it just one more fun thing in his life.

Testing the snow on the balcony

Being a large puppy (he currently weighs 30kg to the poodle’s 7.5kg), he doesn’t know his own strength and any reactivity on his part when I walk him could result in us both slip sliding all over the place in the snow. I’ve been using the Gentle Leader head halter on him when I take him for walks. It makes it easier for me to maintain control should he ever become unstuck and I notice that just having it on seems to have a calming effect on him. 

We do upward of four training walks a day, each with a different purpose. There are several schools on the estate and I make a point of taking Beau out at least once a day when the children are at play. We watch from a safe distance and any indifference he shows rapidly earns him a CLICK’n’treat so that soon his attention is fully focused on me regardless of what the children are doing.

Today I was curious how Beau would react with the children whooping and carrying on in the snow. As it was the children were of little concern, Beau has been exposed to enough of them to regard them merely as a curiosity, even in the snow. No, it was snow drifts and snow ploughs that got to him this day.

Before taking him out for his first walk I let him have a play on the balcony. It runs the whole width of the building and gives the dogs an outdoor play pen. At first he seemed unsure, why was this white stuff filling up his run? Then that classic play bow and he rolled and pounced and shoveled the snow with his mouth. He was having fun, no signs of fear at all, so I rugged up and off we went.

Pedestrian pathways link all the buildings on the estate together and these get a lot of use during the day as the children take them to get to their playground, the postal service and other delivery services use them as well as the gardeners and maintenance crews. It was just my luck to take Beau out on his midday walk when the snow plough moved through, piling the snow up along the edges. I am not sure if it was the plough or the walls of snow but Beau went on alert. I stopped and clicked him for remaining calm, he took my treat but kept his eyes on the noisy machine moving past. More clicks, more treats and I could see the signs of alertness start to fade. His tail dropped, his face softened, and he looked at me – ‘what was that about?’ his expression seemed to say. The plough out of sight, I relaxed thinking what a nice job I’d done averting the situation and we proceeded with our walk.

Have you ever noticed the interesting shapes snow makes when it's all piled up? Some of them look positively menacing and it was this that triggered the hindbrain into action in my companion. We were approaching a corner in the path where the snow had been piled up hard against a fence alongside a building site. It was like some sort of grotesque angular snowman carved out of mud and ice. Beau did a double take, barked and lunged at the beast, then backed up for another go. CLICK’n’treat! He paused. CLICK’n’treat! A tentative step towards the ice sculpture, another CLICK’n’treat!

Before long he was nudging it with his nose and scratching at it with his paws. Nothing to be afraid of at all.