With the below freezing temperatures this past week it’s been a good time to hunker down by the fire and get cozy.  This is great for Kali because besides eating hunkering down is pretty much her favorite thing to do so long as it’s at my feet without her sister Kloe chewing on her or sticking a toy in her face trying to initiate a game of tug-o-war.

We’ve had a good drenching of rain the past few days, which of course is very welcome given the drought conditions the past several years.  We’re off to a good year of rainfall so far so keep it coming Mother Nature!

With the cold and wet I’m not outside very much but when I am I look up at the tree tops and they seem very happy, especially the 80 foot pines.  Kloe not so much!   She stares out the window and sees her normal playground of dirt, trees, and sticks turn into an even more fascinating wonderland of puddles and mud which she would love to be rolling and sliding in.  Kloe loves water and mud as much as Kali loves food.  As much as we’d love to let her out, and as hilarious as it would be to see her “Tazzing” * in the mud, she’d end up a 65 pound ball of red mud and it would take an hour get her clean.

*  Tazzing (for the Loony Toons Tasmanian Devil) is what we call it when Kloe does short sprints,  jumps and circles with no specific direction seemingly chasing imaginary squirrels, ghosts, or perhaps running away from these same imaginary playmates.   

Kloe’s playground during the storm

Fortunately we have a gated area underneath the deck that has concrete and rocks and is mostly dry during storms.  Although it’s not big enough for any Tazzing it’s a convenient place to let the girls out to do their business without having them come back wet and muddy.

The rain has stopped today and although the skies will be dry for a couple of days it takes many days for the ground to dry and the wet clay turn back to dirt.  Long walks only do so much to work off Kloe’s endless supply of energy so at some point today or tomorrow we’ll have to let her out to do some Tazzing.  She’d love to have Kloe join the wet and muddy craziness but Kali moves at a different speed than Kloe.  Kali is the rest of the world while Kloe is Neo from The Matrix.

But even Kloe, at the end of the day (literally), can hunker down with the best of us.   These new beds we got the girls and their makeshift camp shirt blankets is a great way to hunker down for a long winters night.