Ohio Winter

     I was surfing Facebook this evening and found a poem about winter in Ohio...it was an amusing story about the seventy-mile per hour winds when it is thirty below and the like. It ended the a stanza remarking that the author could not leave Ohio because he or she was frozen to the ground, and it reminded me of a story of something that happened when we were living in Ohio.

     We moved to Ohio in July and after learning how to live in the land of 90% humidity and 95 degree temperatures, we had to learn about winter. George and I caught on rather quickly to the notion that one needed a coat, hat, gloves, boots to go get the paper, but the dog was a slower learner. The dog at the time was a beagle crossbreed who defined her existence by the length of time it took her to patrol the entire length of the yard fence, a distance of about 100 yards. Every morning, without fail, we would let her out and she would begin at the back door and make a circuit of the yard, ending up at the back door. She walked right next to the fence and during the four years we lived there, she actually wore a path around the perimeter of the yard.

     Winter came that first year, and a day arrived when the wind chill was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 below zero. The dog wanted out and when the door opened, she set out on her circuit. After a while, I realized the dog was still out, and I went to check on her...she was standing at the far corner of the yard and did not look so good, so I got dressed and went and fetched her. Frozen stiff is a bit of a harsh term, but she was, shall we say, a little less flexible than she had been! I set her down in the middle of the kitchen floor, and in a couple of minutes, she thawed out enough become her usual self! I would like to say that she learned something, but sad to say, over the next four years, we made numerous trips to the perimeter to round up the frosty beagle...maybe one can stick to the ground!!

     There is another story about the time we had freezing rain on top of snow and the amount of noise a beagle can make when walking on the ice on top of the snow, but that is for another time....I wonder if Snoopy ever had those problems????