Oooh, This Stuff is Tingly!

Phoebe the dog woke up and sniffed the air; something was different about today. She barked quizzically a couple of times, but I pretended to still be asleep in bed. So she got up and skidded downstairs to investigate by herself.

At first everything seemed the same around the house except for the silence, which was smothering.

Then I opened the door and that's when Phoebe saw that the world had changed overnight. The ground had turned crunchy! And it had a new smell, like ice. And it was white! How very strange....

Phoebe rolled over experimentally to see if doing that felt any different from yesterday. And it did, it was pleasantly cooling. As was this powdery stuff that was settling on her coat of hair. Some bits landed on her nose, and that was a bit tickly.

There were certainly a lot of birds around. That was a change too, she hadn't seen any birds for the past several days. A chipmunk flitted behind some trees in the near distance; for an instant Phoebe thought of giving chase but for now this new sensation underfoot was far more interesting.

So she rolled over some more, and then tried running. Even that was not the same. This new stuff on the ground made her skid a little at high speed. The other dogs seemed to be rather nonchalant about what had happened (except for one hyperactive poodle that was running in supersonic circles). Could it be that they had experienced this before?

Well if they had, then this was nothing to worry about. So Phoebe went back to doing what really matters: sniffing at bushes, cracking twigs, and waving her tail at anything that moved. After all, this might be the very first snowfall of her life, but that was not going to distract her from the serious business of being a shaggy dog out for a walk on a Sunday morning.