I was over at my friend
Sparky's blog and Sparky was playing on the ice which I then asked my mum about it. She says that at home we have two big ponds that are frozen over all winter but if you want to go skating on them you have to shovel off all the snow first and it's hard to get really smooooth ice for skating!
They used to go skating on the ponds all the time and also sledding down the hill onto the ice. It was lots of fun, snow banks up to your noses and cold cold blizzards - mom was having such a good time recounting this but then she got real quiet and looked kinda sad. I didn't know what to do - anyway I got her to tell me what she was so said about.
Mom's first family dog was named Maggie. Maggie was this spunky little terrier whose mom was important to a program at Mayo Clinic when grandma worked there. Maggies mom was in a breeding program to try and find trends in genetic diseases and then cure the specific disease that this breed is prone to - eventually leading to curing the disease in humans. Maggie didn't have this disease and wasn't of any use to the study so they gave her away and my grandmum was working in a different part of the clinic and saw the ad and decided to take the puppy. Maggie was to little to be away from her mummy and so little that she could fit in grandmums hands - so she and grandmum were really close really really important to one another. Maggie, this little 15 lbs dog, was the boss of my mom's big lab/german shepherd doggie and also of Jenny's big Great Pyrenees mix - she ran the farm, head of the pack.
Well Maggie and my grandmum were very close but Maggie was getting older and a bit dotty - here's the sad part. One night when dinner was over and the big dogs were coming back inside the family realized that little Maggie was missing - it was blizzarding outside and they were all pretty worried about her outside by herself so grandmum went out into the storm to find the spritzy little dog. She looked high and low (well not high, Maggie was not the climber) and around the house and through the woods (they live on a 80 acre farm) and finally grandmum went down to the big pond. Here she found Maggie, a sad little puppy, getting on in years, following her own trail around and around in circle in the middle of the pond where there are no trees or wind blocks to guide your way - just like the endless tundra of the north.
Strong Maggie survived that winter and lived long enough to see springs and summers and pass quietly in the sunshine with her little head and paws facing the direction my grandmum would be coming home.
