It was -12 degrees this morning with a -36 degree wind chill factor so needless to say nobody got their morning walkies. Strummer rushed outside to do his business and came back in limping after less than a minute or 2. All the dogs have trouble with their feet in the extreme cold. Cody & Strum have booties but Lola doesn't. I bought her a pair a long time ago and they lasted not even 5 minutes. I'd try again now that she's older and not quite as crazy but we have so few days that she needs them and they're so expensive. Cody wears them on his back feet but gets pissy when he has them on his front feet. Sometimes he'll get 20 minutes into a walk then stop and refuse to go any farther. Strum tolerates his booties but only just. At some point I decided it was easier to wait out the bad weather than deal with their foot fetishes. And there's the weirdness that the extreme cold brings on as well. This morning Strum broke out in his stress dander and had his tail tucked on the short walk from the parking lot to the office. Is there nothing this dog won't react to?
But today I have Strum with me at work and it's warmed up to -1/-1 at lunchtime and the sun is shining brightly so I put on his coat and booties and we managed almost 15 minutes of walking. His feet were cold when I took the booties off so I was glad I didn't try to go much further. I was fine bundled up in layers and layers of fleece & down and what have you. Several years ago I bought a neoprene/fleece face mask and that makes all the difference. Still it's the kind of weather where it hurts to breathe the air and I don't see the point of hanging out in it if I don't have to. Supposed to go up to the 30's tomorrow so hopefully we can get back to our normal exercise/training routine if it's not too horrible first thing in the morning.
Ow. My brain hurts just thinking about that cold.
ReplyDeleteI really like the boots from bootsfordogs.com - they stay on so much better than others I have tried because they go high up the leg. The dogs do walk pretty funny the first time wearing them though.
BRRRRR!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYes, just TOO darn cold. Not as bad as you had it this morning, just -6, and by 11am we had already hit 1. And its not even officially winter yet. Global Warming? Get Al Gore over here, and don't give him a coat.
ReplyDeleteIt's only December and all ready I've had it with the cold. JoJo isn't very tolerant of the extreme cold on his paws either, but only when snow is mixed in.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your nice comments! We're pretty sick of injuries too :)
Thanks for the booties link, I've been looking forever for booties that go up the leg. They might be just the thing for Lola.
ReplyDeleteStill too cold for walking this a.m. (2 degrees) but going up to the 20's later so we should be able to go out at lunchtime.
Wow, I am gonna stop moaning about the cold here.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Mia (the little princess) is not a fan of being out in the sleety stuff
I cannot imagine it being that cold!
Oh you can moan all you want, I've been to Scotland many times. Those temps. are far from normal, they were record breakers. Normal ave. temp. here is 45 this time of year and lots of sunshine so most of the time I have it pretty good.
ReplyDeleteBTW, 'Ben Mcfuzzylugs' is the best name for a blog, ever.