Snow!

Yay!! We have fresh snow coming down - a little fine snowfall all day long and it hasn't stopped yet. We needed fresh snow. And, here anyways, when it snows it's usually fairly warm... and it was 18 degrees above zero for the high. That's a wonderful temperature for sure! They are predicting temps to go down to at least -10 by the end of the week, so while it's warm, and the beautiful snow is falling, us Alaskans work outdoors to catch up and hopefully get ahead of chores on a farm! I went through the kennel runs tonight and pulled out all of the water buckets, half filled with ice now. All got thawed out, scrubbed with hot water and soap, and all put back into the runs - waiting for the morning warm water to arrive. That's a weekly job I usually save for later in the week, but when it's warm you do what needs to be done! Tomorrow, if we still have these temps, I'll bring out the portable hose reel from it's warm safety and I'll wash down the chainlink and exterior walls. They accumulate allot of dust - how you might ask? You see, our cold here is usually a very dry cold. Like freeze-dried. As the dogs run and play most of the day, they loosen up the surface of their runs which is sand. Our sand up here, even the washed sand that we buy by the dumptruck load, still has fine silt in it. That silt gets loosened up eventually even with shavings down. And it floats into the air. And gets all over everything! I hate it! So, before I put in fresh shavings, I'll wash the kennel runs down - and some of the spray will freeze down the dusty sand again too. Then after that sets up overnight, the layer of shavings will go over that. It will make a huge difference. I always have to watch when the dust starts to show up again - which always depends on the weather , temperature, and humidity or lack of it. I don't want the dogs breathing in the dust either. Keeping kennels tidy in these conditions during the winter up here can be challenging! Since they have a roof over their outdoor runs, it never snows INSIDE their runs........just in case you were wondering why it is so dry. But what IS fun is that the dogs all looooooooove the snow. So I'll take the big feed scoop shovel and go down the line, scooping a big shovelful of fresh snow over the top of each kennel run and they pounce in it and roll in it and have a great time eating the fresh snow.

Snow! YAY!!