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Abby's snowy world

 "Hey Keeper!!!! Look!!! Over there!!! A deer!!!! Let's go capture it."

 Bark, Bark, Barooooo!!!"

And that's how Rick got lost one day in the hills above our home.

We went skooting ahead to go for a swim in the Lake of Doom in the Forest of Despair and Rick was still up on a hill poking along in his slow, dim-witted human type of way.

But we're dogs and big dogs at that and we can run far and fast and so we got anxious for a swim cause we are water dogs as well. And so we went ahead and over the rise and down the hill to go "splooosh" in the water but there was this deer having a drink and it spied us coming and it ran down another hill and into the valley.

Well . . . . we chase deer out of our yard all the time because they eat our trees and flowers and us being dogs and all we just gotta chase things that are running away because that's what ferocious critters like us are supposed to do. It's a duty!!! So we ran after that deer but boy oh boy those deer are pretty fast even though we're doggone fast ourselves.

So we chased the deer for awhile . . . . at least until it occurred to us that Rick had gotten lost and we didn't know where he was. How were we going to rescue him if we didn't know where he got himself lost in the first place? That was a real problem as near as we could figure.

We looked at each other, looked at the deer and then looked at each other again. The deer looked at us waiting for us to decide. So what to do, what to do?

Keeper and Abby look ahead to adventure in King Canyon in Kananskis Country

It was real windy, as windy as it gets sometimes on the prairie and the trees were rustling hard and we couldn't hear Rick even though he usually yells a lot. And we couldn't see him even though he's bigger than your average turnip.

So we did the best thing we could think of. We went 'sploring around. We were thinking maybe Rick would wander in at some point and throw up a hullaballoo about getting himself lost. It was close to dark so we hoped he showed up pretty darn quick cause there's coyotes and cougars and wolves and such lurking about in the hills near our home.

Rick said cougars are something to worry about and he had us going there for a bit at least up to the the point where he said cougars was just big pussy cats. Well we know all about pussy cats having chased the neighbours cats up our tree when they dare come in our yard and we live with three pussy cats and except for Marcie they ain't much to be afraid of.

And Willie gives us kisses!!

So cougars couldn't be too scary you wouldn't think. We're big and we're girls so we didn't have anything to worry about near as we could figure. But Rick . . . . there's a guy with something to worry about.

And then something strange happened.

Keeper got lost too!!!! And then it was just me.

Winter . . . . . Keeper emerges from the forest to a valley and the cloud shrouded Rockies

Gosh darn it!!! I can understand a human getting lost cause they aren't real bright you know . . . . no offence intended.

But a dog?

If that didn't beat anything I've seen in all my 16 months of life. I looked around a bit and couldn't pick up her scent anywhere's.

Well, since Keeper got lost and Rick got lost I figured there wasn't much left for me to do in the forbidding wilderness.

So I went home. Went through the gate. Went onto the porch and waited to see if they would show up.

About a half hour later here comes Rick a huffing and puffing and running up from the hills and sure enough he's yelling at Keeper to hurry up cause they gotta get Carol to help find me.

Find me? Hey I was right here the whole time. Find yourselves says I!!!

And Rick looked mighty dumbfounded when he saw me sitting there waiting. But I waited once before when I was just a puppy when Carol disappeared for 20 minutes and then showed up and there I was on the porch sleeping the whole time.

Humans sure are strange.

Santa falls to the thrashing jaws of Abby

Now I got a story about when the toilet guy came to visit. And we really like strangers as I stated before. We like all people and all horses but not people on horses which is why we barked at the equestrian girls who came riding across the field.

Anyway the toilet bowl guy came through the gate and parked his van and then when we got done slathering him up one side and down the other he opened up his van door and out popped a big black ball. So we grabbed it prompt like and took off!!!!.

A big black ball!!! Those are fun. So Keeper and me we mauled it up pretty good and the guy told Carol to just keep it, that he had a whole van of big black balls to play with. Lucky guy.

Keeper is having a bit of medical trouble, enough so that Rick has to follow around behind her every once in a while with a metal pie plate and a flashlight. I could swear he's trying to get her to do her business in the pie plate. I don't know what that's all about and I'm sure watching my hind end so he don't follow me around with a pie plate.

So sure enough Keeper has to go in to see Doc Doyle Mullaney, our doctor, the next day after Rick sticks a pie plate under her rear end. Talk about timing.

Anyway Keeper is having some kind of problem where she is laying sleeping in the living room and then suddenly she's wet her pants and she doesn't know it and looks confused. But that's OK with me because now we got new food to eat and new vitamins to eat and now Keeper doesn't wet her pants anymore.

But she got her leg shaved at Doc Mullaney's which seemed kind of strange waste of effort on someone's part.

Rick and Carol were putting up coloured lights on the house that you can see for miles and miles the other day. I guess Rick didn't see that card that fell out of his pocket so Keeper and me we grabbed it and slunk off a ways and chewed it up. I'm not too good at understanding human language but the letters said something like: A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N E-X-P-R-E-S-S. Rick says youze guys go to human school so maybe you know what that means.

We helped Carol and Rick put up the Christmas tree. They told us it's a special time of year - a big thing for us since we're only a year-and-a-half old. But they said the ornaments on the tree were dangerous so we had to stay away from them. And they said the presents under the tree would eat us if we got too close so we stay pretty far away on account of getting eaten doesn't sound like it would be a positive experience. But they said one of the presents on a special day next month wouldn't eat us but that we could eat it instead. That sounded a whole lot better.

Keeper . . . . . turning back from infinity

We love snow but sometimes, like now, we got no snow because we get "Chinook Arches" over our home that protect us from cold air.

Except for once last month when it really snowed hard and Rick took us toboggoning down the hill next to the house and we ran and barked at him right up until he hit the tree and fell over. And then he made a big, big, roll-'em up snowball which we promptly began to eat. We like ice and snow. Humans have to put lots of clothes on but the cold time is the best time of year for ferocious dogs like ourselves because then we don't have to sleep in the shade and we can run around without getting hot.

Well, we hope you have lots of presents you can eat at Christmas and not too many that will eat you instead. We saw a boy skating on the pond two days ago so maybe we'll go skating soon and show you pictures of that. In the meantime we have two weeks of extra-ferocious guard duty ahead of us as Carol and Rick go away and we have to protect our grandmother Kay while she stays here and makes sure we get food.

Let's hope she doesn't get lost like Rick did!!

For Keeper, the Christmas fun is over and the napping begins. It's not unusual to have a "brown" Christmas in southwestern Alberta, where the Foothills lie in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains