Snow angel

It snowed this morning.  Just a little, but enough to catch everyone by surprise and turn our garden into a winter wonderland for the kids and puppy.  The kids greeted it with delight and I with a feeling of trepidation – I really don’t like driving in the snow. Muttley, after initially barking at the snow, started to eat it, and the kids lamented that there just wasn’t enough for a snowball fight without getting a faceful of grit in your eye.

Eldest son was long gone, on his early coach to his secondary school, and just the little ones remained.  G had taken the day off and had lots of errands to run and he offered to take the kids to school – a nice treat for me as it gave me that extra hour in which to do all those emails etc that I put off due to lack of time. I got into my jeans and decided to take the dog for an early walk, as I was having lunch with some friends and thought that I would shower and wash my hair after the walk (as in my experience it is always a muddy affair).

Middle son took one look at me and said ‘You can’t go out like that, you look like a mad professor’, and indeed my hair had that crazy look of a punk gone wrong.  Muttering, I disappeared upstairs in search of a ‘beanie’, those knitted woolen hats favoured by celebrities in dress down days, but in reality turns me into some sort of 80’s pierrot or harlequin type character with my big eyes and high forehead.

I found one bought last year, cream with a fetching woolen rose on the side of it.  Sticking it on my head at a jaunty angle, I went back downstairs where G said loyally that it looked cute, middle son choked on his Nutella on toast and said I looked ‘Epic’ (I have a feeling that it wasn’t epic in a good way) and youngest son said sweetly that I looked like a Pokemon.

Searching for some sort of confidence in my new found look, I sought out Muttley, who was mid argument with his penguin, and took one look at me, whimpered and backed off with his tail between his legs…

Undeterred, I set off, dog in tow, to the park where we had a great time slipping and sliding on the moving snow, discovering sticks frozen to the ground and crunching through puddles.  We met a young girl with a small dog looking a bit woeful in a blue woolen coat. Feeling some sort of empathy with the dog, having had my hat dilemma, I remarked on how smart the coat was and she assured me that he had looked even sweeter in his Father Christmas outfit the day before…

Moving on, and we met the woman that featured in one of my first posts, the one with six dogs and one in a muzzle.  The muzzled one, possibly having an affinity with my awkward wearing of the hat, came bounding up to Muttley and I, and they ran off to play.  The woman came up ‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said.

‘I know’, I grimaced, ‘It’s the hat.’ 

‘No, it’s the dog’, she said ‘I hardly recognized it, how Muttley has grown!’

I looked at Muttley, charging around with all six dogs, barking excitedly.  He was indeed a very different dog from the one we had taken on 3 weeks ago.  Silky hair now covered the tiny scar above his right eye that had been acquired some time beforehand, presumably when he had been abandoned.  He no longer automatically cowered when someone raised their hand.  He seemed genuinely happy.  And to my utter amazement, when I called him back, mid excitement, he came straight back and sat at my feet (admittedly I was holding a stick for him…).

It made me appreciate on that crisp and snowy morning how far we have come in such a short time - but there is no doubt that we’ve a long way to go yet...