The early winter is one of my favourite times of the year- the snow is fluffy & light without the world being too cold, it’s cozy enough to drink tea & read books all the time, and I can happily burrow into projects without feeling like I’m missing out on beautiful weather. It’s perfect for me!

Last week was the start of some serious crazy in our lives- Jesse started the first of three trips between now and Christmas. I’m not usually very sentimental about the holidays, but because we knew this would be a stressful time we decided to start celebrating the holidays early so we could have more time at home together with an “almost Christmas” feeling. We put the tree & mistletoe up before US Thanksgiving, and now every morning when I make my way down the staircase to make tea & breakfast I get to walk by a fully lit tree.

I know that it’s on a timer (thank you, husband) but there’s something about not having to turn on the lights on your Christmas tree that makes it a lot more magical. Even if that magic is brought to me by a tiny, timer shaped robot.

So the early morning drives to the airport and solo puppy tending are starting for me, but I’m working on embracing having a little rush & hurriedness as part of the holidays- and the dogs are learning how to manage having me as their sole care giver (who likes to sleep in more than Jesse does).

Case & Point: Last week when Jesse was away on his first trip, Mal developed two new “Get Kyla Out Of Bed” strategies:

1) He would whine until I rolled over to check the time on my iPhone, and then dive onto my pillow where my head had been, flip onto his back, and then wiggle, yip & kick me in the neck so I couldn’t put my head back down and fall asleep!

2) He would determine which pillow I was snuggling up to, and then burrow inside of its pillow case while wiggling around, yipping and wagging so I woke up to a pillow that was coming to life.

After hearing the stories of puppy badness, my mom dropped by the studio with something that might work even better than repeated kicks to the neck by a small dog…

An advent calendar aka. chocolate for breakfast!! And suddenly I’m completely fine with it almost being December…

One of the biggest goals I’ve had for our dogs is to be able to go to off leash parks with them, and to know that I can trust their recall. It’s been a scary thing, because in Winnipeg, unlike other cities I’ve visited, the dog parks generally aren’t fenced so it’s a “no training wheels” kind of situation. While I know that any dog wants to be with the other dogs that are around, and they they don’t want to be away from their owners, I still haven’t felt ready to try a dog park until I had more confidence in Ash and Mal’s ability to listen off leash when they’re in a large area.

This summer I’ve been looking for places I could test them off leash without any worries- community club hockey rinks that still have their boards up seemed promising, and then I found a basketball court in our neighbourhood that was totally fenced off except for a two foot entrance. Perfect!

Last week, Jesse and I took the puppies over to the basketball court on our morning walk, and after we stepped into the court I ran toward the center and dropped the leashes. Ash and Mal kept running with me, would play and explore, and they did really well with coming back! Ash would turn on a dime and bolt to me any time I called him, and Mal would remember to come… when he remembered I brought treats. It was a really fun and successful experiment, and after a couple weeks of returning I know I’ll have Mal as attentive as Ash is.

I grew up with German Shepherds and rode horses since before I could walk, so I’m as comfortable working with animals as I am with people. But there’s still a part of me that marvels at how small our little Schipperkes are at three years old, and because these are the first dogs I’ve had since they were puppies I think it makes me more tentative with them than I am with the other animal’s I’ve had.

When I let go of the leash in the basketball court for the first time it was a great feeling, and I know that being able to trust them off leash will mean I’m more confident and that we can have more fun. I can’t wait to choose the first park we visit!

Do you have any tips for newbies to off leash dog parks?

Sometimes you just don’t realize how your life choices effect the ones you love…

ps – I’m the only vegetarian in our house, my husband and dogs have normal diets, but my dogs have learned to beg based on my eating habits which results in them drooling over things that dogs really shouldn’t be so excited about… :)

Ash and Mal are three years old today, and we’ve been trying to figure out how their crates fit into our lives for a little while. We never kennel them during the day, but their kennels have been their over night spaces since they were puppies. Jesse works outside the province for one week a month, so last month when he was traveling I decided to see how an overnight without the kennels would go.

I thought the best case scenario would be a night of uninterrupted sleep, and the worst case scenario would be Ash becoming nocturnal and barking at anything that moves over night. The first night went beautifully, and I was so proud of myself for taking the first step! That is until I got up, brushed my teeth, and came back into the bedroom to discover Mal, staring straight at me, peeing on my bed.

Not his bed. My bed.

I had no words, so I shrieked.

Fortunately for Mal, nothing was ruined and after a quick trip to the cleaners I was hell bent on making it work. In a few days when Jesse came home I wanted this series of events to be a hilarious anecdote that ended in overnights without issues, not a harbinger of doom. I tried leaving them un-crated again, only this time I walked Mal again immediately before we went to sleep and set the alarm a little earlier and – thank goodness – it worked like a charm!

In the past few weeks of sleeping outside his kennel, Mal has become a total cuddle monster. He wiggles up as close as he can to Jesse and I all night, and in the morning he crawls up to snuggle me and burrow his head under my pillow!

It’s the cutest thing, and has made waking up a really sweet experience. Mal’s become even less of a dog, and even more of a living teddy bear than he was before. If I’d known that taking the kennels out to the equation would have made him a cuddle monster I’d had done this a year ago!

Happy birthday to Ash + Mal – my favourite little monsters! <3

This weekend when I was wishing it was spring I planned a perfect protest. If  it was too frigid to wear a skirt, I was going to make spring happen another way! A while ago I spotted the most amazing headbands by a new blog friend, Savannah aka MaieDae who has a beautiful etsy shop, and I snapped one up as soon as I could.

Fact:
Not only are giant fascinator headbands fun when when you have short hair, they are a lifesaver when you  have short hair that you’re just contemplating growing out enough for it to always look awkward.

It had just arrived in the mail and it’s so beautiful! Very spring like, and the perfect antidote to fresh snow falling outside, so I popped it on, scooped up one of my monsters (Ash – aka the one with pointy ears) and we had a little photoshoot…

I’m so thankful to have my little shadows.

It’s starting to feel a little more like spring already, don’t you think?

Where I live, in Manitoba, today is Louis Riel day! I’m loving the long weekend & today Jesse and the puppies and I are hanging around the house. I’m in one of my comfiest dresses, eating a late breakfast and then tucking in for a day of design work. I love the sleepy, calm mornings that an extra day of weekend brings.

It’s the perfect excuse to put on another pot of coffee and leave the radio on all day, or to curl up in a sunbeam for the afternoon- even if I have my laptop with me. Tonight Jess and I are braving the cold to have dinner at a new pub we’re in love with called The Grove, and on a cold day it’s one of the few places I’ll dash out to! Until then? It’s slippers and coffee and sunshine.

Speaking of sunshine, I had to show off a new trick that the puppies invented!

We have a big rocking chair in the summer kitchen, and when Mal & Ash are cold and want to come they take a seat on it and keep an eye out for their humans. It keeps their paws warm and because they’re so little you can’t see them standing at the door, so the extra height is the perfect solution!

These little gentlemen are all kinds of clever :)

This week I’m taking a break from my normal posts to show you some scenes from my winter…

Ash + Mal have been so excited since the snow has fallen, their favourite thing is to bound through the chest deep snow on the boulevard while we walk through the neighbourhood, bundled up and looking forward to coffee and tea when we get home. The thing I love best about the winter is how good it feels to come home every day- it makes everything cozier and more inviting.

My favourite part of the day is that whenever I let the puppies come inside from a run around the backyard, they have perfect little frost beards that make them look tiny old men. When they look at me, hoping for treats, I can’t help but imagine them with squeaky little scottish accents – just until the beards melt, of course :)

There’s no denying that we’ve been incredibly lucky to have such a long fall- but since the snow started falling and staying on the ground, it’s been an adjustment! My winter clothes have been hauled out of the basement to replace the shorts I hadn’t quite packed away yet, and there have been a couple of times where I’ve scraped ice off my windshield with a CD when I couldn’t find the scraper. But the biggest adjustment in the winter is definitely for the dogs- the days of running outside casually and back in again are decidedly over, and walks become a bit of a production thanks to their blankets and doggy boots.

It’s been really mild here so far, but in the middle of the winter the pads on their feet can freeze, and the salt that business owners throw down on sidewalks can dry out their paws and make them crack. Because our dogs are really little they get uncomfortable very quickly and it makes going for long walks with them impossible.

So we make them wear tiny little boots… and this year I found actual little boots (with soles!) which are fantastic and will last all winter but kind of look like dog sneakers. They’re all kinds of hilarious to me, and the dogs make the best betrayed expressions when we put them on, so I just had to show you our test drive of them last night!

Every time we put them on, the dogs seem more than a little exasperated - but it’s worth it when they can go on walks and be comfy the whole time! And if we don’t burn off their extra energy bad things happen.

Terrifying Case and Point: Yesterday morning they were bored, so they pushed a chair up against our book case, hopped onto the seat, put their paws on the back of the chair, and pulled wooden Christmas ornaments out of the highest shelves. Did I mention that Ash knows how to open the DVD player? And that he can open drawers?

Schipperke problem solving is not to be underestimated! Keeping them too tired to be bored & creative about entertaining themselves is a way of life.

Want to see more of our winter shenanigans?
Last winter I make a little video of Ash running on our treadmill :)

Edit: Since you’re asking, the dog’s boots are Zack & Zooey’s high tops, I’ve had some trouble with the zippers on them, but over all I’m completely pleased with them. The dogs are able to walk much farther than in any other boots we’ve tried, and they haven’t fallen off at all! They’re going to make the winter much easier :)

I swear, you say the words “New salmon pillow” and he just zones right out.

Jesse painted the main floor of the house while I was away in Minneapolis (because he’s a rock star!) and today we’ve been running around scouting accent pieces in the new colour scheme I dreamed up for us. Our styles are very different, I’m bright colours, crafty & kitschy and Jesse is pale colours, minimalist and sparse… but I think we’re striking a good middle ground so far. I can’t wait to get it wrapped up and show you!

Hope you’re having a dreamy weekend!

Saturday morning, 9 AM

Mal goes through phases where he gets extremely cuddly- he’ll follow me everywhere and rest his head on my lap any time I sit down. This weekend he’s decided to be my cuddly little shadow, and I’m in puppy heaven :)