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Thursday, May 16, 2024

If You Can't Beat It, Whippet...

 When we first got Earl as a pup (My Name Is Earl...11/17/21), we didn't know much about him expect he was bred out of some racing sled dogs from one of the upper Yukon River villages. As he grew older, he got a lot longer and leggy, but his head stayed kind of small  We joked about how he kind of looked like a whippet. So I finally got around to seeing what exactly was the Whippet breed. Here's what google had to say...

The whippet is a hound breed developed in mid-19th-century England to chase rabbits for sport in an arena. The breed was developed from terriers and small English greyhounds; Italian greyhounds were later bred in to give the whippet a sleek appearance.

They are the fastest dog of their weight, capable of achieving speeds of up to 35 mph, due to their ability to run in a double suspension gallop. This gait results in four of the dog's legs being off the ground twice in each stride, once when the legs are completely extended and again when they are tucked under the body.

The whippet at full gallop, they sure can move!
So today when we let the dogs off for their free run, Andy took some pictures of Earl running. 

We knew Earl likely was the fastest dog in our team, but it looks like he runs just like a whippet; never knew we had such an exotic animal!

Monday, May 6, 2024

This is spring?

 Last week I finished splitting the wood I'd hauled down from the ridge top in April and was ready to move on to the logs that were stacked up last fall.

Andy had taken this photo a few days ago and labeled it "wall o' logs." But before I could get to it, nature intervened...


Woke up in the morning to this, a spring snow storm. It snowed until mid-afternoon and we got an inch or more of wet, sloppy snow. So spent most of the day doing odd jobs inside the house. Kind of ironic cause the weather bureau proclaimed Saturday as "green-up day" so maybe today was "whitewash day."