It's Febrrrrruary

I've become spoiled by the mild weather this winter. Today we're actually having a seasonal but not-to-horrid day (temps in the high teens with a cold wind and some snow) and I don't want to step outdoors! It just seems COLD. Poor Kipp wasn't liking the cold on his feet this morning either. I think it must have been a touch icy because I've never seen him bothered by snow before - he usually LOVES it.

On the knitting front, I've been working on knitting up my latest design - Candy Hearts socks. I started them last Monday and I'm halfway done with the second sock already!

I also went through my and restocked my Reflections Yarn Etsy Shop today. I'm having a free shipping sale there until February 24th - just enter the coupon code "shipfree" to take advantage of this offer.

I did a couple of short searches with the dogs today. My youngest brother graciously agreed to head out in the snow and wind to play victim. I had him hide in the hay barn today. A place like that can be much different than the woods or fields for the dogs to search through. The scent can travel and pool in weird areas and is often harder for the dogs to hit on and follow to the source. And they're searching around equipment and big round hay bales instead of the much more open woods and fields.

But they both did great today. The wind was strong, and they both hit scent pretty quickly. For Kipp, J was hiding on top of a couple hay bales, but under a pickup capper that had been placed there. Since the capper was laid across two bales, there was a gap where J was able to slide underneath. Kipp hit the scent and jumped up on the bales (no small feat for a dog that is only 18 inches at the shoulders!) he then followed the capper around to the gap and slid underneath to access J and gave his bark alert.

J then moved to a different spot while I took Kipp back to the car and got Kenzi. Kenzi was ready to go (especially since she had to sit in the car while Kipp was out working) and took off as soon as I told her to search. She also hit scent right away as she got to the hay barn. This time J was standing in a 2 ft gap between a row of bales and the wall. Kenzi followed it in nice, but then stopped and alerted about 8 feet away while J was still out of sight. I told J to go ahead and reward here after she had barked several times. It was a new type of spot for her to work in and she had focused, ignored all the distractions and had worked very nicely so I wanted to have her rewarded for that. Besides, it was quite possible with the way the wind was today that J's scent had pooled where she was.