Christmas & Berners in community events

[Vicky Whitney]

I'm looking for some ideas for our local Berner group to participate safely and appropriately in our small city's annual evening downtown Christmas Stroll. First of all, we're a rather loose group -- I've found about 26 or 27 Berners living in and around the area. Every 3 or 4 months, I call everyone and suggest we meet at a safe park, where the dogs can romp and reacquaint themselves with each other's butts while we bipeds catch visit.

We just participated for our third year as a "group" in our annual Christmas Stroll, where we informally gather, snap a few pictures, then attempt to "stroll" the eight or so blocks from one end of downtown to the other as a group. We had 17 Berners and their families this year, a record number for us. I demonstrate "herding" skills as I try to keep the group together and moving -- we each stop frequently to chat with friends or people who want to admire, pat, or ask questions about the dogs. Maddie felt it her duty to hoover the street, ingesting every morsal of popcorn, candy apples, and horse poop she could find (we have to dodge draft horses pulling a wagon up and down the street).

There's a parade -- if you can call a thousand excited children and their parents accompanying Santa several blocks to the mid-point of downtown a parade. Christie Leone and I decided this was absolutely no place to have our dogs carting, not a mob scene of mostly children. However, I'm thinking maybe the "parade" organizers would allow or want us to act like the reindeer, *LEADING* Santa and his followers. Only maybe 5 or 6 actually cart, but the carts could hold large empty but gaily wrapped box, a battery-lighted tree. Each dog could wear a special bandana or bib, whether they're pulling a cart or just part of the team. It's at night, quite cold, and frequently we're trudging through several inches (feet?) of snow. Has anyone ever tried stringing the dogs together somehow, like a real team, with only the last dog actually pulling something (owners walking alongside)? I'd love your ideas, please!

Vicky Whitney
Bozeman, Montana

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