Well we have never had a guide dog but for fifteen years we had a shepherd/lab mix family pet and we certainly never cleared a place for her to dump. She kept her own trails well packed all winter. When we let her out the back door she ran straight to the back fence about where the gate is located in the middle then ran a more or less figure 8 course around the perimeter of the back yard.
While I do keep the patio clear and by the end of the winter there is about 7 feet of bank along the far edge she had her own diagonal trail over it. The one winter when we had an extraordinary amount of snow and about 40 feet of the fence at the south end of the patio was covered she had her runway all along the top of the fence which was firm enough for me to walk along. She also had a walk way onto the top of the shed which, itself had another four feet of snow on it. The front of the shed is embedded in the fence and therefore part of the boundary keeping her in. It faces the end of the driveway which gave her a perch about 14 feet above the driveway and an excellent surveillance point for the neighbourhood. The interesting thing is that all that winter she could have easily more or less swam down the far side of the drift over the fence but never even tried but worked hard all summer trying to find ways of digging under the darn fence. Once spring arrived of course there was a real perfusion of doggy blooms appearing through the melting snow which needed dealing with. Apart from those little lap dogs, chiwawas and the like which don't have enough hair people don't put boots on their dogs or cats. The foxes and wolves and skunks and minks and otters and links and weasels and martins and porcupines and squirrels and what ever else wandering about don't have boots. There is a surprising amount of activity under the snow too, mice and moles and voles. ----- Original Message ----- From: Matt To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 10:50 AM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] for David W about doggies up north Hi ya, here's a message from my super blind friend who knows it all. hahahahehe. We dug a path from the door out into the yard. Then we dug out an area in the yard where the dog could go peepee and poopoo. hehehhe. Such is life in Montana. I traveled in the snow with my dogs. They wore sled dog boots. Isaiah 42:16 16 And I will lead the blind in a way that they know not, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
