Visits from the City

and we went extreme tubing

Hi all! We hope you are happy and healthy out there!

This week had us slow down a bit, as both Kris and I had time off for “Winter Break.”

It’s usually a bit of a weird break because it falls about 2–3 weeks into the second semester in high school, but it’s also teacher convention week. This means that with Family Day on Monday and then convention on Thursday/Friday, it was always a tough sell getting parents not to vacation during this time. So the decision a decade ago was made to just make the whole week off from school.

Let’s get to the shenanigans!

Brix and Beaker

If you’ve been following our saga, you’ll know that Beaker isn’t a huge fan of cats, and she was really cool with Brix when he first arrived. Unlike Ginger, Brix was TINY and nothing but a gentle little thing. Ginger came ready to scrap and bopped Beaker on the snoot, drawing blood in their first meeting.

Brix seems to know that Beaker didn’t really like him, so of course — being a cat — he made it his mission to get closer to Beaker. He would sleep near her (kittens are surprisingly deft at moving around a house) and inch closer on the couch or the ground. He then realized that he could sleep up on the headrest of the couch above Beaker and get even closer.

So fast forward to this week, and Brix has been doing the inch-closer thing. A couple of times this week he was so close to her that they were touching. This is a huge step, as Beaker would normally move or give a very low growl at Brix, which would scare him off. She didn’t do that this time and seemed, for the most part, pretty chill. We do want our animals to get along, so we are happy with this cute development.

The Deep Freeze Is Back

Icy cold weather blasted through early this week with a massive dump of snow and Arctic temperatures. It snowed for more than 24 hours straight, making roads extremely dangerous until the plows got out.

Of course for the dogs — Bunsen especially — this has been a glorious weather gift. Since I had the week off, we’ve gone on numerous walks through the snow, and I’ve kept an eye on Bunsen, as we are pretty sure one of the longer walks two winters ago was when he pulled or strained his doggie ACL. It wasn’t looking great then, if you remember, and if he didn’t improve he might have needed surgery. Thankfully rest worked, and this winter Bunsen has been doing amazing. To be fair, I’ve cut down the winter walks by half, and that probably has been a good thing for him.

He still is every bit the puppy in the snow — rolling in it, tunneling his face through it, and just living the good life.

Kris was, however, despondent.

Ginger’s Back for a Visit

Kris was pretty sure that Ginger wasn’t feeling great the last time she visited. It would make sense, as she wasn’t really herself. She took a longer time to acclimate to being in the house and really didn’t want to interact with anyone for a couple days. Perhaps she was upset about travel or remembering her old house, but this time she was just her old Ginger self.

She isn’t as affectionate as Brix, but she was immediately upstairs walking around like the queen she is. Bernoulli has matured a ton and was obviously ecstatic to see her every morning, but he didn’t lick her. He would run up, smile at her, and run away.

Ginger also got along SO WELL with Brix. Brix really wanted to be her friend and tried every trick in his book — from jazz hands, to zoomies, to cleaning his tail. After day three the two of them were buds, walking around the house together, and Ginger let Brix pounce at her tail. Very, very cute!

Both Kris and I got some Ginger snuggle time, which was really special. It made taking Adam, Annalise, and Ginger back up to Edmonton pretty bittersweet.

Extreme Tubing

Annalise (Adam’s girlfriend) suggested we try extreme tubing, which opened at our local ski hill on Family Day. Monday in Canada was Family Day and a holiday, so we said yes. We met up with Annalise’s family and dragged our tubes up to the top of a massive hill.

Ok. So I went first to be brave, and the first run was terrifying. I’ve had some hard crashes in my life tobogganing, and the number one rule is that if you start going backwards down a hill you are literally going to die. Within moments my tube was going backwards, and the hill undulates, so over the rises it would fly off the ground a bit.

Some pretty serious physics must have gone into designing the hill, because the tube never tipped, and I made it to the end without becoming roadkill. Each run after that was a ton of fun. You can actually link up with other tubes and spin around faster. Adam got some really fun footage on our new sport camera, which some of you would have seen on social media.

It was a lot of fun to spend that time as a family.

Ok — let’s get to the rest of the newsletter!

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The Science Pawdcast is back!

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I normally take all of January off from The Science Pawdcast, but with Gord’s heart attack and stroke right before Christmas, it’s been more like a month and half.

At any rate Kris and I put together a really good show this week, with an awesome guest. We talk about how babies can likely keep a musical beat and how seniors with pets may struggle more that we think. Dr. Raven Baxter is back as our guest!

You can find our podcast everywhere!

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We hope to have some new designs and products in our store in the next couple weeks, so look for an announcement there!

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4. This newsletter has a donation/paid version.

5. Lastly, our Paw Pack Plus is like our patreon. Kris and I, along with hundreds of our fans have built a really vibrant community with tons of bonus content and live chats every week.

We cherish the community support we receive and it drives us to continue to provide great content for everyone!

Talk next week!