Snow dog hops into winter

Let it snow. That's certainly Cassie's motto.

Our Sheltie puppy loves the stuff even when it practically covers her up.

She can't run through the snow. She has to hop through it like a big rabbit.

Cassie couldn't get enough of the snow last week. She begged repeatedly to go exploring in the snow. Our daughter, Bailey, obliged, venturing out into the winter wonderland with Cassie by her side.

I'm thrilled we have a snow dog.

If she was just a little bigger, we could use her as a canine snowplow to clear our driveway.

That doesn't bother our dog. She loves to sink up to her nose in the white stuff.

Getting her to come back indoors is harder than getting a bundled up Bailey back inside.

Like Cassie, Bailey loves snow. She loves walking in it, running through it, and making wet snowballs. Snow sticks to Bailey like lunchroom food.

When she comes indoors after a sojourn in the snow, she's covered in the wet, white stuff. It's like inviting a human avalanche inside.

Cassie resembles a snowball too as she trots through the house leaving white paw prints everywhere.

I have a friend who loves the snow. She lives for those winter storms.

I'm not nearly as excited by all the flakes.

Like many parents, I have a healthy respect for snow. I just don't want to have to clear it off the driveway, brush it off our cars or plow through it to get to work.

Snow looks great in those holiday TV commercials. It doesn't look so good after city plows turn it into the Berlin wall at the bottom of your driveway.

You can't blame the street crews. They've got to put the snow somewhere.

I did manage to get our driveway shoveled the other day. But only to a point. I've got neighbors whose driveways were scraped so clean that there wasn't a single snowflake on them one day after the winter storm struck.

Our driveway never looks that way. In past years, I've depended largely on Mother Nature to melt the snow. This time, I decided to help, shoveling off some but not all of the white stuff. There's no reason to overdo it.

I don't want to take away all of Mother Nature's fun. After all, the best thing about snow is that it melts -- just not soon enough for some of us less wintry types.

Cassie doesn't like the rain, but she sees nothing the least bit frightening about snow. If Cassie were human, she would be making perpetual snow angels.

I never intended to raise a snow dog. If she were just a little bigger, we could turn her into a sled dog and mush our way around the yard. If nothing else, this would give a smooth appearance to our yard which without that blanket of white resembles moon craters.

Landscaping is everything, even in the snow.

While Bailey loves to get personal with the snow, Becca has a far more removed attitude about the precipitation.

She sees no reason to march around in the stuff.

But like Bailey, Becca understands that enough snow means an unexpected vacation from school.

Of course, that means parents have to take turns staying home. This allows you to time to contemplate clearing the snow off the driveway before you abandon the idea and decide to take a nap.

Even kids know that some things are truly snow jobs.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.