Every winter....but now, an Ode to Skye-dog

Sometimes we just let the pictures lead us to where our heart wants to go

Every winter we seem to think that the snow comes too soon or too late. In my case, it’s always too early and I wrack my brain trying to remember how this year compares with those that have come before.

So I decided to look back in my photo inventory to see if I had commemorated the ‘first snow’. And yes, indeed, I had. Every year for the last ten. Here is the scoop:

• December 8, 2011

• November 24, 2012

• November 9, 2013

• November 17, 2014

• December 27, 2015

• November 21, 2016

• November 19, 2017

• October 28, 2018

• November 28, 2019

• November 22, 2020

• December 1, 2021

and this year, November 16.

Looking back sometimes I see a smattering of the white stuff….and I am suddenly blessed with a 2011 photo of my beloved border collie, Skye-dog…and down the rabbit hole of memories I go…

Other times it was thin and icy, with temperatures that vacillated between freezing and thawing, making for treacherous walking. Here, I remember the last winter with Skye-dog, wearing her body harness so I could help get her in and out of the car and keep her from losing her footing, if needed…

Oh, how these photos tug at my heartstrings, remembering the steady, easy dog she was and how we understood and knew every part of one another. That discoloured dot on her front paw, the growing lump on her side, the way she held her tail, the tired look in her eyes when she became old. How she began to walk behind me rather than in front - so she could keep an eye on me, I imagined, but also so that I could scout the path…and become the one of us who would keep us both safe.

This was her last winter with us. And I must have known it because I measured the moments in copious photos of her. Not least of which her marvellous elfin feet.

Photos that marked our connection, that made it more real, in a way that I felt I had to, for one day she would be gone…

And then, I am urged along to find the last photo I took of her. Lying down, of course, as she could only manage to walk long enough to do her toileting, and then would plop on the grass, this was in July, and with her eyes half open, feel the breeze on her face and glimpse the wind move the green leaves on the trees.

And we would sit, knowing the end was near, but never speaking of it.