Wintertime Houndliness

In case anyone has been wondering what my dogs have been up to lately, the answer is:

not much.

My dogs are hyperactive spazzes, so we generally like to take them out for exercise as much as possible.  In winter, however, they simply refuse to go.  Literally.  The won't go for walks without Lucy demanding to be carried, they won't go outside to play, and sometimes won't even go to the bathroom.  When it's below 20 degrees and we take them out for a bathroom break, they just whine at us pathetically and hold up their feet as if to say, "Mom!  Dad!  Our feet are cold!"  If they could, I swear they'd lift all their feet out of the snow at once.  Sometimes it's so bad they simply refuse to do what they need to out there, which inevitably leads to accidents inside.  It would help if it didn't take Lucy a solid 15 minutes to pick a spot to use.  By the time she picks a spot, we're so frozen through ourselves that we've run out of sympathy about her cold feet.

We have boots for them, but it takes a good 10 minutes to put 8 boots on two uncooperative and highly distractible dogs.  And if we're going out because someone asked to go out, neither one will wait those 10 minutes.  Someone will inevitably poop on the floor while I'm putting boots on the other dog.  We can't leave them on all the time, either, because they will just busily work at removing them, and in the process will completely destroy their expensive boots.  Thus, I gave up on boots for bathroom breaks long ago, and they're just going to have to cope with their cold feet.

Anywho, aside from whining about the cold, they've been ripping around my 179 year old house as if it were an indestructible race track, bouncing off the furniture and the walls.  When they're not being spastic, you can see they have it rough:

They're lying on a giant, floppy stuffed hound that we bought them.  In the foreground is their giant, floppy stuffed bear.  They're in front of the fire.

Simon's getting fat and lazy.  For that matter, so is the cat Tucker and so am I.  So, while I can pick on them and complain about their aversion to cold, I also get it.  I tend to want to eat comfort foods and hibernate every winter, too.  Simon and I will just have to start our jogging routine again in the spring.  I for one, will be cursing my laziness over the cold months.  I do every spring.

Between now and then, though, move over hounds.  That looks like a nice spot for a snooze.