Snowing at Silent Valley Club

Our RV in the snow at Silent Valley Club, near Banning, CA.

I’m sure I’ve told you about snow before. I was born in snow country and generally I like it. Snow is like rain that doesn’t make noise or get you wet (much). Snow is friendly unlike rain which gets you all wet and smelly and cold. You can walk in snow without running away from it like you do in rain. The colder it is outside, the better the snow behaves. You can shake it off when you feel it starting to get wet on your fur. Dad just brushes it off his jacket, and Mom slings her head around to get rid of it, kinda like I do.

It snowed this week in our RV Park at Silent Valley (CA).

This week we had a lot of snow while we were in Silent Valley. At first, the snow was nice. Dad and I walked through the entire park while it was snowing. I would shake every so often, and I didn’t get wet. The snow tickles my paws and feels good to walk in it at first. I can see my paw prints if I stop to look back. It’s fun to see where you’ve been! Well, Dad took pictures (what else), and I tried to sniff the remaining p-mail before it was covered by the snow. P-mail gets faint after a lot of snow falls, so I was in a hurry to sniff before the ground was clean smelling.

I like to look back and see where I've been in the snow.

I like to roll in the snow. It scratches my head and back for me!

When the snow gets thicker, I like to roll in it. I did this as a puppy and it still feels good. When it gets colder, it even feels better to roll in, because it scratches my back real good! It also feels good to just lie down in it. With my thick coat, it’s just right for me.

Sometimes the snow gets deep, like here at RedRock RV Park. Hmm. it says 26 inches. What's that in paw widths?

Even when the snow piles up thick, I can smell things beneath it. It’s fun to dig in because it’s so easy, and you don’t get dirty. I smell ground squirrels in their holes. Dad thinks its amazing that I can find the holes so quickly. But, I never see a squirrel. I think he hides when he hears me digging.

Sometimes you can barely see the motorhome when it snows.

Sometimes, the snow falls so heavy that you can’t even see the motorhome. Snow is white and so is our motorhome, so if it wasn’t for my ability to smell, I’d get lost then. That happened a couple years ago at Silent Valley. It snowed so hard that everything looked white in front of me. I was shaking my coat every minute to get that darn snow off my back.

I slip on the ice and don't like it. I want to be in control of where I go!

Once the snow falls and then it gets dark and then light again, often the snow is very hard on top. (Dad says it freezes because it gets so cold.) It tricks you because you start to walk on it and BOW you fall all four feet to the ground. It kinda scares me a little bit and it’s no fun to walk a couple steps not knowing if you are going to fall at every paw step. When that happens, I try to find where Dad has walked and I follow in his BIG footsteps. He wears extra big shoes in the snow and I can find a place to walk where he has pressed the snow to the ground.

I love to run in the snow.

Sometimes, I’ll run in the snow and suddenly my legs go every which way and I’m sliding without any control. Dad says I hit ice. I don’t like to slide on ice. I like to know where I’m going to end up before I start, and you just can’t trust ice to lead you to the right place! Sometimes we see little kids riding the ice and snow down a hill and screaming. I’m not sure if they are having fun or just scared, but it happens a lot.

Oh yes, another hazard of snow is the big clumps that come from trees. I was running under the trees and suddenly I was half buried in a bunch of snow that came from the sky. At first I thought Dad had thrown a GREAT BIG snowball at me (he throws small ones), but Dad says the “widow maker” did it. Dad says a “widow maker” is what you call a lot of snow that falls out of the tree on top of you.

This is embarrassing! Dad says I should have gone into the outhouse. Not my style!

This week, the snow came down the next day too and took away our power. Dad doesn’t like it when it takes away our power. Dad and Mom need power to use their computers and their TVs and their Microwaves and their lights and their heat. I don’t really need power. I’m self-contained, I guess. But humans are different. We have to run the smelly and noisy generator that makes our own power, and it costs money that Dad says takes away from my treats. I don’t like it either! So for 78 hours we were without power. We couldn’t go out much either because it was hard to walk in the deep snow. It was cold at night for Mom and Dad, but it doesn’t bother me. (Remember, I have a permanent coat on me!)

We walked all over the RV Park after the storm. That's our motorhome.

We took a long walk the next morning and Dad took lots of photos and I got to roll around in 4 paw widths of snow. I like to see the park when its all white. I can see the tree squirrels real easy too. They scurry across the snow and jump into the Oak trees before I can get them. The sky was clear and the trees were full of snow.

I like Silent Valley when it snows.

After a couple days though, snow is no longer my friend. It gets really wet and cold on my paws and makes mud which Mom and Dad have to clean off my paws before I come into the motorhome. Plus the trees start to rain and I get wet again. Yuck! Ice is everywhere and I slip and slide. So, I like to stay inside then and listen to the sounds of Dad and Moms creaking chairs, and look out the window for squirrels. They are looking for buried nuts that they hide just for this occasion. Also, the birds are digging for seed that Dad threw out to them.

My feet are getting cold!

Snow is OK, as long as there isn’t too much of it. Anyway, it goes away soon and then I’m back to sniffing as usual.

Dad and Mom say to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Maybe next time they’ll tell me what that means and I can say it with a little more meaning, but until then,

Merry Christmas.

Arf

Reggie