Winter

Molly was a short-haired dog with very little extra fat on her living for at least four months of the year in a cold, cold world.

Molly spent most of her first winter indoors, but, after the long slow process of finally getting her housetrained, she had to go outside, not just for purposes of elimination but for exercise, too.

What winter meant in our household, as I mentioned to Bruce one time, was months of struggling the dog into coats and boots. Molly hated these things, but not as much as she hated being wet and cold.

Molly's first set of boots - NeoPaws - that cost almost as much as people boots.

Molly sported over her sixteen years an untold number of dog coats, none of which really fit. They were always too big, too small - especially across the chest - too long or too short, even the ones that were made specially for her. There was no doubt that they kept her at least a bit warmer than she would have been naked, but naked was always Molly's favourite outfit.

Molly needed a lot of coats at one time. She as a low-slung dog in a dirty world and one walk was enough to make a coat unfit to wear until it had been washed. In 2009, I got her three lovely hand knit pure wool coats, not that she seemed all that thrilled to have them.

For a couple of years in her youth, we could actually get Molly to enjoy herself in the snow. By accident we discovered that she loved to fetch snowballs. And if snowballs weren't an option, she would happily chase after chunks of ice. I have a memory of seeing Molly in full coat and booties tearing over the frozen playing field of Jarvis Collegiate in hot pursuit of a flung ice shard. 

But that happy period didn't last too long. Boots were just too big a challenge. They would either not stay on her feet because they were not snug enough, or would be so snug that they hurt her. Snug or not, she couldn't stand having them on her feet. After many, many attempts to find the right kind of boot over several winters, we gave boots up as a lost cause. Molly didn't mind walking on clean snow, so we would carry her over the salt and slush of the sidewalks and deposit her where she could roam happily barefoot for the brief time to do her business and then we'd return to the great indoors.

Winter ran contrary to all the things Molly valued most: being naked, being warm, being dry. Every year as the weather turned cold I would carry around a small worry about the discomfort winter caused Molly. As she aged, the worry grew.

Wintertime, summer and fall, many humans concerned themselves with her well-being, not least of all her walkers.