Thanks to winter storm Nemo, over 24" of pretty glorious fresh powder fell on Boston Friday night. It was a proper blizzard, with clapbord-rattling wind and impressive drifts. The city, erring on the side of prevention, shut down public transit and enforced a 24-hour driving ban - effectively creating a blustery ghost town, with only the occassional public works pick-up sloppily shoving through the accumulation. By morning, the main streets had been reasonably maintained, but just about everything else (parked cars, sidewalks, front yards, back decks and garden gnomes) was positively burried. Some sidestreets had yet to see any kind of plow. For this Vermonter, the morning brought with it a wonderland.

Oscar quite obviously dissagreed with my enthusiasm.
But the Beast was a sweet-faced trooper and trotted along with his pack as we skiied our way through the kingdom, admiring the magnificence of the occassion.


For all his weight and serious-ness, Oscar is not a terrible toughie. Maybe I had something to do with that, though I get a sense the Ridgeback breed is rife with divas. On top of an embarassing sensitivity to wet feet, and disgust at any amount of precipitation blowing into his eyes, the Beast is not well insulated against wind and freezing temps by his tight, short coat; if he's not keeping up a vigorous pace, he gets cold, fast. Fair enough, my boy, fair enough. For this reason, we've got a couple coats in rotation - they don't make a sub-zero day a sauna, but they extend his tolerance long enough for a decent walk.

And not a winter walk goes by that he doesn't get a compliment on his wardrobe...


Years ago I discovered Swedish canine coat company, Obtrack - it was love at first sight of their smart, red-on-black tailoring, and I've been a devotee ever since. Full disclosure - these coats are expensive, and a rip or tear will prompt an appearance by your sewing kit before you reach for your credit card to order a replacement. In my humble opinion, they are also worth every penny. For starters: they fit like nothing else - even with shoulder-drawstring panels, velcro collar tabs, and an adjustable buckle over the back to secure the belly panel, the coats come in 13 sizes! meaning a much more exacting fit for your pup than traditional S, M, L. Also: they're DEAD SEXY. AND: they put up to wear - after 5 years of trail runs, Northeast winters, run-ins with barbed wire fences and wrestling with honest to goodness "animals", Oscar's Skrylle was only just this season replaced. His Rogle will need updating in another year or two, but it's still the snuggly go-to when the Beast spends a chilly day in the studio with me.

I sing Obtrack's praises whenever possible, though I have yet to see a SINGLE dog in person wearing one, or even a distributer (I ordered Oscar's coats direct from the Obtrack online shop). I assume they are more common across Europe... guess for now the brand is just our little not-so-closely-kept secret (Obtack, if you're reading this post - you've found your next US sales rep).

And with Valentine's Day just around the corner, we thought a little blatant brand-love might be apropos: 

If you live anywhere in New England, you know it's been FLIPPING FREEZING for the last week or two. The kind of cold that renders sunshine "ineffective" (apparently that's a weatherman term - and shockingly appropriate!). The kind of cold that crystallizes your tears as you weep at the numbing of your fingers and toes. The kind of cold that makes any activty that doesn't include a roaring fire and volumes of hot chocolate seem downright foolish.

Consequently, if you live anywhere in New England, you may also be finding yourself... day-dreaming of summer...


Oh dearest Vermont woods, your wintery beauty is breathtaking indeed, but some days... some days, it's July's verdant spires and sun-splotched trails that sound the best...

Snuggle down and stay warm, friends. 

Initiative: Rescued Bestie Feature, in collaboration with The 13 Project
Featured Canines: Storm (left) & King (right), 4 y/o Great Danes 
Rescue Facilitator: Great Danes Around New England & Big Fluffy Dog Rescue

King and Storm, a steely-blue Great Dane brother and sister pair, first appeared on my radar when I spied them in an urgent post on facebook from the Big Fluffy Dog Rescue (a network of locations from states in the South all the way thru New England). In a photo, the two stood shoulder to shoulder on a beach, and they were... MAGNIFICENT. Danes often have a grand nobility about them (when they're not goofing about like Marmaduke, of course) - these two might as well have been wearing crowns. They were just the type of dogs I internet-stalk late at night (a perverse kind of window-shopping for animals I can't take in that leaves me wishing I had 100 acres and unlimited resources with which to adopt them all...). 

The most proactive thing I could do to help these particular beauties was to forward the posting to a few friends and cross my fingers that the two would be able to find a home - together. It breaks my heart a little to see adult animals end up in shelters who arrive already bonded to a sibling, relative, or best friend. Rescues know enough to advertise for a home that can absorb the influx of more than one adoptee at a time - to eliminate the additional stress of separation - but these homes are not nearly as common, and the larger the dogs, the lower the chances of finding one. With that in mind, there must have been a Dane-loving spirit watching over this team of heavy-weights, because within 48 hours of their initial facebook posting, Storm and King, together, had found a new forever home. By chance, the couple who took them in were friends of a studio mate, and a week later we were discussing an opportunity to meet up.


It turns out, Kathryn and Doug had been searching for a Dane to add to the family for years. Breeder searches didn't seem to be the answer, so Kathryn made a habit of regularly scanning rescue sites, with hopes that a local beast of their preferred temperament would surface. When King and Storm caught her attention - on the same Friday afternoon that I spied them on facebook - she made an immediate inquiry. The rescue responded right back, with urgency. Apparently, this wasn't the first time the two dogs were surrendered for adoption, and as striking as they were, their reappearance in the system set off a chain of alerts through Great Dane Rescues around New England. 

Expecting the process to take days, even weeks - if they were even selected as adopters - Doug jumped in the car that weekend and headed over to take a look at the siblings, to make a quick assessment before they invested too much effort in the chase... And in case you didn't see it coming, he didn't just give them a star of approval, he drove home with a car unexpectedly full of Great Dane.

Despite the intensely hurried adoption process, King and Storm could not possibly have landed themselves in a more wonderful environment. Kathryn and Doug have done more right in their preparations, rearranging of living quarters, and coordinating professional training consult, than I see most new puppy owners do. Whether it's the physical scale of the situation (the dogs combined weigh roughly 300lbs!), or just a powerful sense of responsibility for these two, sweet animal souls (on their 3rd home in 4 years) the couple wasted no time making the successful integration and well-being of their new family members top priority. Never mind that two massive dog crates now dominate the far end of their tidy living room; excuse the fact that a mattress-sized double dog bed now obscures most of their pretty, patterned area rug; and try not to mistake the tasteful raised feeder under the window sill for a coffee table - Kathryn maintains a lovely home - but what truly ties the interior of this house together is the pair of great, snoozing, grey giants curled into soft boulders on the floor. And having witnessed firsthand the structure and firm but loving guidance that is already shaping a beautiful new human-canine relationship (squared!), my money is on this "forever home" lasting.

Sooo, even with a holiday to-do list already busting at the seams, inspiration struck last week when I stumbled on this kinda amazing, albeit ambiguously simple, novelty gingerbread cookie-cutting set. I've made my share of spice-cookie architecture and smiling ginger-boys and girls, but this was something new, something special - and I loved it... but I could so totally do something better...

So I did.

Starting with a silhouette of Oscar's handsome pop, Ruger, and utilizing some very gracious design/engineer friend-consult, I fashioned, step-by-step, my very own custom Ridgeback cookie cutters...


Now, molding tin dog silhouettes to a perfectionist's specs isn't exactly a walk in the park, but lest you think it's all smooth sailing once you've got a bonafide "dough-stamp" - working with raw gingerbread (I'll posit any cookie dough) is, let's just say, rather tricky. *Consider that your molds - dependent on THREE cookies to amicably interlock - have a lean margin for variance in cookie thicknesses; consider that gingerbread rises ever so slightly (and completely uncontrollably) while baking; consider that your icing, depending on how you make it and how thickly you spread it, adds it's own hair to two-hair's thickness; then consider that gingerbread, as a sculptural material, could honestly care less about what you're up to... Add that all up and you've got a recipe for trial and error. Lucky for me, I'm one patient amateur baker...


Many delicious prototypes and test runs later, I had a small pack of "perfect" gingerbread dogs, which I guarded FIERCELY until all photography and special gifting was complete. And now - project documentation buttoned up and posted - I just have a half dozen or so extra reasons to go out for a run or find a treadmill every day for the next month...

*For those curious, the gingerbread recipe I followed was from trusty MarthaStewart.com, as was that for the Royal Icing. And if you're wondering about the icing color, which is actually a bit brighter in person, behold - Neon Food Coloring (yeah, they make that now!).