The Dog Between Us

The Mountain Between Us

I got out of bed the other night because Chandler was doing his tap dance at the bedroom doorway. It was four in the morning. The tap dance is what Chandler does when he has to go outside, Scout just jumps on the bed and licks my face. Anyway, as I was getting out of bed I brushed up against the wall. That woke me up good because it was like an ice cube. I've noticed that about the walls that are up against the outside brick of the house. They have gotten quite cold. I call it cold soak. The temperatures have been so cold here for the last two weeks, in the teens or below, that the cold is starting to soak through the walls.

On Saturday night Mark and I turned up the thermostat and watched a Netflix movie, The Mountain Between Us. Not a good movie to watch when it's five degrees outside. It's all about two strangers who charter a plane so that they can get to Denver, because all the experienced airlines have cancelled flights because of bad weather. Right there you know it's going to be a stupid movie, and that is reaffirmed when the charter pilot informs them that, "No, I didn't file a flight plan. VFR is what we'll use, no problem."  So, the pilot has a stroke, the plane crashes, yet the two strangers and the pilot's dog survive. Now they have to find their way down out of the mountains to civilization. It keeps getting more stupid as the movie progresses, as evidenced by both Mark and I only caring about the dog. We were both much more worried that they were going to kill off the dog, or lose the dog, than we ever cared about the two stars of the movie. Anyway, watching those idiots on that cold, snowy mountain only made me feel the cold outside our house that much more. Kind of like when I read a bunch of Jack London stories in the middle of winter once.

Back to me getting up at four in the morning to let the dogs out in the sub-zero cold. I put on my slippers, my coat, hat, and gloves, then opened the back door. As I stood there watching Chandler trying to find a place to poop while walking like his feet were on fire, I thought of that dog in the movie. He walked down a mountain, through deep snow, and it never seemed to bother him. Yet if my dog Chandler can't pinch off a loaf within thirty seconds of going outside in the snow, he gives up.