I want to be in Florida.......got to wait for my shots at the end of December, but I am already getting cabin fever. I am done with winter the day after Christmas, but in Illinois it is usually mid April before you start to get pleasant weather.
We have to be careful with the dogs. The geese will fly off the islands and then walk on thin ice approaching the main channel where the flow has delayed ice formation. My daughter's dog affectionately called box of rocks will swim into the water chasing the geese, who simply once getting her in the water will fly upstream and within about ten yards squawk at box of rocks who obliges and begins swimming into the current making no progress as the geese just relish what a dumb predator they have found. With ice, box of rocks is a goner. I had strict rules with my children concerning ice. In fifth grade, I had a twin on my bowling team fall through the ice at the post office taking a shortcut over the river. His brother made it. I fell through ice when I was in third grade. I could not get out, and I could not feel the bottom. The more I tried, the more the surface ice would break, and still not bottom. I was alone and starting to slip from the effects of the cold water on my body when I found bottom, and just began running from the pain of the cold. I ran probably close to six blocks when all of a sudden I realized that the water next to my body had warmed and the running saved me. The final ice event was falling off an oil tank with a full elbow cast on a broken arm and getting caught in the river current as it moved me to an ice flow which I would go under.....again I found bottom and made it to shore.
So my kids who are adults and have kids always shake their head when I start lecturing about ice, but understand......a dog can drown on ice, but unless you have proper tools to rescue a dog and people to back that up.......you do not go on ice.
We have to be careful with the dogs. The geese will fly off the islands and then walk on thin ice approaching the main channel where the flow has delayed ice formation. My daughter's dog affectionately called box of rocks will swim into the water chasing the geese, who simply once getting her in the water will fly upstream and within about ten yards squawk at box of rocks who obliges and begins swimming into the current making no progress as the geese just relish what a dumb predator they have found. With ice, box of rocks is a goner. I had strict rules with my children concerning ice. In fifth grade, I had a twin on my bowling team fall through the ice at the post office taking a shortcut over the river. His brother made it. I fell through ice when I was in third grade. I could not get out, and I could not feel the bottom. The more I tried, the more the surface ice would break, and still not bottom. I was alone and starting to slip from the effects of the cold water on my body when I found bottom, and just began running from the pain of the cold. I ran probably close to six blocks when all of a sudden I realized that the water next to my body had warmed and the running saved me. The final ice event was falling off an oil tank with a full elbow cast on a broken arm and getting caught in the river current as it moved me to an ice flow which I would go under.....again I found bottom and made it to shore.
So my kids who are adults and have kids always shake their head when I start lecturing about ice, but understand......a dog can drown on ice, but unless you have proper tools to rescue a dog and people to back that up.......you do not go on ice.