Thin ice

We are looking after our neighbour's dog Kiera, for a couple of days, so taking her out for walks has meant that I've been getting rather more excercise than is normal for me.

As if the novelty of being dragged about by an enthusiastic springer spaniel wasn't enough, the fact that we've had a pretty good covering of snow has made it even more entertaining. For a dog, even the most boring looking bit of hedgerow seems to take on added sniff-worthiness when it's smothered in snow, giving all the regular routes added value.

Most of our walks include bits of canal towpath, but as we've been having temperatures of ten below zero whole sections of the canal are frozen over. Narrow boats are ice-locked at their moorings and the ducks are skating about on the surface as they compete for scraps of bread. The only place where the water remains unfrozen is beneath the bridges and this where most of the ducks congregate when they've had enough of people laughing at them as they slither helplessly about on the treacherous surface of the ice.

Spaniels are typically keen to involve themselves with water, not to mention ducks, and Kiera is no exception to this rule, but there is no way that I'm going to allow her off the lead in these conditions. If you think that this is a bit unsporting, consider this.

A few years ago, a friend of ours was walking his dog along the towpath in similar icy conditions to those that we have at the moment. His dog was off the lead and had run onto the ice to harass the ducks. The ducks took a dim view of this and headed for the open patch of water near a bridge, so the dog followed. When the dog neared the clear patch of water, the progressively thinning ice broke under his weight.
The dog was unable to clamber up through the hole and vanished beneath the frozen surface.
Our friend tried to rescue the dog by breaking the ice, but by the time he had waded into the canal, located the unlucky creature and pulled him from the water, the dog was dead.

I was considering this unhappy tale as we strolled along the path, because on the loose snow lying on the ice covered canal were footprints where people had been walking.

The footprints were of an adult and a small child...