On Saturday morning Skylar, Duncan, and I went up into the mountains with our friends Andrea and Shane to stay at a cabin and go snow-shoeing, which is a fancy way of saying "wear comically-large shoes and walk in the cold."

Andrea and I went to high school together. To prove it, she brought to the cabin a video of the two of us performing a song and dance on stage about kissing under the mistletoe in 2001. She showed this to Skylar, which is an actual hate crime.

Andrea and I were in the same choir together in high school, which is proof that the talent range at our school was wide since Andrea had an incredible voice and I mostly just mouthed the words so I wouldn't ruin things for the group.

We brought our dogs to the cabin, mostly so we could force Duncan to wear doggy shoes made for the snow.




He stood in one spot after we put them on and wouldn't move for 20 minutes. Finally, after taking a couple of awkward and hilarious steps, he decided he liked them and wore them for most of the day, sprinting through the deep mountain snow and looking like he was on heroin.



It was a lazy day, which was a perfect way to end a week in which Skylar and I had both been running at full speed and on empty.


Then night fell.

Duncan isn't the best sleeper. He's not terrible, but a couple times a week he will wake us up in the middle of the night to go outside and do his business. Sometimes he decides that 2:00 is the perfect time to finally go eat his bowl of dog food that he has ignored for 48 hours. It's not the best.

I don't know what happened in that cabin, but Mr. Duncan Doodle would not sleep. He stayed up all night long, whining and pawing the door. I would take him outside and he would just go sit in the snow until I called him to come back in.

Skylar abandoned us at about 1:00 AM, finding a bed somewhere else in the cabin and leaving me to deal with this mess completely by myself.

This shall be remembered, Sky man.

By the time 7:00 AM rolled around, I was googling dog shelters to see who might be willing to take him. I'm purposefully not defining "him" for you.

I walked out of the bedroom and found princess Skylar sleeping like a cherubim who has never experienced discomfort. I poked his face and snapped at him, "you shall be on dog duty forevermore."

For his part, Duncan has been sleeping for the last three days. He can do that, because he doesn't have a job.

He's lucky he's the cutest animal to ever grace this world.

~It Just Gets Stranger