Hi Everyone!!!! I'm sure you're all as excited as I am that we are getting closer and closer to Spring! There's just a few weeks now until the official start of Spring. This has been a really exciting month for me because the anniversary of my "Gotcha Day" (the day my parents took me home from rescue) is in February. I celebrated the actual day with my own mini ice cream cup (Mom buys me the little single-serve cups of strawberry-flavored Haagen-Dazs for very special occasions) and my parents always donate to rescue organizations in my honor on my Gotcha Days, as well as on my birthdays. Mom put together this video to commemorate my Gotcha Day this year.
Otherwise it's been a pretty quiet month for us. We've been doing more running (when the surface conditions have permitted given the weather we had, especially at the beginning of the month) and we've done more skijoring in some of the snow we've had. This last time we skijored, we tried out the Warbasse Junction section of the Paulinskill Valley trail and it was really nice. Dad and I had a lot of room to go ahead of Mom (she's very slow compared to us) and there's a nice section we turn off onto that runs along a nice pond where a lot of ducks and swans hang out. We see a lot of waterfowl while we're out on the trails and I love to watch them (and dream of chasing them, if only I were allowed to!). We all really enjoy seeing all of the wildlife when we're out and about in Sussex County, it really is one of the most enjoyable aspects of living in this area of New Jersey.
This cold and flu season this year has been such a nasty one for everyone unfortunately. Dad just recently came down with the flu, although thankfully it was a relatively mild bout. Mom has been trying to keep their immune systems functioning as best as possible with all of her tasty (from what my Dad says, I stick with a strict meat and ice cream diet myself ;) soup and other recipes. One of the more recent pots of broth she's cooked up was a red lentil soup that was filled with lots of carrots, onion, celery and of course, red lentils which are so, so very healthy. Lentils are a great source of protein and they even lower cholesterol. To humor my Dad, Mom does mitigate the cholesterol-lowering benefit of the lentils to some extent though with this soup as she cooks some bacon in the pot and sautes the veggies in the leftover oil, rather than using butter. She also uses a can of organic diced tomatoes in lieu of the diced fresh ones, given that it's tough to find tomatoes that are any better than so-so this time of year. My parents find that soups are pretty easy to whip up during the weekends when there is a little more time and they pack up so great as leftovers for meals throughout the week. This gives them a lot more time to dote on me of course :)
Well that's all I have to report for this short month of February!!! I'm really looking forward to touching base with all of you again once the Spring season is officially upon us!!! Until then, stay warm, safe and well!!!!
Much love and sloppy puppy kisses,
Piper the Rescue Mutt
