Christmas in Sun Valley

Wow!  What a vacation 🙂  Since we’ve been dating, we have Christmas’ed in some lovely places — Maui, New York City, Valdosta, our beautiful Colorado — and now — Sun Valley, Idaho!  This was especially nice since all the puppies made the trip with us!  A lot happened, deets follow 🙂

We were scheduled to leave around 6:15 on Wednesday (the 21st) after Marc wrapped up work, too bad the snow started falling at 5:00.  The snow DID NOT let up.  It was miserable, slow, and sketchy going.  Full on blizzard.  We made it to Laramie just as the Wyoming Dept of Transportation was cranking down the gates to close I-80.  Bummer.  We were trying to make it to Rawlins as we were tracking the storm (*love* our iPhone and modern technology!) and past Rawlins the blizzard let up.  Oh well, it was 11:15 at night (please note, on a normal weather day it should have only been like 9:00pm) and we were ready to call it a night.  Luckily, there was a very recently updated Best Western that took dogs, so we had a place to sleep!  There were also at least 16 Fed-Ex drivers who were stranded there with us — crazy hearing their stories of blizzards and Christmas delivery schedules!!

Thursday morning, we had breakfast with our new Fed-Ex friends who gave us some tips (wait 1/2 an hour after they re-open the interstate to let all the crazies get out of the way — plus they’ll heat up the road!) and waited for 80 to open up.  It finally opened at 9:30, and we were on the road by 10.  It was another several hours of sketchy road conditions until we got well into Utah.  By about 6:30pm we were in Burley, Idaho — Marc’s paternal side of the family’s home town.  Marc was so excited driving down Main St.  He pointed out all the stores and buildings he remembered from spending summers in Burley.  He stopped by to see his grandparents home and found out that it was now on “Spencer Circle!”  Turns out that his grandparents left a good chunk of their land to the city, so they named the street in their honor.  Cute, huh?  We also saw his grandfather’s office supply store on Main, and were surprised to see it is still an office supply store!  Even after decades!  After the stroll down memory lane, we finished up the drive to Sun Valley.  It had been a *really* long day.

Friday was Marc’s birthday!! After opening some presents, we booted up (see our dissertation below) the pups and headed to the golf course behind the condo to let the Vizslas burn some major steam.  They had **SUCH** a great time!  Schmav, however, spent the entire walk inside Marc’s jacket — he was having none of it!  Then it was time to catch up with the family.  Turns out Marc’s sister-in-law, Bev, also shares the 23rd as her birthday.  In their honor, Marc’s parents planned a very nice evening for all of us (Marc’s Mom + Step-dad, Marc’s Bro + Bev + their two girls) to put us all in the mood for Christmas.  We went over to the Sun Valley Lodge, grabbed some hot toddies, and headed out for a sleigh ride to the restaurant.  Actually, the snow was a little light, so it was a wagon ride, but Christmas carols were sung and it was **freaking** cold so it may as well have been a sleigh ride 🙂  Dinner was amazing, and we were surprised with an amazing choir that made an appearance and serenaded us Sun Valley style.  It was a PERFECT night.

This is pretty much how our whole vacation went — booting up & running the dogs, hanging with the family, reading books, and playing Mexican train — basically, we took it easy!  We also had the obvious highlight of Christmas — with an amazing meal courtesy of Marc’s mom.  Seriously yummy.

Now for the dissertation on booting up:
Before we left, we did a little research on dog boots, snowshoeing, etc.  We settled on a system of applying vet wrap up the dog’s legs, then a sock, then the boot, then duct tape starting at the top of the boot and stopping just below the vet wrap border.  Here are some more tips:
1) Constantly shift the dog’s weight as you wrap, fit the shoe, and tape.  For example, if you are outfitting the front right leg, set it down along every step and lift the left front leg.  This will ensure their foot is all the way in the boot and that the tape isn’t too tight.
2) In the pictures, the tape goes pretty high up the front legs.  Our V’s didn’t seem to like it that high, so depending on how deep the snow is, they might be more comfortable with shorter duct tape socks.
3) Look for cute duct tape!  We found racing flag for Indy (appropriate for our Indy-500 dog) and polka-dots and leopard print for Karma — it made it so fun!  And we got LOTS of compliments on their cute “socks.”
4) Size the boots!  Indy ended up in a small and Karma in an XXS!  Vizslas have very compact feet — so don’t base your decision on weight alone!  For a quick video on how to size the boots, click here.

We hope you all had a very happy holiday season — Happy New Year!