Dog Days of Winter

Cooperstown's 41st Winter Carnival logo
click the picture for the official carnival website

Many communities sponsor winter festivals and carnivals to help break up the tedium, monotony, and boredom of a long season of dark and chilly. We went to Cooperstown's festival our first winter here and were entertained all day with the doings. Snow sculptures, foot races, wiffle ball out on the frozen lake, sports and dancing at the Clark Sports Center, and special dinners and tastings are just a few of the activities. Our favorite, of course, that first year were the dog activities, including obedience and agility contests. So many dogs were running around sniffing, playing, and having fun - and those were just the "spectator" dogs - that their exuberance was catching. We went to the following year's carnival but the dog events had been dropped for that year. Same for the next two years.

Dogs were back on the schedule this year - how could they not after developing a doggie theme? - so we decided to take Goofus and Doofus Mochie and Toby to see what the other canines were doing. The dogs did better than we had hoped and seemed to greatly enjoy themselves although it took forever for Mochie to calm down and stop squealing like a little girl pig in his excitement with all the dogs, people, and hubbubbing commotion. No growls or aggression by either of our two made us both very proud of them. I think there were more dogs as spectators than were in the dog show. There were also teams of sled dogs for demonstrations, giving sled rides, and answering endless questions - their handlers of course, silly.

The mild winter weather - some snow but not too much, temps in the 20s, and periods of sun - held up so being outside for a couple of hours was not uncomfortable. After the dog doings we took ours for a walk through town and ended up down by the lake at Lake Front Park (clever name) where the New York State Snow Sculpting contest is to take place during Snowfest 2007 from Thursday 2/15 through Sunday 2/18. Two action packed weekends of fun back-to-back.