Our house is built into a hill so the basement has a door straight into our backyard – it’s hard to open and shudders the whole place when it slams shut. There are two other exterior doors on the first floor, but they’re both at the top of a set of stairs that makes it awkward to shut the door behind you while Martie tears her lead out of your hands.

Frustrated with this embarrassing juggling act every time Martie needs to visit our backyard, I have been training her to use the door in the basement to go outside. In a totally selfish act of laziness, I started to leave her lead behind and eventually just watched her from the doorway. We’ve made it into a sort of game; all I have to do is walk over to the door and she waits for me to throw it open, dashes outside, does her business and dashes back in, thunders upstairs and waits beside the cupboard with the dog treats inside.

She has performed this feat – which eliminates the need for me to don boots, jacket and hat every time nature calls – flawlessly for the past two weeks.

Until last week.

Our driveway, sandwiched between our house, a steep slope and the garage, cannot be cleared by a snowplow. Snow removal is done either by hand or with a snow-blower. The latter is definitely not in this year’s budget so I have spent a lot of quality time with Martie tromping up and down the driveway wielding a snow scoop, cursing the town plow trucks as they pass. 

There are two piles of snow on opposite sides of our garage so massive I have to lay a piece of plywood down to reach the peak, where I deposit what seems like tons of white power. Our teenage neighbor – who I have yet to meet – snowboards down them when we’re not home. I would tell him the best way to “get air” would be to skid down the entire icy driveway and veer off onto one of the piles before running into the garage door, but I’m not sure his mother would appreciate the advice. 

Nevertheless, I have tried to make them as enormous as possible. 

Rather than placing the snow on the sidewalk – to be redistributed across my front lawn by a public works snow blower – I take the extra time to deposit it in either of the two piles. One more snowstorm like last week’s and I may have to install a chair lift.

The piles are great for my neighbor, but not for Martie.

Last night I flung open the basement door and Martie bounded across the threshold, then disappeared – swallowed by my mountain, which now takes up almost half our yard. She must have turned around somehow because before I could start laughing she came leaping back inside, tracking snow all the way to the door on the first floor.

Looks like her new trick will have to wait until the spring training season.

— Nate Jones