I am thrilled to unleash the logo I’ve been working on getting for nearly a year. Looking forward to passing out my sleek new business cards – after the winter holiday craziness is over!

The winter holidays, which for me is roughly December through mid-January, is the busiest time of the year. Many people go away and return at the same time. I start receiving reservation requests for this time period in August. It is never too early to make a Christmas-New Year pet sitting reservation.

I am fully booked, and due to high volume, will respond to messages slower.

I am really hoping it won’t be as bitterly cold and miserable weather-wise as it was last year, when there were a couple weeks of -25°C weather and snow as far as the eye could see. I also no longer have the luxury of an indoor parking spot, and have already had one of those mornings where your neighbours swoop in to help you chip out the ice under your spinning tires while your child is watching from inside the slowly heating car. Montrealers are awesome – everyone knows how it is, and the spontaneous generosity of spirit always astounds me.

“It’s my fault,” I said, as we hacked away at the ice, realizing I should have cleared the slush from the tires the previous day before it froze into solid ice overnight.

“It’s winter,” my neighbour corrected. Yes. It. Is. One of my ice scrapers has already been obliterated.

Generally, I survive pet sitting in winter by always keeping 2 things with me in the car: an insulated water bottle to prevent my water from freezing while I make my pet visit rounds, and a big Stanley vacuum bottle of hot sweetened milky tea that I sip from in between each stop. I don’t drive long enough in between stops to warm up the car at all, and my feet and hands are always cold. That thermos is amazing at keeping liquids hot all day, and holds the equivalent of three large mugs of tea. Maybe I’ll do hot chocolate one day to mix it up. If you put in a cinnamon stick, the continuous heat of the vacuum bottle will infuse the hot chocolate with a warm, rich spicy flavour to help beat out the chill.