I got some insight into what we might have done wrong with Storm as a puppy, which might have made him the meathead he is today, more than five years later.

Yesterday afternoon, yes on Sunday, I went to Gotcha Outdoors Adventure Sports Show at the First Church of the Nazarene in Kankakee

In part because I wanted to see Dan Ihrke of Green Acres Sportsman's Club do his dog-training seminar . . . in the church sanctuary.

I wanted to see that--dog training in the church sanctuary and, yes, the dogs did run around the pews--but I also really respect Ihrke as a dog trainer and wanted to pick up some tips.

It is probably too late to break some of the meathead's worst habits, but I gained some pointers about starting right away with establishing memories of behavior with your pup.

Cold enough at some point overnight to hang some of the trees with hoarfrost. I am guessing we had some radiational cooling to drop the temperatures lower than the 9 degrees I read at dawn.

I did not hear the Canada geese on the lake to the west, but I don't know if the hole they had been swimming open finally froze or not.

I checked the ice on the town pond and various holes drilled by other ice fishermen. The loose spots around drilled holes had firmed up overnight.

Yesterday afternoon I had our two youngest kids out. We drilled one of our own holes and redrilled several other holes others had drilled.

But we couldn't catch anything. So one of the things I did this morning was inspect each hole to see if there was any signs of fish around it.

A lone dove fluttered out of the trees by the south edge of the south old clay pit. Near the edge of town, another mourning dove one fluttered off.

As I stood still and watched it, a rabbit spooked from under the pile of rails.

That was it for wildlife. That was the morning ramble timed to catch the dawn, another red-ball one, another cold one.