Salt along East State.

From the first real freeze until the piles go gray in March, East State and the Commons carry rock salt. The crews are doing their job. The stone is walkable because of it. The salt still comes inside in a dog's paws and on whatever part of the lead touched the ground.

Fresh crystals are sharp. After an hour of sun on the paving they turn to brine. Brine is the part that gets into leather. A lead that drags picks it up at the tip. People wipe the tip, hang the lead on a peg, and think the job is done. The brine is already in the fiber end, and in the stitch holes near the handle if the handle knocked a salted step.

Salt pulls moisture out of the hide and leaves a pale crust. The leather goes stiff at that spot and cracks later, usually on a cold week, not on the day you walked. Rinse it the same day. Lukewarm water, folds open, hung to dry away from the radiator. Saddle soap after it is dry, if you still see a crust. Soap on salt, before a rinse, grinds the crystals in. A little oil later if the hide has gone hard. Do not oil the snap. The pivot collects grit, and grit plus salt is how a brass spring gets rough.

We use a solid brass bolt snap on the leads we sell, not a zinc snap with a brass-colored wash. The cheap spring rusts after one winter of this street. Brass is not magic. It still needs the rinse. The construction, and which fold we will resew, is on the leather page.

Paws are the part we will not pretend to treat. Salt irritates the cleft between the pads. You can see the crystals. A rinse at the end of the walk does more than a dry cloth, which pushes the grains further in. From December through March we keep a low tub of water just inside the door at 215 E State Street, before a dog walks to the beds. We change it when it goes cloudy. On a Saturday that is often before noon. It is a tub. It is not a place to stand with a limping dog and ask us if the pad is all right. A split pad, or a dog that will not walk on one foot, needs a veterinarian.

Booties stay on some dogs and come off others at the first slush pile. We do not stock them. If yours stay on, use them, and still check the paws when you take them off. If they do not stay on, the rinse is the honest method. Crystals also drop out of paws onto apartment stairs and into the wool. Brush the paws dry after the rinse so you are not putting salt water on a bed for the evening. Wet wool can air. Wet wool with salt in it is a crust by morning.

Plan the last two minutes of a Commons walk as cleanup, the way you would stamp snow off your own boots before the hallway. The clay of March is a different mess, gray and slick rather than white and sharp. That one is clay on the waterfront lead. The rinse for both is the mud note, which covers leather, wool, and the line we will not cross into clinic work.