Is it still snowing where you are? I'm in a northern suburb of Detroit and it's been too cold to do any pruning yet here. Yes, I have leaves already on quite a few of mine and my forsythia just started to bloom but I'm still holding off on pruning. It's still going down into the 20s at night and we keep getting snow. I'm going to wait probably at least another week or so before I start working on them.

You can prune off truly dead wood whenever you like, but as Seil says once you start cutting into the live wood like you want to you may be stimulating extra growth that might be too early for your zone. It all depends on what your season is doing. Seil is a full zone warmer than me technically, but we've had forsythia blooming for 3 weeks and it was 85 this weekend. I don't think we're going to have a frost again in April, which is unprecedented in my experience, but it's a very early and unusual spring. I'm actually done pruning, but that's specific to my local conditions. Seil is closer to you so I'd take her advice over mine.

I always do pruning in two stages, with a light prune to take off the truly dead stuff and get it out of my face first, then a second prune to take it entirely down to the live growing cane. No reason you can't do the first level prune if your fingers are itching, but no reason to rush things either if your season isn't warming up like mine is. Fertilizer really is best once your ground is warmed up and the rose is fully leafed out, which for most of us is still a while off (though most of my roses are pretty danged leafy now).

Cynthia

Yes, I guess ill hold off, still too cold!

Still to cold to even prune here in my zone...Constant cold has frost damaged some of the leaves and new growth I already had that started from earlier warm weather...