They are two very small creatures. Alike, yet different. Sometimes they act independently of one another and often enough they act in concert with each other. They sleep together, play together and eat together. When we're out on the forest trails daily they often diverge widely in their preoccupation with the great outdoors. It's difficult to say which of the two is more curious about everything than the other.

Their personalities differ greatly. Jillie is phlegmatic but when she encounters something unfamiliar she is instantly alert and alarmed, expressed through her wildly hysterical barks. Her behaviour infects her brother, and Jackie responds by  releasing his nervous energy to emulate hers. Otherwise he would approach situations that make her fearful with far more equanimity.

They do their best to instruct us in their ways. Sometimes it must seem to them like a thankless job. We're the ones who look at clocks and wear timepieces, but they're the ones who know instantly what time it is. They seem to feel that we should be far more aware of the importance of time. Not all time, but the important times.

Time when they anticipate they should be taken out to the ravine for their daily hour's jaunt in there. Time, above all, when their evening meal should be prepared. And time, finally, when everyone with an ounce of good sense knows it's the point in the evening when trudging upstairs to bed is required.

They're restless in the morning edging into midday if we've delayed too long taking them out for a walk, even though they may have spend time racing about the house or the backyard in hot pursuit of one another, wrestling, grunting and daring each other to greater excesses. Five o'clock marks a sacrosanct hour, one that twice yearly becomes a real problem in the changeover from daylight savings and vice versa. Five, as anyone in their right canine mind knows, is mealtime.

And eleven sharp in the late evening is when everything should be tucked away for the night, distractions shunned and bedtime beckons. Last night we were watching a film series as we often do on Saturday night, and they spilled over in time from eleven to midnight, to one in the morning and this situation was found by Jackie to be extremely unnerving. He communicated constantly that we were in arrears of our bound duty. Until finally, the VCR was put to rest and so were we all.