Charlie is a big galumphing, hairy, happy crossbreed. Could be some Newfoundland in her. We've known her for a number of years and whenever she greets us it's with the kind of enthusiasm that might be reflected in seeing a long-lost relative for the first time in too many years. She exhibits an excess of emotion that can be seen, apart from her knock-over rubbing against our legs, in her deep brown, expressive eyes. She is irresistible. And she's cherished by her human companion.

She is still emotionally needful, and it's not quite possible to exhaust her insistence on remaining rubbed up hard against me while I knead and manipulate her ears, stroke her and admire her zest for life, although I can soon enough become exhausted from the sheer drive she displays to insinuate herself into a situation where focus must be on her alone. Riley, our own little master-manipulator, is bored by it all.

I thought, yesterday, that I saw her beard becoming grey and mentioned that. Her companion laughed, reminding me she's only four years old. Born the same day of the same month, he said, as his son. And so, I quipped, since it was a spring month, is your son afflicted with Seasonal Affective Disorder? And then the man whom we have never seen otherwise than carefree and praising the beauty of the day no matter weather conditions, grew instantly sober, and he responded, no; schizophrenia.

And then this man who always forcefully overrides any conversation so that it is always he who leads and no one else can manage a comment, spoke at length about his 26-year-old son who once had briefly lived in a group home, but had to return to live with them because his psychoses are so prevalent, hard to treat, unpredictable and barely manageable. He spoke of the many drugs prescribed in a still-vain attempt to manage his son's condition, the tense sadness that prevails, their efforts to help him, and the relief that comes only at night when bedtime drug doses knock his son out until the day is introduced at the first nudges of dawn.

Eventually we parted, he offering his usual gay parting shot of 'enjoy the day'. His long rambles in the ravine, it seems now to us, must represent a brief respite from exposure to his son's confused pain and misery, relayed to his parents who, despite expert medical care and advice, are destined to be witness throughout their lives to the steady decay of a child they so love.

We did enjoy the day, the ramble through the frozen landscape, despite unseasonable cold and a miserable wind that enhanced the cold. A slight annoyance, the weather, in an otherwise perfect atmosphere. It is, as our friendly acquaintance always likes to remind us, nothing but slight imperfections that we speak of when in a complaint-mode. Our focus should be on gratefulness for what we have, for it is much.