The two little black marauding rapscallions take few breaks in their pact to demolish any imaginary possibility of tranquility in this house of ours, their new home. Correction: during the night when they're tucked away into their overnight crate in our bedroom they settle down quickly to sleep through the night hours, giving themselves and us a break from hellsapopping.

They recognize very well what happens in the kitchen, and the result is a free-for-all of wild expectation. When they're hungry they are ravenous. Their baby kibble is gulped down at such a rate that I will now have to establish a bit of a protocol, giving them only half of their meal at a time, replenishing their bowls once they've (in a blink of an eye) wolfed down the initial offering. They haven't quite understood yet why it is that two-thirds through whisking their kibble out of their bowl, they are overcome, have to briefly retreat and allow that first tranche to go down, before leaping to the fray again and attacking the remainder.

They're recognizing the boundaries, whose place, whose bowl is whose. Which doesn't stop them, once they've cleaned out their bowls, from attempting to raid the other's, if one is a tad slower than the other in emptying their respective bowl.

Can't a couple of fellas rest in peace?

As for the elaborately careful security area that was established for them within a gated-off portion of the family room, they've grown comfortable with the idea of its presence, since the gate is always open and they enter it at will either to play or now, for the first time this morning, to rest, exhausted from their romping about. Yesterday, when we tried it out for the first time and closed the gate, to enclose and confine them, as we intend doing for their own safety during those times when we leave the house without them, it took all of two minutes for rambunctious Jack to climb the three-foot tall wall of wired enclosure, like rungs on a ladder, and liberate himself, while Jill sat whimpering within the enclosure.

Who, me?

So now Plan B comes into effect; the construction of a wired lid lined with wood strapping. They're escape artists of estimable quality. They've already mastered clambering up the backyard steps leading to the deck, when they've decided in this extremely cold weather that it represents puppy abuse to insist they remain longer than they want to, in the forbidding icy temperatures that now prevail. Just as well that an area has been established between the two garden sheds where they feel comfortable peeing, and will do so fairly swiftly before heading for the stairs.

They have a lot yet to teach us.

Two alert, oneexhausted