It's official, spring has finally albeit tentatively placed her dainty toe into our landscape. This is the second day of 20-degree weather under a wide open blue sky, the cherished sun warming the atmosphere, and a gentle breeze preparing to cool us off.

Colt's foot and scilla are blooming in the gardens, and tulips have pushed themselves to the point of almost-but-not-quite bloom. The gardens look dry and dessicated, not yet have all the perennials begun to push through the newly-released soil, but the lillies and the irises have and some of the hostas as well; even a few of the peonies. And the climbing roses are showing signs of impending bursts into life.

In the ravine there are two areas where ice persists, otherwise the trails are drying well enough although they're in horrendous shape, full of ankle-busters like limestone rocks, instead of gravel. And where the construction equipment left their full mark, the deep treadmarks are full of dirty water and there is muck galore to be avoided when possible.

Some of the understory is beginning to sweetly leaf out in minuscule bright-green foliage, and maples have got a head start on their foliage, though it will be weeks yet (perhaps less!) before we see an unmistakable green haze over the forest canopy. Today, under bright skies and that gentle breeze, the largest crop of Mourning Cloak butterflies we've ever seen flitted and sailed on the breeze, celebrating their usual early appearance in spring.

Trout lilies have popped up in their little colonies in preparation of their bright yellow starry blooms, and for the last several days we've seen the occasional triangle of trilliums, even a nodding flower head, soon to bloom. Cardinals and robins are singing with gay abandon.

With this warm weather, the remaining ice will soon melt, and Jackie, who for some strange reason seems almost nostalgic for the disappeared snow and ice, will no longer be able to hop aboard it, sniffing wildly.

And spring wildflowers will introduce their presence, to our delight, all over again.

Aren't we the fortunate ones? The most we ever have to complain about is the discomfort that unaccommodating weather brings to our lives, for the most part. Nature, we so often complain, unfairly targets our northern climate, and us by default, with too much cold, too much wind, too much snow. That's the winter season, excessively prolonged, we whine, in Canada. And in the summer, there's too much heat and humidity, and the inconvenience of the sun blasting us in its oven, with wide open blue skies, lovely to behold, but sending us in search of shade relief.

If we have an earthquake episode, it's invariably mild. Although we have had exposure to what nature -- when she's really serious about discomfiting us personally is capable of, through a shocking tremblor that passed through our area a few years back when an unbelievable roar like a freight train at close range alerted us that something was happening, backed up by the ground swaying in a manner we hadn't experienced since leaving Japan -- what happened here was nothing like the tremblor that just hit Nepal.

Ah, you've discerned that I'm complaining about our propensity to complain.And what brought that to mind? A little bit of introspection, about how fortunate we are in every aspect of our lives. Above all, that my husband and I, now approaching the 60th anniversary of our marriage in a month's time, have had a most fortuitous friendship with Dame Fortune.

Yesterday, my husband idly glanced at a part of the newspaper he never takes the trouble to look at. And then he read aloud to me a number of classified ads. They caused us both amazement and amusement, and later, a deeper glance at ourselves. And this is what a few of them read as: Under 'Personals" and "Companions" these were a few texts:

• Widow, classy lady, 60. Looking for classy gentleman 60 - 75 for serious relationship. Will only answer replies with recent photo.
• Man, 72, retired, bilingual professional. Seeks woman. Same age to discuss current affairs and human sciences via meetings, phone, internet in friendship.
• Lady 70s, well established. Looking for gentleman friend. Straight only.

Never is a nation so vulnerable, its people becoming victims of misfortune as when nature, in one of her truly black moods, comes calling. Nepal, a nation of almost 27-million, adjacent the other Asian countries in the Himalayan range, and home to the fabled Mount Everest, is an impoverished country, hugely dependent on the income it derives from foreign tourism, drawn to its imposing geological landscape.



Buddhist shrines of ancient heritage are everywhere in Nepal, sacred places whose lineage has been recognized by UNESCO, given recognition as the place on Earth with the most heritage sites. And now many of those sites have been irremediably damaged, a people's faith put to the test. Well over four thousand Nepalese have died as a result of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that destroyed peace and calm in Kathmandu, and spread its dire effects in a wide range affecting India, Tibet and as far as Bangladesh.

Hospitals in Tibet cannot meet the demands of the thousands of wounded requiring care. And these are those who can be readily reached by search and rescue volunteers, many of them of international origin. The further, isolated villages of several hundred souls each to which passage has been cut off, resulting from the earthquake's vast destruction, will add immeasurably both to the death toll and to those who have suffered grievous injury who require medical attention to ensure that they too do not join the ranks of Nepal's dead.

"I ran and it just flattened me. I tried to get up and it flattened me again," Singapore-based marine biologist George Foulsham told AFP at base camp. "I couldn't breathe, I thought I was dead. When I finally stood up, I couldn't believe it passed me over and I was almost untouched."
Picture: Robert Schmidt/AFP

International teams of mountain climbers were caught on Everest's Base Camp as a landslide triggered by the quake swept down the mountainside. Some 18 climbers and Sherpas are among the dead, many more injured. These are intrepid mountaineers for the most part, many having a fairly good idea of the kinds of obstacles they face, both through the uncertainty of the geology and the weather. This season, like the last, when 14 Sherpas were swept to their death on the mountain, has started off ominously.

As the Sherpas would warn, the goddess of the mountain is angry, her lord, the Earth's interior, has rumbled his rage and the mountain responded.

Flames rise from burning funeral pyres during the cremation of victims of Saturday's earthquake, at the Pashupatinath temple on the banks of Bagmati river, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Sunday, April 26, 2015. AP Photo/Bernat Armangue

We've been so busy we hardly noticed the time clicking down to the end of April and tax returns. It hardly seems like April in any event since the last several weeks has been wet, cold, windy, more like late fall than early spring. And so, one of us is busy preparing the tax returns and it isn't me.

It's been two days since we removed the cone off Jackie, for the last and final time. All previous attempts had him licking furiously at his surgical wound area, and we didn't want to risk his opening of the wound again, necessitating another trip to the veterinarian hospital to have it restitched. As it is, during one of the times we thought it was safe to free him from the cone, he managed to pull out the last stitch done to ensure the wound healed completely. Now, he can lick to his heart's content without inflicting damage, and he does lick, with no damage ensuing.

Jillie, smart girl, has been cone-free for a week. She does get into plenty of mischief but she showed no interest whatever in inflicting misery on herself as Jackie did. Now that they're both freed of that impediment to freely impetuous movement, they've re-engaged in ripping around the house, wrestling, challenging one another to exciting physical feats of amazing dexterity and no little amount of incidental physicality bordering on insanity.

Once again they're sharing a nighttime crate since we no longer have to separate them for fear one will inflict incidental damage on the other's surgical area; both are completely healed. I sent an email expressing our gratitude to the Ogdensburg veterinarian hospital.

Yesterday, incidentally, though it was a raw day, we got out for our usual ravine walk after a hiatus of almost a week and a half avoiding it. Too difficult with Jackie wearing that cone, and too many days of heavy rain transforming the ravine into a veritable bog. The trail system remains a mess thanks to the tracked vehicles, the earth movers and shovels and bulldozers used for months in the bridges replacement work.

It was the first time Jack and Jill have ever been in the ravine with an absence of snow and ice. We did find some areas off the trails that continue to host large sheets of packed ice, but they'll soon melt, when/if/as the weather begins to warm up for prolonged periods, as it surely will.

It really is odd how little credit we give to a child's fears. Children, like other animals, seem somehow to have skills of detection that bypass adulthood. They can sense the existence of inexplicable symbols of what might be another world entirely, one that the adult eye is blinkered from acknowledging.

Is it possible that in another dimension altogether there are weirdly wonderful chimeras of nature's devising that she has placed in a parallel universe whose presence only the very young can detect? Strange versions of life stranded in that universe, lingering pensively and perhaps furious at their abandonment, making their homes in a universe that never sees the sun, where creatures bleakly exist without purpose, eyeing our own with the envy of the disadvantaged, might be hinted at by a child's cries of fear at what exists in the dark beyond the sight of adults, but visible to them.

Seventy-five years after I recall having had an experience that was truly inexplicable, one whose details I still recall, though blurred by time and distance, I still don't reject as implausible, and the hysteria of a very vivid imagination. I remember a trap door in a shed in a neighbour's yard and the invitation of a child who lived there to accompany her. I recall, carefully descending a series of steps carved into the earth, under the lifted trap door, and a burst of light and colour as my feet reached the level at which the steps stopped.

There, before me, was a bright landscape, an orphan landscape deep in the bowels of the earth and far from our life-giving sun, where green fields luxuriated under a bright light that elaborated detail and the vivid colours of proliferating flowers. I recall a small thatch-roofed cottage before which sat an old man, white-haired and frail, busily whittling away on a piece of wood.

I dimly recall returning to the world above, startled and confused by what I'd seen. And I remember trying to tell my parents what had happened to me, hesitant to for fear I would be blamed for doing something I shouldn't have, but wanting to share what I'd seen in the hope there might be an explanation offered.

And there was, only the explanation was in the realm of disbelief and a chiding that I couldn't offer any better reason why I had been missing for a length of time.

I've tried to puzzle out what has never left my mind and my memory, and I cannot. Are children gifted with extraordinary powers of perception ushered into their minds by a powerful urge to explore the world around us, and in the process daydreaming unlikely events into existence, even if only in their minds? Certainly most likely.

And hardly worth puzzling over, since it's a given, isn't it?

I went back temporarily to shopping alone, yesterday. Jackie has become a compulsive licker. Actually he always has been; enthusiastic about life in general, he leaps to lick our faces, his tongue keeping time with his irrepressible tail, its excitement about the happy state of affairs his life is, needing to be expressed. So, though we tried to remove that damn cone from around his neck on several occasions, since it was high time, because of his licking we had to put it back on. Awaiting the time when his wound was completely sealed so he couldn't do any damage to himself.

Until that collar was removed it wasn't really safe to leave them alone and unsupervised even in their playpen, we felt. So my husband remained with them rather than accompanying me to do the weekly food shopping at the supermarket we tend to favour, and I felt rather lonely without his company. In fact, when I'm doing the shopping I'm so busy looking around, selecting items to place in the shopping cart, that I'm hardly aware of anything else. Still, I hugely favour any time that we're together.

The shopping was three-quarters finished when I found myself at the dairy coolers. I heard a rough, querulous voice grumble "I can't find the lactose-reduced milk". I responded almost involuntarily, offering that it was right there, at the section I was perusing, since I'd just been looking to withdraw a two-litre container of 2% for my own shopping cart.

I looked up to identify where the voice came from, and there fairly close beside me was a tall, heavy-set, rough-looking man, a scowl marking his face in what appeared a permanent response to life's trials. "Get one for me, 1%", he ordered gruffly. I slide one, at his order, out of its slot and proffered it to him, and his response was to order me to place it in his cart, in a very particular part, and I did so, mentally shrugging off his offensive rudeness.

Then he turned again back to the large glass doors fronting the refrigeration unit, opened one of the doors and began flailing at a row of one-litre chocolate milk containers, failing to secure one and loudly declared their defiance of his attempts. I sighed, and said, just a minute, I'll get one for  you. He glared at me, and imperiously called over one of the overworked young lads trying to fill up the gaps in the emptying unit, from the warehouse side of the store.

Quite the trial to live with someone like that, I thought to myself; an ugly, demanding attitude would dampen anyone's enthusiasm for life. Then I corrected myself; the man likely lives by himself, fends somehow for himself, resents that fact of his life, and partially because he looks after himself isn't in the best of health, let alone the best of moods.

Yesterday was kind of a lost day. It's discombobulating for me to see a doctor, and so I rarely do, since I rarely have reason to. But yesterday was also the appointment for my annual check-up (check-in?) with the cardiologist who has been looking after me, so to speak, since my emergency and totally unexpected five-day stay at the Ottawa Heart Institute four years ago where it was discovered that my haemoglobin level was perilously low, enough to require two blood transfusions, caused by a bleeding ulcer on my stomach wall. Caused, you guessed it, by long-term use of a 81mg Aspirin daily dose.

I have a leaky heart valve that concerns the good doctor. I believe I've had it since day one of my introduction to life. So yesterday I was treated to the joy of an echogram and after that an EKG (electrocardiogram), that the cardiologist could study to determine whether there was any change in that leaky valve's condition, which there wasn't.

At my earlier, prolonged hospital stay to monitor my heart, I had undergone an angioplasty in an effort for the cardiologist to completely understand what had happened to cause fainting spells and physical weakness that were the symptoms I experienced as a result of that bleeding stomach ulcer. The cardiologist who had performed the angioplasty informed me that there was plaque in my main heart artery, but not of an unusual amount for someone of my age. That too was an inheritance from my father who had arteriosclerosis.

Which is why, along with my elevated blood pressure condition and high cholesterol, that my cardiologist wants me to continue taking aspirin daily, with pantoprazole to line my stomach wall tissue against the acidic effect of the Aspirin, both of which I had on my own initiative stopped taking a year ago when a blood test revealed very low levels of B12 vitamin as a result of long-term use of pantoprazole. There are always side-effects of a deleterious nature, some serious, some not, in taking any kind of drugs. It's termed the iatrogenic effect; one drug often causing a condition requiring another drug to treat, which also causes a 'condition'.

It isn't a pleasant place to be, and most people do their best to avoid having to visit a hospital. There is a constant stream of people entering and exiting. And for the most part they are elderly and frail, coming in singly and in couples, in wheelchairs, or ambulating with the assistance of walkers, or in the company of those who render them physical aid. This is life, and these are people who are suffering from the ultimate chronic condition; old age creeping upon us, gifting us with failing organs to complicate whatever is left of our treasured lives.

Her voice sounds quite, quite different. Almost light-hearted. Happy. Satisfied that the dreaded exams are now finished, done with. Her first year at university under her belt. All that studying, nose-to-the-grindstone -- and it was, though she took time out to draw herself away from the tension by regular visits to Hart House -- over until fall of 2015 returns her to Toronto once again.

She now knows her away around part of downtown Toronto, the part she feels at home in. From her university residence on Chestnut Street to the campus grounds, and beyond, where she decided proximity required no more than dedicated walking, rather than reliance on public transit, weather be damned.

She won't be returning to the residence come fall, however. She and two other students, her friends, have decided they'll rent together and see how that works out. One of them was her roommate this year, who has already returned to Moscow. Though she admits she'd prefer having her own little space all to herself alone. That too may come eventually. Correction: it most certainly will be in her future for a period of time, at least.

Of the courses she took it seems that history was of the greatest interest to her, though psychology wasn't far behind. She thought the history professor led the students through areas that would be of future value to them all. She'll eventually be studying law, since it's criminal law that she is particularly invested in.

I've always told her any new information she gleans from any sources represents a valuable addition to her pool of knowledge, however irrelevant it may seem. She never did agree, even when she was younger, but I stand by my contention.

Any time I read anything interesting about human nature, the law and new findings, I tend to relate them to her. I know that domestic violence is an issue that interests her, and mentioned a new U.S. study that finds it is on the decrease, and when I told her that, she snorted derisively.

She'll make a fine lawyer.

Our younger son spent the weekend camping close to a research station on Vancouver Island, near an estuary leading out to the ocean. He was reconnoitering nearby, at a creek as a possible venue for the oncoming summer season when he will be supervising post-docs as he usually does. He was wearing hip-waders when he happened at one juncture, to be waddle-walking along an isolated old logging road.

At a bend in the road he thought he saw the disappearing back-end of a young bear. When he turned the bend himself, at an obviously slower rate than the swifter animal's progress, the road straightened out and he could see ahead the unmistakable form of a big cat, its long tail swinging, white-tipped, the animal a deep brown colour, proceeding with the grace of a cougar, the first he's ever seen in the wild.

When it became aware of his presence, it turned to regard him, then languidly turned back to its business-like progress along the road, and soon disappeared from view. It would have been aware of our son's presence since, thinking it was a bear, he had shouted loudly at it, to make certain it knew that someone was nearby.

We were ourselves thrilled when, in broad afternoon daylight, two juvenile raccoons had appeared, one in our backyard at the composters and the second at the front of the house, sifting through what was left of the discarded seed and nut piles we replenish regularly for our neighbouring wildlife. But a cougar? I'd be somewhat less thrilled than immediately stricken into panic mode.

It was like that for me, paddling a canoe in a semi-wilderness Algonquin Park area with our son and his father, when we came up close and too personal to a moose cow. I insisted we back-paddle immediately while they were all for a closer look. As far as I'd been concerned we were far, far too close to the enormous animal.

We're late this year, much later than previous years in beginning our household spring cleaning chores. But we have finally made a start and it makes us feel good that we've at least begun the process. For one thing, feeding local wildlife throughout the winter months leaves a dreadful amount of unsightly detritus behind, to be swept away and hauled off. But before my husband managed to get to it, along came a pair of visitors. We were surprised that in broad daylight a young raccoon was making his way along the back fence toward the composters. Which has inspired my husband to begin taking out the kitchen compost far more frequently this week; his sympathy expressed for the hunger of newly-awakened hibernating creatures.

The very same day, again in the middle of the afternoon, another larger raccoon ensconced itself comfortably in the midst of the pile of seeds and nuts left after winter's bounty was expended by hungry wildlife. The raccoon remained there awhile, digging among the detritus to daintily pick out treats until he was satisfied, and then ambled off. Not long afterward the entire mess was shovelled up and into compost bags for trash collection.

As for the house interior, I began taking down sheers and started with those in the dining room, to wash them and return them later to the windows, fresh and clean. They had been fairly clean, but not fresh, and so that's changed. And I began to tackle the kitchen cupboards, beginning with the pantry wall, hauling out boxes, jars and tins, to check expiration dates and clean the shelves. Jack and Jill were curious, but non-intrusive, for which I was grateful.

And since it was also a gloriously sunny day and not all that cold, I also hied myself and them off to the backyard to begin to finish the process of clean-up that had mostly been accomplished last fall; cutting back any perennials I'd overlooked, including roses, picking up detritus that had fallen throughout the winter, and generally satisfying myself that things were in order to welcome spring bulbs pushing through the soil in preparation for their early blooms.

My husband had gone out shopping, in the meanwhile, for wire fencing to be temporarily erected around the gardens to keep our two little gnawing-imps out because they tend to want to nibble at everything and we've got lilies coming up, and they, among a few other plants, are poisonous for canines. In all, we felt well satisfied with this initial clean-up foray, and plan to continue until we feel enough has been done this spring.

There are two waiting rooms at the Ottawa Veterinary Hospital, one of two such institutions in the city of Ottawa that operates a 24-hour emergency service. Move to the right and you're in the canine waiting room; the left is for felines, but people often don't pay heed, since it's just a kind of courtesy and they seat themselves wherever they fancy. When we entered the large canine waiting room opposite the large reception desk, there were two other couples seated there with their pets. One couple, grey-haired with a cat in a typical travel-cage, looked fit and urbane, the other pair were slightly younger in appearance but obese and clearly out of shape. With them was a very small Pomeranian mix.

The woman with the Pom, morbidly obese, but one of those thankfully cheerful types who immediately warms up a room of strangers with infectious friendliness, immediately began asking questions of us regarding our two little charges, nodding enthusiastically at all our responses to her queries, and it didn't take long before everyone was engaged in pleasant observations about how much our pets mean to our lives. The little Pom sat between the two overweight people who adored their pet. I watched as the obese woman laboriously lifted herself from the benchseat and waddled slowly over to the watercooler to draw water in a paper cup, then return with it to her husband and the little dog. And observed with incredulity as the small animal drank copiously, paused, then drank again, almost emptying the paper cup. Yes, said the woman smilingly, that little dog of theirs loves water and drinks constantly.

We sat chatting, relieving the tension by friendly exchanges, until all three of us couples was called almost simultaneously into separate examination rooms in the large interior pocketed with such rooms. The veterinarian who looked after us was a very short dumpy-looking woman who must have been in her early 60s, a motherly, sweet-faced woman who tenderly manipulated Jackie, looked closely at his surgical wound and informed us she would attempt to see if he would allow her to stitch the wound he had opened, with just an local application of anaesthetic. If that didn't work he would have to stay at the hospital until it was felt safe to fully anaesthetize him (he'd had his breakfast earlier) for her to proceed. She'd know within a ten-minute frame.

When we left him with her and returned to the feline waiting room, closest to the corridor leading off the examination rooms, there were the two people who had been called in when we were, with the little cat. They too awaited word on what the veterinarian who examined their pet would determine about its state of health, so we sat together and talked quietly, reminiscing about the experiences of our early years. They had originated in Montreal, but lived now in Spencerville, not far from Prescott, so they'd had a bit of a drive to come in to the emergency hospital. They'd never heard of the Ogdensburg veterinary hospital and were interested about our venture there for Jack and Jill's surgeries. Before long, our examining veterinarian returned with Jack in her arms, to tell us she'd been successful, that his wound was healing nicely and she had sutured the external area, and he'd have to return to wearing the cone for another seven to ten days. A not unusual occurrence with such little dogs, she said. My husband was so grateful he spontaneously hugged her to convey his emotion, and she graciously smiled.

A few seconds later the other couple was informed that their cat was all right after all, given some instructions for care to nurse her through a little health scare, and given the green light to take her back home to Spencerville. We parted, gratified no end that we'd had a happy ending to our concerns, made all the more pleasant in the company of people whose concerns matched our own.

And then, just as we were awaiting a final invoice before leaving, the third couple shuffled slowly down the corridor, she pushing her walker before her, her normally ebullient manner stilled, her face crumpled with grief. Their little dog, so alert and anxiously looking to them with trust and adoration evident in its beautiful, soft eyes as we watched it earlier in the waiting room, had reached the end of its life. It was twelve, the woman who doted on it had informed us earlier, a little rescue dog that had enormously enriched their lives. She had herself endured a stroke a short while earlier, but shrugged that off as irrelevant to their concern over the little dog's welfare.

They had little realized when they brought their little dog in to the emergency hospital that they would be walking out without her, that their home would be a lot emptier and quieter in future. We grasped their hands, hugged her, told them of our empathy for their loss, and as they slowly made their way out of the hospital, the doors swinging behind them, I cried, our own loss under similar circumstances just a short few months earlier still a fresh wound.

It's been an interesting day, so far, full of surprises. We're hoping that the rest of the day will be a predictable bore. Interesting, I should add, like what one might expect of that old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times". We had an interesting time this morning.

It all began when we made a joint decision. The instructions handed to us when we left the Ogdensburg Veterinary Hospital informed us that for Jillie, having undergone spay surgery, we should wait between five and seven days before removing that dreadful plastic Elizabethan collar. We'd thought about alternate types of collars, inflatable ones that rest around the neck, but what we've read about them, and been told, even from those who sell them, is that they're fairly ineffectual. And for Jackie the time frame was reduced for neutering removal of the cones to between three and five days.

We could see their wounds were healing wonderfully well. We had our doubts about Jillie because her surgery was the more difficult of the two, but we thought it was time to remove the cones, mostly because Jackie was inordinately miserable wearing his. Oddly enough, while he's in the house he treats the cone casually, as though it's not even there. Once he's outside, though, it's a different story; he keeps trying every acrobatic gyration he can manage to remove it.

It was Jackie who had recovered quickest from surgery, and even a few hours post-surgery was energetic, aware and seemingly unperturbed. We had alternates to the cones after all; the use of infant onesies, that we had used previously with our little guys who predated these two, and they had worked wonderfully well, covering the wounds so that access to them was denied.

So off came Jack's and Jill's cones this morning. I think we were more relieved than they were. Jillie behaved as though there had been nothing whatever amiss and just went about her business, in her little onesie, and never bothered to attempt licking herself. Jackie, on the other hand, Mr. Casual, went kind of berserk and just couldn't lick himself enough, suddenly released from the constraints of the collar.

Before we knew it he had opened the wound. A smidgen of an opening, but a break nonetheless. Our regular veterinary clinic remains open half-day Sunday so off we went with him. They were adamant that he would have to be re-stitched and likely placed under anaesthetic; of course by then they'd already had their breakfast. Because they weren't set up for surgery on Sundays they advised us to take him right over to the emergency veterinary hospital we'd used previously, so we did just that.

There, the veterinarian said she'd try giving him a local anaesthetic and if he allowed her to stitch him under a local he wouldn't need to be put under. It would take a few minutes, she said, and then we'd know whether he would have to be left for hours or could be taken right home. When she returned with him she said his surgical wound had healed very nicely; only the surface portion of it had been disturbed. And he had behaved to allow her to stitch it together. To say we were grateful is an understatement.

And off we went home with the two little rascals in tow. Jack, once again wearing his cone, which he'll now have to continue wearing for at least another week while his wound continues to heal, and Jill, in her little onesie, disinterested in causing herself the same kind of grief that her brother had indulged in.

It's about a half-hour drive from the emergency hospital to home, and how odd, we said it was, to see two police cars parked not far from our house. I had a fleeting thought swiftly dismissed that they may have responded to someone's house alarm; ours. When we entered the house there was a telephone message from our alarm company. Yup, ours had unaccountably tripped; likely when we exited the house to drive to the veterinarian hospital we hadn't closed the back door tightly enough, causing the alarm to become alarmed.

Certainly a most interesting series of incidents; and more than enough, we feel, for one day.

Day three and counting.... We had nightmares thinking about how Jack and Jill would cope, wearing plastic cones over their heads for almost a week, but they're managing, and so are we. We had to change their drinking bowl to a very large, deep, wide one to enable them to use it with the interfering cones. And when they have their meals, they've got to position themselves just so, centering the bowls within the orbit of the cone opening and in so doing, are able to scoop up everything with ease.

We thought the cones would interfere with their out-of-door browsing habit, but no such luck. Although the cones tend to scrape and sound awful when they're sliding them along any surface, they still manage to stick their little sharp muzzles out sufficiently to be able to grasp detritus to their hearts' content, and our dismay.

Suddenly, while coping with the discomfort of a post-surgery ordeal complicated by the cones meant to keep them from reacting at the surgical site by licking or scratching, Jackie has incorporated the inspiration to become a mountain goat. He now effortlessly leaps prodigious heights with no ill effects, and although we've tried to keep them both calm and less physically inclined, it hasn't always worked. From time to time, though Jill's recovery time is understandably longer and deeper than Jack's, they will face off in a mutual invitation to rough-tumble wrestle.

On the really positive side, their undersides look quite amazing for two little animals who have so recently undergone a surgical procedure. No bruising, no swelling, no bleeding, as per our past experiences, just smooth skin and a few visible stitches which will themselves dissolve; some surgical glue was used on the exterior; dissolving stitches on the interior.

Jillie, who tends to be aloof at times, wants to snuggle close on our laps at down-time. Jackie, who insists that we be within eyesight at all times, prefers to leap onto the back of any sofa we're sitting on, to balance himself on the back, rather than the seat of the sofa, above or level with the height of our heads.

Although Jackie is quite ready even now to have his cone removed, and we know it drives him to distraction, since he's forever trying to scratch it, he'll have to wait until Jillie catches up with him. And that will be at least another two days, and at that time they'll both be relieved of the nuisance of wearing the damn things, when we're assured that they're beyond the potential of inadvertently harming themselves.

We were extremely pleased with the accommodation we were able to enjoy on Wednesday when we drove our two little poodles to the Town and Country Veterinarian Hospital in Ogdensburg for their neutering and spaying surgeries. The Stone Fence Resort turned out to be just perfect for our needs. And they were most accommodating to our request, that we have the use of their lovely facilities for the day, absent the night, since we planned on returning back to Ottawa as soon as we picked up our puppies, post-surgery.

They charged us a mere $50 to have the use of one of their clean, airy and attractive rooms with its bathroom and mini-kitchen facilities. And tossed into that charge a breakfast as well. We thought that was going a little too far in generosity, so when we checked in on Wednesday morning around nine, we insisted on paying for our breakfasts, as well. Even so, it was inexpensive at $6 for each of us. When we departed just after five to pick up our pups, we left a $20 tip for the maid. Altogether, a reasonable sum to enable us to relax and enjoy the leisure and pleasure of a well-appointed room and its pleasant surroundings beside the St. Lawrence River.

Irving walking about Remington's sculptures looking himself like someone who might have excited the artist's brush.

When we'd gone to the WalMart store to see if we could pick up a crate and lining, we saw people streaming past a man stationed just outside the entry, no one pausing or stopping. Perhaps they'd seen him before, on earlier shopping excursions. He was selling $3 tickets for some prize, the proceeds going to the local food bank. We 'bought' a ticket, without picking up the ticket itself, then entered.

When we completed our goal successfully there we went on to visit the Remington Museum that we'd read about online, but knew the presence of long before. My husband in the past, visiting the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, had seen Remingtons there, and in our home library we've plenty of art books featuring the American West with his artwork and sculptures featured there as well. And who isn't aware that Remington is featured in the Oval Office of the White House?

In the time we sauntered about the interior viewing the oil and watercolour paintings (and a few pastels), the memorabilia of Remington's time, copies of some of his most famous sculptures, a display of the lost-wax method of bronze-casting, we were the only visitors to the museum.

Citizens of the town enter free of charge; all other visitors pay a modest charge. In our case, that charge recognized us as senior citizens, so we paid $8 apiece for the pleasure of moseying about in that place dedicated to the art of a skilled painter and sculptor. And we enjoyed the personal attention of a docent, an elderly man whom we took to be a volunteer stationed there for that purpose who was knowledgeable and eager to impart what he knew of that famous artist's life and celebrity.

Taking into account our post-breakfast walk dockside beside the vast, blue St.Lawrence under a wide, blue sky the trip turned out very well indeed.

Although the morning was beginning to warm up nicely, the wind off the St. Lawrence River was emphatically unpleasant. But the scene more than compensated for the blustery wind. We were wearing jackets and thought it would be a shame not to venture out on the short walk that would take us from the dining room of the Stone Fence Resort where we'd had breakfast yesterday morning, down to the breakwater and the docks alongside the edge of the river.

There were gulls flying overhead under the warming sun in that wide, blue sky meeting the wide blue river intersected by the perspective-miniaturized view of Prescott on the opposite shore. We walked out along the boardwalk fingering the river with its inviting gazebo and stayed awhile, talking, enjoying the marine landscape before us. The water was crystal clear, and close to the shore tinged with green. It was a restful space in our day awaiting the surgery our two little poodles were facing, and many hours before we would be picking them up for the return journey home.

From there, we drove a short distance to an ubiquitous and almost-guaranteed-presence WalMart store where giant parking lots are always expectantly packed with shoppers. We headed directly to the pet supply section hoping they would stock the kind of crate that we would need to separate Jack and Jill to prepare them for sleep, post-surgery. They're inseparable, accustomed to sleeping tightly tucked up and into one another, but for the next few days this wouldn't be possible. We meant to place the two crates side-by-side in our bedroom for the following week.

When we picked them up finally at six o-clock in the afternoon, Jack was sprightly as his name demanded, and Jill was still fully under the influence of the medication given her for pain management. I decided to sit in the back of the car with them, to try to make them more comfortable. They had both expressed what they could manage in enthusiasm at seeing us after our day's separation, and their anxiety level needed a calm-down. Uncomfortable at first, they gradually settled down and fell into sleep as we drove the one-and-a-half-hour trip home.

Once arrived, they were given water with Jillie despite her languid state, drinking far more than Jackie who was already prepared to begin racing all over the house. We closed off access to the stairs for him. A short while later I gave them half their usual amount of kibble drowned in chicken soup, and they were ravenous, but we felt it was better to err on the side of caution. We paid for it later, when Jackie, after having slept well for hours in his crate alongside Jillie's awoke, and was distinctly unhappy. I theorized he was hungry and this was causing his discomfort, but thought that four a.m. wasn't a good time to feed him.

By morning they were both famished. He was energetically himself, and she was still pretty lethargic. Both of them are wearing those horrible plastic 'Elizabethan collars'. We had imagined it would be a nightmare having them wear those things, but surprisingly, they appear to have adapted to the inconvenience, amazing us no end, given their usual rejection of being physically trammelled with even their collars.

This was the day of the scheduled appointment for our two little six-month-old poodles. Little did they know what the day held for them. They were doubtless puzzled no end when we roused them at six, since they usually get awakened two hours later. After they were taken to the backyard first thing, we took our showers as usual, and instead of giving them their usual breakfast we had the unmitigated gall to 'forget' to feed them.

Instead, they were bundled into the car, and we all drove off to Ogdensburg, New York. A nice enough drive, on yet another beautiful spring day. Light jacket weather first thing in the morning, but we knew, from what we'd experienced the past several days that as the day wore on into afternoon it would be warm enough to shed the jackets. And that's exactly what happened.

We dropped the little fellows off at the veterinary hospital. We arrived even before the scheduled 8:30 a.m. admission time, but they swooped us up anyway. The office staff is casual, informed and friendly beyond previous experience. Truth to tell, I hated leaving them. But leave them we did, with instructions to come back at half-past five to pick them up and head back home.

They were scheduled to be spayed and neutered. An awful thing to have happen to two innocent little dogs. Interfering with their natural biology. On the other hand, we're informed, doing so prolongs their life and their health, and avoids a whole lot of nuisance occurrences; that we have siblings, a brother and sister, would certainly complicate our lives and theirs, otherwise.

We'd made reservations at a nearby motel-condominium complex and that's where we next drove to. We checked in, went to our room, refreshed ourselves and then went off to the dining room of the Stone Fence Resort for breakfast. And then began a long but happily, pleasant day noodling about Ogdensburg. Discovering there was plenty to do and see.

Pleasant only half describes our location, right on the St. Lawrence River, close enough to see across to the Canadian side; the river wide and beautifully blue, matching the sky above.

Our two small American- and Canadian-Kennel Club-registered toy poodles are anything but 'toy'. Toy poodles are very small, our two are not very small. They are, in fact, at six months of age, the size of miniature poodles. They're rangy, tall and extraordinarily flexible They are able to stretch the length of their bodies astonishingly, and this enables them to reach surfaces you'd never imagine them to be capable of. They're little predators, especially Jillie. Jackie is more of a follower.

And he is, as my husband points out with great amusement, a real Mama's boy. He worries if I'm not around in easy accessibility range. Jillie is a lot more relaxed about it. Jillie is the initiator of all their mischief, and Jackie an enthusiastic accomplice. They may have exited their puppy-chewing stage, but you'd never know it; anytime they're out of doors they spend all their time ferreting out bits and pieces of natural detritus, and at this time of year there's ample for the picking. We do our best to keep them from eating all this garbage, but it's a mug's game. For every bit of dry stems or foliage we take away from them, an equal measure is swiftly consumed.

This, on top of the gargantuan amount of food they eat. It's quite a natural phenomenon. Jillie will now ask to go outside, but not yet to relieve herself; her goal is to get out there for more fun-and-forage. Because of their proclivity to mouth and chew away at everything, including whatever is beginning to come up in the garden; violets, hyacinths shoots, my husband has been busy uprooting as many lilies as he finds since they're toxic to dogs. We never had these problems before with Button and Riley.

Last night we had a series of glorious thunderstorms entertaining us; loud clapping and banging up there in the heavens above, a drama that we both love. But this was their first introduction to thunderstorms; Jackie just barked every time a clap of thunder reverberated through the house. Jillie looked nervously up at the ceiling, trying to determine what was happening, what was making such a din, and she was excitedly upset.

Life's newly discovered adventures and alarums alike.

Perhaps it's not Nature after all, who teases us. What if it were really that her season of Spring is itself so shy and retiring she hesitates to assert herself in trepidation of the very real possibility that should she enter too soon, Winter will be so aggrieved as to never speak to her again. Some of these seasons, after all, act like prima donnas. We do attribute to Winter grumpy recalcitrance, a bad-tempered unwillingness to leave when his time is up, to move over and make room for the following season that everyone on Earth is so anxious to welcome.

Winter is a resentful, nasty old man.

Spring, a slender, beautiful sprite, on the other hand, is gracious in her generosity, awakening all the elements we so love that Winter's windy cold has sent into temporary suspension, so akin to death itself. The tenderness of Spring is such that she is fully reluctant to cause an old man any further resentment, and so she is careful to await such time as he has succeeded in tiring even himself by his unwanted presence, and finally departs, taking with him his elements that have outlived their time, and we bid farewell to Winter, to ice storms, snowfalls, and extremely cold temperatures.

That time appears to have finally arrived, now that we're halfway through April. Yesterday's temperature bustled up to an incredible 18 degrees Celsius under a wide, blue sky that the sun smiled broadly down upon us from. We were able to free ourselves from jackets and toques, gloves and boots. Oops, scratch the boots; there was still enough snow and ice on the trails, still slippery enough for slides and falls to convince us the boots were still required, reluctantly complete with cleats.

Mourning Cloak

We weren't the only ones out and about in the forest. We came across a very busy Pileated woodpecker and though I tried to snap him in the process of debauching a tree, he was too clever by half, moving to the opposite, unseen side of the tree just as I prepared my camera. We saw, too, small orange butterflies which, if I remember correctly, may be called commas. And also present were the larger, early spring Mourning Cloaks, the sun throwing their shadows as they flitted through the trees.

If anyone has an interest in world affairs and the way that politics and organizations set up to reflect a world vision of conflict-prevention with a view to aiding the inevitable flow of refugees that result from such seemingly unavoidable conflicts providing humanitarian aid around the world, there is nothing quite as instructive as reading the opinions of those who were actually on the scene in some of those dramatically obscene conflict situations.

I've only now got around to reading General Rick Hillier's (former Canadian Chief of Defence Staff' 2005--2008) memoirs, A Soldier First -- Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War, published in 2009. His story is an interesting one, from his boyhood to his maturity as a responsible, intelligent, humanely capable manager of the Canadian Defence Forces.

His impressions, above all, of the United Nations and its sadly dysfunctional role in overseeing the order of a fractious, bellicose, combative world simply serves to validate an overall public perception of that ambitiously-failed world body as an inept, corrupt, crony-ridden, Third-World vehicle by which political-religious-social blocs have been able to capture and manipulate the administration of its various arms to their very particular vision of their place in the international community and their complaints over past injustices while they are themselves complicit in current injustices.

Some of General Hillier's observations strike the message of a compliant-to-pressure, hopelessly befuddled and incapable United Nations and they're worth noting:

"The Srebrenica Massacre had left us with enormous numbers of refugees to deal with, tens of thousands of the homeless during a viciously hot summer. I went to Tuzla and landed by helicopter at the airstrip just outside the UN sector headquarters on a hot afternoon, with temperatures hitting 40 degrees Celsius. There must have been 35,000 refugees on the runway, most of them old men and women and some very young children, but almost nobody in between. They were on that runway in the hot sun with precious little water, almost no food and no shelter. Almost all were in deplorable condition because of the traumatic and severe hardships they had faced during the attack and afterwards, when they were forced to make their way into Muslim-controlled territory, over hills and through forests, on foot. That tarmac had now become their home."
"The United Nations, representing the will of the international community, had failed. The UN just couldn't handle that many refugees and was incapable of looking after them, let alone helping them recover and get on with their lives. By then we were starting to learn the details of what had occurred during the preceding days in Srebrenica. The reason there were so few young adults in the flood of refugees was because the Bosnian Serbs had murdered them, and those who had escaped were on the run, hiding or fleeing for their lives."
"I went to one refugee camp that the United Nations was helping run for people seventy-five years of age and older. It was as pathetic as it was appalling and tragic. All these elderly people were living twenty-five to a room in a tiny, decrepit schoolhouse that had only a partial roof. Each of them was sleeping on a thin blue rubber mattress and had a little bag containing food or clothing from the UN High Commission for Refugees, which was now everything they owned. They had been driven out of their villages, their families killed or dispersed to God knows where, and this was what they had to look forward to for the rest of their lives...."
"Within days, we assumed responsibility for organizing the evacuation of the Krajina Serbs, who had been bypassed by Croatian military forces and were now refugees, living in a  hostile area and fearing retribution from angry Croats. Many had fled ahead of Operation Storm, but a lot of them were still trapped behind the Croatian front lines. In what became a showcase of human tragedy and the viciousness of human nature, this motley collection of tens of thousands of impoverished men, women and children left Krajina by motorcade, on tractors, bikes, carts, horses or whatever vehicles they could find, with as many of their household possessions as they could carry, and travelled through parts of Croatia to other, Serb-held areas. All of this was carried live on TV around the world Despite the supposed protection of Croatian police and UN forces, those convoys of old women and children, riding in the backs of hundreds of tractors and carts, were pelted with rocks, eggs and anything else people could get their hands on all along the route out of Serb Krajina. It was a travesty and, again, the UN was powerless to prevent it."

And he has placed on subjective perspective born of real-time and on-site experience an issue that is repeatedly raised by Canada's federal opposition parties, forever critical of all decisions made by the current government relating to Canada's involvement in meeting the international challenge of fighting against the massed forces of malevolently-directed terrorists in their pursuit of gaining conscripts and territory while violently disrupting national stability; torturing, raping, enslaving, murdering their way into odious notoriety as international threats.

"The United Nations had no concept of how to build multinational forces into one effective team for a mission and, worse than that, it usually had no concept of what kind of mission it would be asking that team to do. We were doing things in the former Yugoslavia that no one had been prepared for, and even though it was dawning on some of our military and civilian leaders that UN peacekeeping operations were a thing of the past, there was no way that we could get past that mantra of 'peacekeeper, peacekeeper, peacekeeper'.
"...Yet our soldiers were sent into the Balkans under Chapter 6 of the UN charter, a peacekeeping mission where they could use their weapons only to protect themselves. As a result, we put soldiers and sailors and airmen and airwomen, who served on the ground, in positions where they saw brutal acts that they were powerless to stop. That was a scar that a lot of our people brought back from the Balkans, and a scar that the entire Canadian Forces, particularly the army, brought back as an institution."

Yet it is the outdated and useless concept of Canadians as peacekeepers in a volatile and violent world that the federal opposition partners keep referring to; that it is only as peacekeepers that our troops should be dispatched to meet the challenge of medievally-brutal terrorists meting out mass bloodbaths to religious and ethnic minorities as they sweep through Africa and the Middle East now, in their religiously-inspired campaign to dedicate the world and its community of people to Islamofascism.

Yes, of course we agonize like this every spring, wondering when winter will ever leave, and why spring is so tardily ambivalent. Glimpses of the past that our memory willingly serves up if we really press the matter recall other spring-time arrivals when felt equally hard-put-upon by a cranky spent winter refusing to recognize its best-before date, and a timid spring that can't recall when its arrival date was meant to be.

Surely, we convince ourselves, this year is much, much worse, and it seems as though the cold will never relent, the snow will ever melt, and as we concern ourselves over the welfare of returning birds and the lack of accessibility to green shoots, insects and anything else that migrants will look for to sustain themselves, exhausted after their long flights, nature seems unperturbed.

Our ravine walk this early afternoon took us to the alternate portion of the Bilberry Creek ravine, necessitating that we cross des Epinettes, introducing Jack and Jill once again to whizzing traffic and the need to spring across the road to access half of the walk. On that side of the ravine the creek is almost in full thaw mode and roars downhill to make its way underground to the upper half. There is ample snow left, but it has a nasty dark crust atop it as it transforms into an unpleasant sight bearing little resemblance to the pristine blanket it once represented.

Although the morning dawned with heavy, dark clouds and light flurries after a night of rainfall and temperatures just hovering above freezing, the sun finally made its presence, warming the day to a tolerable 9 degrees making it possible for us to shed our winter jackets, but not, unfortunately, the boots and the cleats strapped over them to enable us to climb up and down icy trails.

The trails alternate between packed snow, degrading ice, and the bare forest floor turned into muck, and in some places pools of meltwater swimming with last year's foliage. Not entirely pleasant, but a fair facsimile of an energetic and appealing walk regardless.

We were just exiting the ravine yesterday afternoon, quite early, when we came across him. Usually we see him later in the day. He and his wife have two rescue dogs, one a terrier mix the other a Lab mix. Both of the dogs have their issues, from their days living elsewhere, before they were surrendered to a dog-rescue organization.

They'd never posed a problem to our Button and Riley in the past, and nor do they now, to Jack and Jill. The female terrier becomes extraordinarily excited in the summer months when she's permitted to wade in the creek, by her owners. We don't let ours do anything like that, although most people do with their dogs. We once had the misfortune to find that Button had cut the area around her dewclaw badly, thanks to a beer bottle that some nit had tossed into the creek. The creek, in fact, becomes a depository for all manner of detritus, junk that people carelessly throw into it.

The larger of those two dogs has a tendency to shy away from people and from other dogs, barking furiously. When the two dogs are in their own backyard they're adamant about not permitting anyone but their owners to draw near. But they are loved by their owners, and why not? It was previous owners who had marked them for life by imposing a trauma of brutality on them.

The young man, Sri Lankan by birth, but Canadian by good fortune -- ours and his -- told us about an incident that had occurred in the ravine last week. There's a woman who often walks two middling-sized terriers. She never leaves them off leash, and often stands aside, holding them back when others approach on the trails. She's friendly enough, and has explained to us that one of her dogs is fiercely cranky. Both, in fact, bark furiously at people passing by, or perhaps it's their dogs they bark at.

The cranky dog has a nasty reputation among Bilberry Creek ravine dog walkers. It has often attacked other dogs, despite the care its owner takes to separate it from such opportunities. There are some dogs, much larger than the terrier, fearful of being anywhere in the vicinity of this dog. Our friend explained he had been walking with his two, and suddenly around the corner, the two dogs appeared -- on leash of course -- and his Lab mix reacted by pouncing on the belligerent dog. He separated them immediately, but, he said, the woman went out of her mind with rage.

She plastered the air with vicious language, and although he said he did his best to calm her down, nothing would assuage her anger, she just kept on screaming fairly horrible things at him. This went on interminably, he said; he should simply have left, but he kept trying to instill some calm into the hysterical woman. Finally, he said, he became so angry himself if she'd been a man he would have hit her.

It's  unfortunate, but these things do happen.We've experienced our own unfortunate encounters on occasion in the ravine, with dogs whose socialization left much to be desired, and whose owners' attitudes sometimes weren't much better than their dogs'. But you turn the chapter, unless something really dreadful occurs, and move on. We did our best to assure our friend he was not at fault, given the circumstances. And we'll continue to give those two middling terriers wide berth.

Hey! Me too, only make it snow, okay?

via Giphy

 

Sad to hear that James Bond has had to undergo surgery while filming the latest Bond film, Spectre. As a result of arthroscopic knee condition. James Bond, after all, is impervious to danger and physical harm because of his extraordinarily strong physique, and his amazing ability to counteract physical threats by instant reaction and immensely clever manoeuvres.

But there it is, poor James Bond in hospital, undergoing surgery, holding up filming on his latest flick. But, like a feline whose amazing capacity to evade death he mimics, he will survive to live yet another incredible caper.

And it must be comforting to him to know that he has the sympathy of others, like for example Sir Roger Moore who tweeted: "Sorry to hear Daniel Craig has sprained his knee on set #Spectre. Being 007 is not without its hazards. I'm available to step in if needed." So kind and considerate.

And of course the hazards are many. The man of steel nerves, indestructible physiognomy and instant reaction faced death numerous times. In Skyfall, for example, it has been pointed out by a panel of medical professionals, our hero is shot with a depleted uranium shell, an armour-piercing ground used to destroy tanks.

It "would have turned his lungs inside out and killed him", commented the medical team. Even if he survived the fragments of uranium shell exposure to them "would greatly increase his cancer risk". But not our superman of exquisitely formidable resistance to anything that would destroy the lives of lesser mortals.

Removing a bullet from his shoulder on his own as he did after the uranium shell encounter "Risks blood loss, lack of consciousness, nerve and muscular damage and the infection risk is huge", cautioned the health professionals. Ah yes, but this is no ordinary human being, after all.

And when he tumbled from the roof of a train into a river, that close encounter with the Angel of Death "could sever his spinal cord or break his neck", if he hadn't drowned, an instant paraplegic. Not our James Bond, the world's supreme acrobatist.

Oh and when he wrestled with a henchman underwater in a icy Scottish loch, survival would have been miraculous: "Fighting means he would use oxygen quickly, so it's improbable he'd get out in time. Hypothermia would set in very quickly and he'd struggle to move." Don't these medical professionals realize precisely whose foray into the dangerous channels of crime and violence they are interpreting?

Doctors, health professionals, forensics: what do they know when it comes to the arcane, impossible, yet eminently possible escapades of a timeless, undefeated hero?

By the time our appointment with the veterinarian at the Town & Country Veterinarian Hospital at Ogdensburg was completed, physical check-ups on Jack and Jill completed, bloodwork done, the reception area had begun to fill up, and though I felt distracted, I did note the presence of an increasing number of pets and their owners. One young woman had walked into one of the rooms set aside for physical examinations with a beautiful looking Golden Retriever, leaving an elderly man sitting outside in the reception area.

He was comfortably stout, and looked worn by life, glancing about at others gathered there. He struck up a conversation with my husband, standing in front of the reception desk to pay our bill and make arrangements for the following week's surgery for our two mopheads. I was seated with Jack and Jill and directly across the seating area there was a woman with a Boston Bull terrier and a Shih Tzsu, awaiting their appointment. An American, she told me, but living temporarily in Ottawa, scheduled to leave shortly for Arizona, she will be sorry to leave Ottawa where her family has made many friends. She was there lured by the fees charged in challenge to the off-putting expensive fees back in Ottawa.

Before long, the elderly man addressed me as well, and in a short space of time I learned that he had lost his wife who loved and knew how to expertly handle dogs, a year and a half ago. She had been eleven years his junior. They had one child, the young woman I'd seen earlier with the Golden. Her mother's death struck his daughter particularly hard, he said; introduction to the impermanence of life is hard at any age, obviously. She doted on the dog now, just as he doted on his daughter. Nothing is good enough for the dog, he said, the most expensive dog food is provided, and strict rules have been imposed by her in their household to avoid giving the dog, now twelve, any type of 'human food'.

This dog, he said was the precise opposite in personality to its predecessor, another Golden Retriever that had lived for 14 years whose passing he and his wife truly mourned. The earlier one was so smart, he told me, that once when his wife had locked herself out of their vehicle, she coaxed the dog to pull the car key out of the ignition and transmit it to her hand extended to receive it through the narrow opening that resulted when she had left the window open a few inches for air circulation. This one, he said, though his daughter loves it, has remained over its years mischief-prone, getting into all kinds of trouble.

When his daughter emerged with the dog, the man's face broke from its almost morose appearance to an instant beam of pride like the sun emerging from dark clouds, and he said "and this is my baby girl"; not meaning the dog, obviously. The young woman seemed shy and constrained, and I complimented them on how well the dog looked, almost puppy-like for its age, with a gleaming coat, alert eyes and a very handsome conformation.

And then I blurted a statement I was later to regret. I should have said that the baby in our family isn't as lovely in appearance as his, instead what I said was: our baby is now 52 years old, the youngest among three of our children, and the man's jaw dropped. He repeated: 52? Oh well, I said, we're 78, after all, and he said, looking like a truly sorry sack, that he was 70. I felt instantly regretful, as though I'd engaged in some kind of one-upsmanship of familial pride with a man whose fairly recent loss and emotional frailty didn't need anything like that.

We weren't sure how long the drive would take. Particularly since we'd made the appointment for Tuesday, the day following the long Easter week-end, when we were fairly certain that the Ottawa highways would be stuffed with traffic, since people tend to return to work after a long week-end, and the day following call in sick. So it seems. And sure enough, traffic was backed up and slow.

It hardly mattered all that much in any event, since we'd left ample time for ourselves. The appointment was for 11:00 a.m. and we left the house just a tad before eight. We had time to spare.
We'd originally thought of cancelling the appointment since the weather forecast we'd heard a few days earlier warned of a considerable snowstorm. But it was amended a day later, and the possibility of snow had been reduced to 40%, and the temperature would rise to three degrees, under an afternoon sun.

So off we set on this preliminary visit to the Ogdensburg veterinarian service we'd heard such raves about. We had decided to take Jack and Jill there to be neutered and spayed rather than have it done in Ottawa. For one thing, we wanted it done by laser; more efficient, less pain, swifter recovery. In Ottawa only two veterinarian clinics offer laser surgery. And they feel entitled in charging about ten times what the service in Ogdensburg costs.

Have the spay done here and pay over a thousand dollars; the neutering a hundred dollars less. Do it in Ogdensburg, and the cost is $135 for each of our puppies. So many people had advised us to look into the services there, so we looked on line and liked what we saw, spoke by telephone and made arrangements to get physicals for our puppies and bloodwork done the week before scheduling surgery.

Today was the day for the physical and bloodwork, though we were advised by the clinic it could all be done in one fell swoop the very day of the surgery. We thought we'd feel more comfortable doing it this way.

We discovered that although Ottawa had managed to escape the snowstorm, the further south we drove, evidence arose that the snowstorm did strike regardless, and from Oxford Station to Cornwall it was a white, white world once again. A surpassingly lovely landscape. Which made the drive all the more pleasant. When we got to the Rideau River crossing, the sky turned dark again. And when we arrived at the St. Lawrence River, a white fog engulfed the river itself. When we drove over the Seaway International Bridge, a long, looong, affair linking Ontario to New York, visibility on the bridge was perfect, but nothing could be seen glancing over the sides toward the St. Lawrence.

The veterinarian hospital was easy to find, a rural practise on a country road just outside town, aptly enough named Town & Country Veterinarian Hospital. When we arrived there was no one else in the waiting room. We were over an hour early for that appointment. Because it was a quiet time, however, one of the veterinarians saw us almost immediately and checked out our little imps and had bloodwork done.

Activity in the place became frenetic soon after our arrival, and the waiting room swiftly filled with people and their dogs awaiting their appointments. We came across another couple with two dogs, also from the Ottawa area. And we found that the local people who drifted in with their pets extremely courteous making an effort to acknowledge the presence of other people. 

By the time we returned the route we had taken to get there, the snow that had so brilliantly enveloped the landscape had melted under the gaze of the now fully-exposed sun. We'll be returning in a week's time for their little scamps' surgery.