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.