We'd ventured out quite a bit later than we usually do for our walk in the ravine yesterday. Consequently, we saw people that we don't normally encounter in the woods, although we're familiar with them, too.

It couldn't have been a more pleasant day. The humidity level had lifted somewhat, the wind was up and it wasn't as hot as on previous days. The rainfall that came down the previous day also freshened the atmosphere, while creating deep runnels in the packed accumulation of detritus on the trails, an obvious indication of the pounding the ravine took. And our narrow escape on Sunday from an utter drenching.

We came across a woman with her two little pugs whom we've seen on occasion. There'd been a lapse of time since last we had seen them and the two little dogs had been transformed from merely verging on overweight at six years of age to obese, one of them morbidly. She informed us that this little dog was now newly on thyroid medication, because he was so completely shorn of energy. And though he's just been on the medication for five days she could see a slight improvement.

We saw a little dog that needed to have its food intake severely curbed. He actually waddled when he walked, poor thing, and was anxious to keep up with the woman, yet so exhausted when he finally reached her side as she spoke with us that he virtually collapsed at her feet. If the veterinarian didn't recommend a change in diet and increase in exercise, who were we to do so?

Next off, we saw a youngish man we hadn't seen in awhile. He was walking his mixed-breed, Pinscher-Shepherd, a muscular and quite nice dog, although we've never seen the dog off-leash, the man always tends to hold him close to his side, wrapping the narrow leather leash he uses closely around his left hand. In his right hand he always carries a cane. Just as we were bidding goodbye for the second time to the woman with the pugs walking in the opposite direction, the man came abreast of us.

When we'd first become acquainted with him, he was rail-thin, his body curved like a giant question-mark, ambulating with difficulty, but still holding the dog close beside him. He had, at first, casually mentioned an accident with a vehicle. We would see him occasionally and it was clear that his ravine walks were accomplished with some difficulty. Yesterday, because my husband said to him that he barely recognized him because he had gained significant weight, was walking upright and with far more confidence, he related his story to us.

Fifteen years earlier he had been highway driving in the winter with an icy glaze over the road. A number of vehicles had collided and before he knew it, his van was one of them. He hadn't been wearing his seat belt, he said, and he was thrown out of the vehicle, landing close enough to reach over into it, he said, to shut the engine down -- and he laughed ruefully. He had sustained so many internal injuries it was questionable that he would survive.

But he did, and it has taken him all of fifteen years to get to this point. We hadn't seen much of him, he said, because months ago his dog had suddenly dashed off, anxious to see another dog he was sometimes permitted to play with, at an area park. As the dog bolted, the fellow's fingers which were curled tightly around the leash, broke. They've since, he said wryly, recovered. And I noted that he still walks the dog with his hand and fingers clenched tightly around the leash, in the very same manner.