Although our two little companion dogs are the size of miniature poodles, they are in fact, toy poodles, extremely large for their breed, but registered as toy and toy they are. This is a breed notorious for their unfriendly attitude toward other dogs. We experienced that with our little Apricot Toy Riley, who exhibited all those symptoms of his breed. Still, we were naive enough to think that the hostility that Riley had demonstrated was particularly relevant to his own character, and didn't really anticipate when we adopted Jack and Jill that they too would be just like Riley.

We were right, in a sense, they aren't just like Riley. They are, as it happens, even worse than he had been in spontaneously reacting to the presence of dogs they don't know with raging snarls and provocative barking. And since there are two of them, their emotions feed off one another, one inciting the other to even greater efforts at displaying their dislike for unfamiliar dogs. Like Riley, once they become familiar with another dog that hostility disappears and they become friendly, looking forward to seeing and being with 'friends' they know.

But since they're so small, and all our efforts have been useless to convince them not to behave in such a manner, we always worry that if they are left to confront other dogs, particularly large ones with such evident rage, that the other dog will become incensed and be inclined to harm them; not that they don't deserve being disciplined, but angry dogs don't discipline, they strike out with violent savagery.

Our twins also have an unstoppable proclivity to browse when we're out in the woods, picking up twigs, dessicated foliage, all manner of detritus to eat. It's not as though there is something lacking in their diet or that they don't get enough to eat. They even enjoy mixed fresh salads of vegetables daily, supplementing their ordinary fare. For small dogs they have prodigious appetites.

Jackie is lean, lithe and athletic, always on the move; he eats twice what Jillie does, and she with her more complacent character, weighs twice what he does. We've experienced occasions when we've had to rush Jackie to the veterinarian emergency hospital because he's become violently ill from something he picked up in the ravine.

We became so fed up with both these issues that we took to keeping them on leash at all times, to be able to respond quickly to restrain them in their attempted rushes at other dogs, and their efforts to eat anything that appeared before them they viewed as edible. We never had to resort to that kind of stifling of freedom of movement for Button and Riley, their loved predecessors. Finally yesterday, after having them on leash for at least six months, we decided to give it another try; take them off leash and see how they behaved.

They behaved, in fact, much better than when they're on leash, yesterday. They stayed reasonably close to us, didn't stray much, responded with alacrity when we called them or chastised them, and we were enormously pleased with them. We did come across a number of other ravine walkers, some with dogs, but all familiar to Jackie and Jillie, so there was no misbehaviour.

We'll see how long that lasts....