It's happened before in our decades of hiking through the woods and it will happen again, of course, but fortunately this time, unlike some of the other occasions, no harm was done. One moment I was negotiating my way downhill, exercising caution in view of the fact that both on the descent and the ascent, the trails were tricky underfoot given the latest inundation of cloudbursts, and the next I was slipping and falling. Ending up briefly sitting, where just a second earlier I was striding. So my hands got muddy and so did the back of my jacket, and Jackie was momentarily upset at what was clearly different, until I swiftly arose to assure my husband that I was fine, just a bit muddy.

Companion dogs add much to our lives, they entertain and amuse us, their presence giving us comfort and sometimes purpose -- and we feel responsibility for their well-being. Their presence alongside us as we hike through the forest trails gives us the purpose for doing so, and enjoying nature. Jackie soon settled down and along with his sister Jillie, they resumed their usual sniffing and toddling along into the fall-dwindling bracken off the forest trails. When we get home going directly into the laundry room with them, we clean their paws and begin to extract the countless burrs they pick up on their soft haircoats. Yesterday we even found a tiny live snail in Jillie's footpads, placing it outside to continue its life in the garden.

Two days earlier we'd come across one of our trail-walking friends. He is in his mid-50s, and retired not by choice. He is by nature a tense man, concentrated on physical action so it made sense that he was with the RCMP special enforcement unit. He is of medium-height, wiry and energetic, with a perpetual look of concern on his face. He has always been involved in extreme sport activities and thrives on them, but that involvement has cost him dearly in one fracture after another. Not quite as serious as the shunt he now wears draining liquid from his brain whose delicate adjustment after an MRI scan is critical to his functioning. Which has been dreadfully impaired lately by the last strain his body took after his participation in another extreme sport event, leaving him for the past several months totally unable to do anything physical.

His wife, who has been walking their three working-breed dogs -- border collies from the same litter, the most well-trained and obedient dogs we've ever come across -- suddenly decided, he informed us, to go off to Orlando (puzzlingly, given the high-emergency weather threat that Florida is now under) with the mother of one of their sons-in-law, and is there now, so he has had to get those high-energy dogs out on his own, despite his excruciating pain. This is an instance where canine companion needs are met despite the obstacles to health that their human companions face. He was unable to walk very far and had to, in fact, crouch down from time to time in an effort to allow the pain he was experiencing to pass before carrying on.

And then there is another dog-walking, trail-hiking friend of ours about the same age, also now retired, who now walks alone. It's difficult for us to accustom ourselves to seeing him without his beautiful, good-natured white German Shepherd but she suddenly died, leaving him in disbelief at the suddenness and lack of symptoms. She accompanied him on all his walks; like our friend with the border collies, he habitually took her out into the woods two or three times daily. Now, he continues his walks as a matter of personal necessity for his own health, missing her presence, expecting from time to time to see her walking toward him. He is a man of immense height, almost seven feet, with a well-built girth, a veritable giant, wearing a cardiac pacemaker. He experienced heart failure about a decade earlier and at that time underwent open-heart surgery. His wife never accompanies him on his walks; some people are devoted to touching nature intimately as possible, most others are indifferent to that need.

These are both resolutely determined people focused on getting on with life. Their companion dogs have helped them enjoy life to its fullest potential, but in the same token, leaving these people burdened, cognizant of their need to respond to the health requirements of their companions, and sometimes achieving a balance becomes very difficult.