Most often, and particularly during the week days we seldom see others making their way across the trails through the forest in the ravine. Not that there aren't ample people doing just what we do daily, and we know many of them through encounters of many years past, but our times don't necessarily mesh. We tend to go out when our daily tasks in and around the house are finished for the day, and that could be anytime between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm.

Yesterday was a little unusual; after I'd spent the morning baking and doing some light house-keeping, it was still before noon and off we went on yet another lovely early-fall day. And we kept encountering others out with dogs, some of whom we knew and a few we didn't.

Jackie and Jillie, happy and eager to be out in the forest, are consumed with the interesting messages they sniff out here and there. Despite which they're always attuned to sounds and sights long before we are, of people approaching. And as soon as they confirm that to be the case, off they leap in a frenzy of expectation. They know, long in advance of any approach if it's someone they're familiar with, and whether there is a complete stranger ahead.

The sounds they make also alert us to the very same realities; fierce barking is interpreted as 'strangers ahead', and relative subdued greetings accompanied by a mad scrambling signals to us that they're coming abreast of friends and acquaintances. Most often there's a prequel where they will excitedly bark and then fall silent, having validated that friends are approaching.

It's not only us who are signalled with that information, but people we know well, who laughingly as they come abreast of us, inform us that they knew far in advance of Jackie and Jillie reaching them that we were in close proximity. We don't particularly like it when our two arouse one another to such heights of hysterical excitement, all the more so when they swiftly go out of our immediate sightlines. Their behaviour could very well act as an incentive to hostile action by dogs unfamiliar with their routine. But so far -- and they're now three years of age in two days' time -- we have met with not one iota of success in attempting to persuade them not to behave this way.

There's little doubt that they kindle in one another this type of behaviour. For the most part it's Jillie who begins and transmits her excitement to Jackie, her loyal follower. The thing is, the moment a new dog reciprocates and begins to run toward them, Jillie retreats post-haste, leaving Jackie to face an oncoming dog curious about all the ruckus.

When I call them to return to us as soon as we hear their growing excitement, there are key words guaranteed to bring them back. "Treat!" is one of them. "Bye-bye" is another, and so is an imperious "This way!" But the rate of response is directly linked to what it is that has so excited their interest. If there's too great a distance between them and the object of interest they will return all the more quickly. If they've accomplished their goal and feel uncertain about what they may have unleashed as a backlash, they're also quick to respond.

Our forays into the woods is never without its particular pleasures not exactly enhanced by tension, but pleasant despite those tensions.