They can be so intuitive, having observed us closely and lived with us so intimately for almost four years. Dog psychologists say that the more intelligent the dog, the greater the dogs' emotional attachment. That dogs whose intelligence quotient is on the lower end of the scale are emotionally placid; they like all of us like their comforts and because human companionship is comfortable with the assurance that there will always be something to eat, and someone to care for them, and a good place to stay, they aren't too troubled at brief absences.

Acutely intelligent dogs on the other hand, become too psychologically dependent on the presence of their human companions, and absences however brief - a trip to the grocery store, the dentist, let alone absences of longer duration -- feel to them like abandonment and they worry and they grieve. And when the human returns, the joy and relief are palpable. Our two little guys, Jackie and Jillie fall all over themselves in their frantic efforts to greet us after a brief separation.

What we've been told to do, of course, is to simply ignore their anxiety and their erratic state of compulsive leaping all over us rather than reassuring them as best we can because, the psychology goes, we're assisting, enabling and affirming their need for reassurance. If ignored, the reasoning goes, they will get over their anxiety more quickly, and eventually realize that there is no reason to become anxious, that we will return and be reunited with them. When we do return, we tend to give them little treats to try to please and placate them, and sound reasoning goes that we are rewarding them for their anxious state.

All of which may be true, but we find it too difficult emotionally ourselves to be as casual and non-committal as is required to train them to cease their feverish anxiety. Perhaps part of the trouble is that we rarely go anywhere without considering them, whether to allow them to accompany us or succumb to the reality that there are times when it makes little sense, when it isn't to either their or our advantage, let alone convenience.

They know, from  subtle hints they pick up, what our intentions will be. Not only because there are obvious signals, like the clothing we wear, like the fact that if heading out-of-doors the first thing we do is put their collars on with their identification; no collar, no accompanying us. They know our routine as well; when we're preparing to do the grocery shopping and then they never, ever accompany us. Except, that is, when we're on holidays in New Hampshire and the great supermarket we shop at permits dogs and we carry them with us in over-the-shoulder bags and they get all kinds of attention, with other shoppers wanting to pet them and play with them.

Routine, however, suits them best; the predictability of our daily lives which includes a long daily recreational circuitous trail through the forest where we follow them as they make their way through a familiar set of linking trails taking us on a loop with various landscapes, and the changing seasons' effect on those landscapes. This is when Jackie and Jillie enjoy life the most, apart from eating their meals, playing with one another, dozing alongside us while we're reading and relaxing at home. It's hard to imagine life without their constant presence. A kind of mirror-image of their imaginations gone amok thinking for a brief period of separation that they are alone and we have left them.