Just over two years ago we took Jackie and Jillie, then about 8 months old, to Ogdensburg, New York, just across the border, an hour-and-a-half drive from our home, to a veterinary hospital located there to have them neutered using laser technology. We wanted it done that way because it's less painful for them, less bleeding results, it's quicker and recovery is faster.

There were two locations in Ottawa that offered veterinarian laser surgery but their price was quite prohibitive, over $1,000 for each of the siblings. A ravine-hiking friend had informed us that it's more practical and affordable where he takes his own little dogs for veterinarian services, into the U.S. We thought about it, looked online, telephoned the place and made a trip out there for exploratory purposes. Satisfied with what we saw and discussed with the manager there, we made an appointment for neutering for our puppies, returning several weeks later to get it done.

We had made a reservation at a nearby motel where breakfast was served and we relaxed, took a walk in a wooded area alongside the St.Lawrence River to while the time away after we had delivered our confused little puppies to the veterinarian hospital. We visited the Remington museum, we went by a local Walmart for additional bedding for the puppies, and finally were able to pick them up around five to take them home. They had expertly professional treatment, and the cost to us was a fraction of what it would have been at home, about $150 for each surgery.

Scott, our hiking friend, had taken one of his little terriers to the same hospital a year earlier to have a cancerous growth on one of its hips removed; a reasonable procedure there but immensely costly at home. What he paid was yet again a fraction of the cost in Ottawa; a quick surgery, well executed resulting in a cancer-free little dog. We'd had previous experience with the cost of veterinarian surgery with our toy Apricot Poodle when we paid thousands for surgery on three occasions, the last one succeeding not in helping him overcome a sudden-onset medical condition, but taking his little life.

Scott, a fireman by profession, is the most amiable, courteous young man imaginable. We know his mother as well, a more occasional hiker with her own little Shih-Tsu Angus, and Scott, though a burly, handsome young man, and his mother a wee bit of a Scottish woman, inherited so many of his mother's personality characteristics it's quite amazing, including his distinct manner of speech, an absolute masculine version of her own.

He has made arrangements, he told us, to return for the same veterinarian surgeon to once again operate on his little white terrier. Like our little Riley, his terrier has developed a substantial tumour, a fatty-deposit lipoma. We had Riley undergo surgery when his lipomas grew to a size that impeded his gait and turned one of his legs outward. And this is what has happened with Scott's terrier. Its companion is several years younger and has never had any such problems; just a matter of random genetic inheritance.

When the four little dogs meet, as they did yesterday during our afternoon ravine walk through the woods, there's a great racket of yipping and barking and rushing about, in an affectionate display of friendship between four little dogs. That the day was relatively mild at 8C, with occasional sun and a reduced wind effect, made the hike all the more pleasurable for anyone venturing out as we do daily.