It's a dilemma. We can exert control over Jackie's movements by keeping him on leash. Or we can allow him to roam about to his little heart's content off leash, and hope he doesn't suddenly indulge in a wild dash after a squirrel which will result in a re-injury. He still skips part of the time, hopping along effortlessly on his three long, nimble legs around fifty percent of the time when we're out in the ravine. Doing so doesn't seem to bother him. It bothers us.

We know that this kind of 'skipping' is common to poodles. Both our other little poodles, Button and Riley often indulged in it, but not for the prolonged periods that Jackie is now doing so, when he never did before. Poodles, particularly small ones are also known for slipping their hind legs at the joints and we used to give them Glucosamin for shallow knee-joints. He doesn't skip when he's at home. But on the other hand, at home he's mostly relaxing, snoozing, a lay-about on the sofas.

But there too he's becoming more like his normal self, pre-incident that caused him to react to what we imagine was a painful event. He has always been sensitive to being touched, since the time we brought him home to live with us, along with his sister, when they were three months old. We guessed that though the breeder advertised for months (we'd seen the advert in the papers), people wanting to bring a toy poodle into their home would reject our two because though toy they may be by breeding, they're both the size of miniature poodles.

Jackie is normally a joyful, fun-loving little fellow, anxious to be played with and petted once you get by his initial shrinking back from an extended  hand. He is far more agile than his sister who is slightly shorter and notably heavier than he is. She has a normal physical conformation while her brother is lean and muscular with a metabolism rate twice hers, so he eats twice what she does. They both at the best of times tend to be a little neurotic as very small dogs often are.

Since the incident (which remains a mystery to us) when he suddenly reacted in the strangest way, heart beating furiously, trembling, heavy panting and leaping to the highest point he could attain as though to remove himself from ground level where something occurred to give him pain and/or frighten him, it's been a long, slow process trying to understand what occurred and how to go about rehabilitation.

He's on medication to relieve pain and reduce emotional stress and his veterinarian believes he has located the nexus of the problem -- Jackie's nervous temperament complicated by an acting-up sciatic nerve -- we've seen steady improvement. He's more willing to play with Jillie now, more assertive about getting about and definitely excited when he sees we're preparing to take him and his sister out for a ravine trudge through the forest trails we're all so familiar with.

Yesterday was the temperature-mildest day we've had in a month, about 9C, heavily overcast and humid. We met up with four dogs being walked by two young women, none of whom we'd ever before seen. There were two Goldens and two Bernese Mountain dogs loping along one of the ridges as we hauled ourselves up a long slope of one of the many hills in the ravine. The Goldens were silent and friendly as Goldens tend to be, while the other two, though also friendly, emitted constant deep-bellied, gruff woofs that Jackie and Jillie were happy to echo.