We were later than usual getting out for our ramble through the woods with Jackie and Jillie this afternoon but it's still fairly routine for a Monday, housecleaning day, to end up later than we'd like, in the ravine. We were putting on our jackets around four o'clock, and although we're beginning to reverse daylight hours, recapturing bit by agonizing bit -- likely not more a few seconds a day -- lengthier days, it's not yet noticeable.

It's been like that for months now, though. That when we enter the forest interior the light-atmosphere is dimmer than outside it, but with each minute that passes we notice the light becoming progressively dimmer until the point where it's unmistakably deep dusk and it'll take only another ten minutes before time shoves dusk aside and ushers in night-time darkness. Little difference now between early evening and night.

But the camera records it all, from the first few when the photographs present with a modicum of light to the last few where indistinct images prevail. We figure that by the end of February there will be more light to the day, enough so that we'll remark on it.

We'd had light flurries through the day and when we were walking up to the ravine entrance snow was tumbling lightly from above, enough so that it could be seen as a light frosting over the overall snowpack. In their eagerness to reach the forest, both Jackie and Jillie pull on their leashes. It would result in a far more relaxed trek overall if they were off leash as they once were, before coyotes began being sighted during daylight hours, any time of day. And the occasional encounters that people narrated  of their dogs having episodes with coyotes. Mostly no harm done and in some instances playfully, but then other stories were reported in the news from the west end of the city with dog-coyote encounters that didn't end well for either.

Many people still continue to walk their small dogs unleashed, and today in fact we came across someone walking two very small Yorkie-mixes. Other than making a spurt downhill to meet up with Jackie and Jillie the little creatures tended to stick pretty close to their human, so one imagines he has confidence he wouldn't run into any problems with them.

Even so, shortly after we'd come across the little dogs and their person, we met up with someone else who was walking two very large German shepherd mixes who informed us he'd been out with them earlier in the day, around half-past eleven, when in the very place where we met him, he'd seen a pair of coyotes. His big boys are more than capable of looking after themselves.

Our two, off leash, have a tendency to  race up to other dogs, sometimes with obvious hostility if it's a dog they're not familiar with, and we know from experience that if it was a coyote they confronted they would raise its hackles if for no other reason than that they're irritating. Should an animal like a coyote respond with similar sentiments, though, our two little dogs might come out of the encounter in a condition necessitating immediate veterinarian care, if not worse.