We decided against boots for Jackie and Jillie for their afternoon ramble in the ravine, since the temperature was 0C, and we thought boots wouldn't be required. And they were fine for the most part,though a chill wind made it seem much colder. The trouble was that there was so much loose, powdery snow about. Which meant that at that temperature the warmth from their pads contacting the loose snow produced a build-up of snow and ice on their little paws and eventually it did affect them.

In the meanwhile, they pranced about happily enough on our walk. No sun but light snow came down in little drifts from the cloudy sky, and the landscape was admirably handsome, as it so often is with that combination. Again, we came across no one else throughout our walk on the forest trails, but when we emerged from the ravine after the last long climb toward street level we did come across several of our ravine acquaintances just entering with their dogs.

A brief bit of rollicking about for Jackie and Jillie with their friends. Because they were without boots we picked them up to carry them home since the road had been salted and was a thoroughly murky mess of sand, salt, melting ice and snow. Jackie was beginning to shiver, and both he and Jillie ahd tucked their tails in, a sure-fire sign they weren't quite comfortable, so carrying them resolved the problem. Little dogs are just that much more vulnerable to weather extremes. Once home, warm water applied on their frozen little feet helped to dislodge the ice packed into their pads.

And then my husband decided he'd bake a bread. A whole wheat loaf with cracked wheat. He's a dedicated bread-baker. And he depends on his trusty old breadmaker. Not me -- though I'm willing enough and he keeps refusing my offers to bake his bread myself by hand -- but the electro-mechanical breadmaker that he's used for years and more latterly has hauled down to his workshop to effect a few repairs upon.

It's a bit wonky, even after those repairs. It mixes up the ingredients and 'kneads' it all just fine, but when it comes to the baking process there's much to be desired. The end product invariably is a bread with a crust hard enough to saw through like a thick plank of wood, and the interior is uneven with large air gaps making the bread sometimes difficult to cut through and come up with a clean slice.

Finally, he listened to me. I had recommended he just extract the bread dough when the machine was finished kneading, and pack the dough into a loaf pan, let it rise there, and bake it in the conventional oven. He was skeptical and reluctant, but finally agreed he'd take that route. And the result was a perfect bread, interior smooth, the crust just crusty enough.

Our puppies were last shorn of excess hair in November. When I used to cut their hair myself, I would wait three weeks to a month and then set to with an assortment of scissors, time-consuming and tiring, snipping away hair first on one then the other. I'd been doing this for a quarter of a century, first with our other two little poodles, and now with these two.

With age, however, comes a gradual decline in the functionability of our senses. It's not just that we tend to have less energy to expend at any given tasks, but eyesight too has a tendency to degrade when we reach our senior-senior years. Patience too has a habit of trickling away, though I'd never found that to be much of a problem. Handling delicate jobs requiring both skill and patience become compromised and you fear a wrong move and injury resulting.

It took awhile, but we finally decided I'd put away those shears and we'd take Jackie and Jillie to a grooming salon, selecting one attached to the animal health clinic we'd been taking Button and Riley, J&J's predecessors to for health checks for many years. The staff at the 'spa' is young and cheerful, and their love of the dogs they handle to bathe, groom and care for is obvious.

And my relief at no longer having to groom our restless little fellows is enormous. At the same time the pleasure we take in seeing how beautiful they look immediately after their grooming session is equally enormous, their hair silky smooth and soft, their nails done, and all is well. This time of year meant we hesitated before taking them in, but they had become so wild and woolly, shaggy and unkempt in appearance, we felt we had little option.

In fact, we had waited a month longer than we would normally have them done. Our concerns are with the fact that shearing them would remove a protective layer of warmth against the prevailing cold conditions. On the other hand, with their hair an even and short cut, they don't pick up snow and ice as they're otherwise wont to do. It's just that they look so delicate and vulnerable, the bulky appearance gone, in favour of the grooming result showing just how small and dainty they are.

It was -8C and damp, with a cutting wind when we took them out for their afternoon hike through the forest trails in the ravine yesterday. They needed the full regalia, boots, sweater, jacket. Truth is, they gave no indication whatever of discomfort during our hike in the elements, behaving just as they normally do. We were acutely aware of the wind ripping through the protective layers of the garments we were wearing, however.

The floor of the bridges tamped down hard from months of people stomping over them, fording the creek in the ravine as we move through the forest trails are becoming increasingly higher as the rails of the bridges become correspondingly lower; there's a difference now of at least three feet in height in packed snow cover on the bridge floors, due to accumulated snow and ice. Not quite as high as we've seen it become in the past, but notable.

Of the few wooden benches left in a few key strategic 'rest' places -- which is to say, what's left of them over years of being hacked by bored teens with nothing better to do -- they're mostly covered in layers of snow, inviting no one to sit awhile to contemplate nature unfolding around them.

Yesterday hit a high temperature of 3C, so it seemed quite warm. It followed on overnight rain which left driveways mostly free of the snow that had preceded the rain, but threatened to become sheer ice as soon as the temperature dropped again, and the same was true of the road. Slush, best described the road which hadn't been plowed by municipal crews.

A light ice fog could be seen in distant views. But for a change Jackie and Jillie had no need of boots. They charged off down the entrance hill to the ravine in an ecstatic show of appreciation. The creek, only the day before when the high was -8C and windy, was piled high with snow over top of the ice that had finally formed, and was now open and raging downstream with meltwater.

The footing on the trails was much improved from the state of the new-fallen snowpack of the days previous, when every step forward on an ascent was accompanied by a slide and progress was painfully slow and arduous. Under these new conditions, our boots made deeper inroads into the snow and we were able to proceed with far less effort. Even the drag of lifting each boot out of the depression in the snow they made, was less of an effort, that the balance and thrust required in the alternate circumstances. In some places where melting was ongoing apace now, if an unwary step glanced slightly off-trail, your boot sank up to the knee and it required a helping yank to extricate it and regain balance.

Other than that, progress was relatively free of the previous effort required, and we decided to take advantage of this brief interlude of warmth and clement conditions to extend our walk. It wasn't our usual afternoon walk in any event. We knew that before the day ended the temperature would plunge back to -8C with wind picking up strength, so we decided we'd go out with Jackie and Jillie towing us along, before breakfast.

It turned out to be a prolonged, leisurely trek through the forest trails. It's been at least a week that piled-up snow events and icy conditions have mitigated our hikes, influencing us into taking shorter circuits through the forest, but it seemed as though it were months, not a week, that we had missed out on the longer circuit. Oddly enough, we came across no one at all out, like us taking advantage of this brief opportunity.

It's their usual modus operandi. They get excited and begin picking up their ears, sniffing, coming to an alert pose and we know that somewhere nearby another dog is approaching. We may not see it for awhile yet but Jackie and Jillie know, they are far more attuned, their hearing, olfactory sense and sight superior to ours by far. It's where canines shine and humans decline.

We were almost in completion of yesterday's ravine hike on a relatively mild -4C day which still required that they wear boots since the freshly fallen snow was loose and their tender little paws would pick it all up and freeze their feet rendering them incapable of trotting the forest trails. And that's when they became aware of the approach of another dog.

When that happens their excitement cannot be assuaged, they leap forward, both as one, to speedily close the gap in the trail between themselves and whoever is oncoming. Soon we saw their goal in the distance but couldn't yet make out who it might be, if we could recognize the shape and size of a familiar dog. There was a mild ice fog in the atmosphere so at a distance objects appeared slightly opaque.

By that time they had reached a position closer to the object of their curiosity, and that dog was ramping up its speed to meet them, so as soon as the other dog began closing the gap between them Jackie and Jillie turned tail to run back toward us. It's an old and familiar example of their excited 'aggression' being instantly damped the moment another dog makes an effort to challenge them.

It was, in fact, Amadeus, the 125-lb Saint Bernard whom we had come across just a few days earlier and at the very same place on the forest trail, as it happened. Amadeus is really laid back, he wouldn't threaten a fly, and had no intention of actually 'challenging' our two, he was merely reciprocating as they well knew. They were soon briefly milling about together, an unlikely trio.

We'd come across another pair of acquaintances just a short while earlier with their three dogs leading the way, one of which, a formerly aggressive littermate of their original two had been neglected by its former human, so they had adopted him and socialized him with a great deal of patience, and now he stood before us, waiting and wanting to be acknowledged, petted and spoken to. Actually, it's those sharp noses; he could readily detect there was a bag of treats in one of my pockets.

Dogs adore winter, all the more so when the forest floor is deeply blanketed in snow. They dip their muzzles into the snow and screw their heads about as though in an ecstasy of appreciation at its icy freshness, they leap with huge enthusiasm through piles of accumulated snow, they forge their way along newly-dusted trails with curiosity about what lies ahead, and go off-trail at random to inspect anything they see or smell requiring their immediate attention, melding themselves completely with the landscape.

Certainly there's the nuisance factor resulting from a snowfall. But first there's the glorious sight of snowflakes tumbling down from the clouds above and their lazy swirl as they pack themselves around and about everything that receives them, a soft white cloud themselves of the winter phenomenon of freezing moisture tumbling about in the atmosphere.

A snowstorm is a swirling descent of flaky crystals whose shapes are both random and startlingly creative, but then why wouldn't they be, since they're the creation of the same omnipresent, omnipotent force responsible for the existence of all things and everything?

A snowfall is as exquisitely ephemeral as any natural phenomenon that has passed through existence on its way to extinction, for nothing lasts and everything is recycled in the endless transformation of matter assuming unimaginable variants of being. Our human sensations and emotions are moved by what we experience in the present; we cannot possibly be aware of the events that have preceded us and will in the fullness of time succeed us.

But for the moment we can dwell on the privilege of witnessing nature's countless events that impact on us, sensitive to our immediate environment and to the reality that we are a significant portion of that environment. All of which is to say, isn't it, how much we can, if we allow ourselves to, enjoy to the fullest extent possible these brief examples of nature's seasons.

Of course, there's also a cost in energy expended eventually to bring human order to the event in question, to be enabled to enter and exit, travel and resume 'business' as usual. And that inevitably means shovelling those marvellous crystals that tend to heap themselves everywhere, hampering ease of movement. The price we pay, so to speak, for being part of nature.

First things first; off we went with Jackie and Jillie during the snowstorm, wading our way up the street that wouldn't be plowed by municipal crews for hours. Jackie and Jillie are smart enough to seek out the furrows in the snow created by passing vehicles, though there weren't too many, to be sure. Gaining the entrance to the ravine by climbing over the snowpack adjacent the group mailbox we found that at some time someone had been out before us.

Jackie and Jillie simply leap their four-legged ecstasy through the snow, following within the shallow and narrow trench of the still-visible path filling in with new snow. And we followed them. Jillie has a tendency to race far ahead, turning back on occasion to spot where we are, while Jackie races back and forth from her to us in an excited display of high energy output. We make no effort to replicate that kind of output, and take our time.

We find them both awaiting our arrival at the foot of the venerable pine at the base of our entrance trail as we make the ascent, then all of us veer off to the left and to another, briefer ascent. By that time the trail has been tamped down somewhat, pointing to the earlier presence of others, though the momentum of the snowfall means we are in some areas 'breaking trail' until we reach the main trail accessed over the first of the bridges over the now-frozen and snow-laden creek, and up another hill to a main ridge where the ravine falls away on either side, as we progress forward after a right turn.

Jackie and Jillie stop occasionally to bark fervently at the valley to the left, sensing someone we cannot see at first making their way through another trail we don't plan to access this day. Eventually as we continue along, we can make out a partial dim figure a far way down below, moving steadily along, and as we continue to move steadily forward through the falling snow, the landscape enraptures us with fleeting filaments of snow seeming to leave traces like those of a falling star in a night sky, as they fall and settle around us.

We come across a tiny woman with ski poles and snowshoes whom we had last seen back in the summer months, and with her, Amadeus, her robust companion. Amadeus is a 125-lb. St.Bernard, comfortable in this snowy environment, friendly and totally relaxed. He's about 110 pounds heavier than Jackie, our scrawny little poodle, but both Jackie and Jillie (heavier than her brother) are comfortable in this giant breed's company.

We talk awhile and the three dogs become re-acquainted in the way that canines do; casually and undemandingly, their interest soon turning back to the landscape that excites them just as much as it does us, likely more since they're infinitely more adaptable to all that is natural in this world, making few demands upon the environment to exploit it to advantage, as we do.

So after I finished baking those giant cupcakes -- chocolate mocha, my husband's favourites -- and made some bread dough to refrigerate until using it to bake croissants to go with a good hearty soup for Sunday evening -- a short-cut I employ, preparing the dough a few days ahead -- and then starting a chicken soup for dinner for Friday night, there was a bit of daily kitchen and bathroom clean-up, bed-making and other little chores.

All that done with, off we went for an afternoon jaunt in the ravine for Jackie and Jillie to have their opportunity to sniff and snuffle along the forest trails, occasionally indulging in bursts of energetic fervour in their constant competition to determine who would arrive first at a designated spot only they are privy to.

It was -14C when we set out, the high temperature for the day, with light wind. But oh, what a wonderful sky, an ocean of pale blue with a brilliant golden orb sailing within it, pretending to warm the winter-chilly atmosphere. The wind hadn't yet blown all the snow off the forest trees, so the last snowstorm's snowfall nicely limned branches and boughs to emphasize that creation of a winter-wonderland landscape we so appreciate.

The forest is fast asleep under its white, protective mantle, insulated underground are all the delightful perennial plants, flowering and fruit-bearing that so delight us when spring and summer arrive. For the time being we have the enchantment of winter spreading its snowy mantle over the landscape, the sun glancing off pure white snow, not yet prepared to degrade once late winter brings milder temperatures and the slow progress of snowmelt.

Shortly before our circuit was completed for the day in the ravine we had a pleasant encounter with an old ravine acquaintance walking her own little dog Angus, a small fellow with a mind of his own that keeps persuading him to wander beyond sight, and her son's two terriers. Jackie and Jillie spotted them a long way off and ran excitedly to greet them.

When we caught up to them finally the two terriers who know us well since we more frequently see them out with their human companion, surrounded enthusiastically us with their own greeting. The untoward weather of extremes we've been experiencing this past month of January has kept quite a number of people from entering the forest precincts, until equal measures of guilt and curiosity drive them back to venture into the forest with their dogs who have sorely missed their favourite playground.

The last day of January saw a crisp, cold day inviting us for a circuit in the ravine with Jackie and Jillie. We missed the sun. It was out all morning and into the early afternoon, but by the time we set out at three in the afternoon the sun had bid the day goodbye and the blue sky had given way to steadily shifting pewter clouds.

Since the high temperature for the day was -14C with some wind, we knew a bit of adversity in conditions awaited us and dressed our little dogs and ourselves accordingly. As we finished up our hike in the ravine and were just exiting, a hiking friend with his three dogs wast just then entering the long slope leading to the forest trails, and he was well muffled, a thick scarf pulled across his lower face so only his smiling eyes greeted us, and his voice.

Off we set toward the street and home, after Jackie and Jillie had leapfrogged all over our friend's three Border Collies, excited at the brief get-together. Our friend and his wife had returned a week ago from a ten-day winter holiday in Costa Rica, so it makes sense that a bit of re-adjustment to a far different climate was called for. Ordinarily not much fazes this guy, a former tactical squad police officer.

The bridges in the ravine -- there are about four of them, reduced from the original five -- are finally getting smothered with layers of snow. Little wonder since Environment Canada tells us we've hit a record snowfall amount for January. On the other hand we can recall winters when the floor of the bridges were raised so high we felt uneasy passing over them, the top rails at thigh level; the floor raised by at least three and more feet of hard-packed snow and ice. They're merely at the one-foot level at present.

We're not coming across too many people and their dogs actually, on these days when it's been so icy-cold, with wind whipping through the atmosphere, adding a wind-chill factor well above the -14C of the average day-time highs lately. But we did come across one acquaintance with her young German Shepherd mix yesterday, familiar to us and named Sasha, happily dressed for the weather, and even happier to offer a playful run-about with Jackie and Jillie.

We're not ourselves staying out as long as we normally do, cutting our daily circuits short by selecting alternate trails that don't thread through as much of the forest as we normally take. By the time we're ready to clamber up the last of the hills toward street level our noses usually feel as though they've fallen off and the cold has penetrated to bone and flesh.

But the quality of the landscape remains incandescently beautiful, our reward for getting out there into the forest daily. Rewards are ample for Jackie and Jillie as well. Their frequent stops to acquaint themselves with the marking messages left by other companion dogs going through the forest trails bring them up to date with the latest canine news of the larger neighbourhood.

They have a tendency when they see something different on a familiar trail to exhibit great curiosity with the intention of exploring what it is, after their initial audible warning that halt! something different lies ahead. Everything shows up on the wide, deep and white blanket of snow covering the forest floor. Yesterday it was a partial branch complete with desiccated foliage that drew their interest.

An interest that lasted for as long as it took for them both to vigorously sniff at it, paw it, and reject it, then move on. But it did hold their interest briefly, as do many other perplexing sudden appearances of woodland objects all of which must undergo strict vetting.