If you have dogs you don’t realize how nice a fenced yard is until you have to do without one for a while.  My mother lives on about 4 acres in East Texas, which are not fenced.  So whenever the dogs needed a potty break, I had to go out with them.  Unlike the neighbors up the road with their pack of unruly curs, I’m not going to let my dogs roam unsupervised.  Besides those other dogs and the road (which people have a nasty tendency to engage at warp speed), there are various wild animals around.  Not to mention that Boots has shown a distressing tendency to roam great distances if not closely supervised (i.e. on leash, since she conveniently forgets that I exist if she gets beyond 20 feet away). 

Interestingly, Malcolm is much more human/pack oriented, so I was able to take them both out by putting only Boots on a leash.  Malcolm would then orbit either Boots or me and generally stayed within 50 feet or so of both of us (and would come back when called if he started to get a little too far away).  While not quite as secure as having both of them on the leash, it was much more convenient, since the two of them seem to have an instinct for crossing back and forth and tangling their leashes.

Anyhow, it’s a bit annoying to be awakened by a whining dog at 2:00am when it’s 40° and raining.  Although I have to acknowledge that it could be worse, since I’ve had to do the same duty in the past while visiting my sister in Colorado (which, in December, means really bundling up, rather than just throwing on a jacket in addition to the flip-flops).