Earlier this week, temperatures fell into the single digits and everyone bundled into coats and blankets and hunkered down to keep warm. But today the temperatures have drifted nonchalantly above freezing, the somewhat fitful February sun is making an appearance, and I find it in my heart to believe that yes, the seasons might actually change this year.

A person might’ve been excused for not believing it last Sunday. A passing fury of ice and sleet caked everything in thick chunks of white gunk, and in a matter of hours the neighborhood looked as inhospitable as the surface of the moon. As the week progressed, the days turned bitterly cold and everything that hadn’t been plowed or shoveled became as hard as sandstone.

The dog had an interesting time of it on one of those days. Taking her outside to do the things that dogs don’t get to do in the house — not even if it’s very, very cold — I checked on her when she seemed to be dawdling, and got a blank stare from her in response to my whistles. Well, it wasn’t exactly a blank stare. It was actually a kind of surprised look with a touch of that “How cool is this??” canine pride she gets sometimes, and perhaps that helped me figure out the mystery of why I had never seen Clementine in that particular part of the back yard before.

“Yes, it’s true,” I told her. “You are indeed standing on the pond.” She had blithely trotted onto the frozen surface of our redoubtable little pond and then apparently just stopped in amazement, knowing that she’d just done something but she didn’t know quite what.

“And now,” I continued, “Why don’t you come in the house, before you become the dog who’s in the pond rather than on top of it?”

I don’t think it was a sudden grasp of English that made her immediately break for the door. I think it had more to do with her being a little uncomfortable with her unexpected role as dog-scientist. That and having some sense that coming in the house is the thing that house-dogs get to do on sub-freezing days, which marks them as privileged house-dogs as opposed to pitiable yard-dogs.

She didn’t attempt her pond-walking trick today. Just as well. Though the pond has an enormous ovoid hunk of translucent ice bobbing beneath its inky surface, it doesn’t look like the thing for supporting a dog.

And anyway, there were other things to keep her busy. There was sniffing to do. Last week’s snow and ice has been receding every day, and though the ground underneath is still a study of different shades of brown, things are definitely changing. While Clementine completed her circuit of the yard looking for scents of Interesting Things, she missed the sight of Romeo the Squirrel making his uncertain way along the top of the fence. Up from hibernation, Romeo had no interest in chittering at Clementine. Such was his pressing need to take in some nourishment. He was carrying an enormous walnut he had dug up, and though he was still woozy and unbalanced, he made a big jump back onto the maple tree and regained his nest in no time, like a guy getting home with the beer and franks just in time for the game.

Yep, the word is out. Winter actually won’t last forever this year.