I took my two surviving English Springers on their routine morning run Wednesday, 8:30-ish, to the usual hayfield — a mix of clover, timothy, orchard grass and rye — the shadowed eastern third still frosted brittle. I let Ringy and Lily out and sat in the cab listening to Dennis and Callahan on WEEI.

Well, I wasn’t there for more than a minute or two when I heard one of the dogs jump aggressively onto the truck’s bed. I looked back and, strangely, it was Bingy. Hmmmm? Very unlike ole Bingy to be eager to leave. So, I hopped out of the cab and the dog leaped off the tailgate and ran 35 yards toward the river bank, stopping to look back at me before rearing back a couple of times and bouncing on his front feet like a horse. I called him and he sprinted to my side, seeking affection. I pet him on the breast bone, under his jowls, and he stood motionless, enjoying the attention, before again sprinting down the path toward the steep river bank and repeating his previous horse dance.

Bemused and in a hurry, I called him back, kenneled him and whistled for Lily, she searching about through a melon patch some 100 yards south of me. She lifted her head, spotted me and sprinted across the sunny section of ankle-high hayfield before bounding onto the truck’s bed and straight into her porta-kennel. I fastened the door shut and re-entered my cab.

As I drove homeward toward a couple of hot houses, I was thinking about potential reasons for Bingy’s peculiar behavior. He was clearly asking me for something. I was not sure what. Then it came to me. I have been running them each afternoon in the adjacent sunken meadow, where they seem to enjoy hunting rabbits and whatever other critters lurk in the bordering wetland, not to mention eating green pear apples under three “wild” apple trees at the far end. With a chill in the air and wind in his sails, Old Bingy, a youthful 12, was frisky and wanted to head for that sunken play ground.

His time is near. Soon it’ll be hunting season and we’ll travel to many similar haunts, where that enthusiastic gait will sing the same joyful song it’s sung for more than a decade.

Who would have ever dreamt he’d outlive Bessie?