You put the lamp on at four o'clock on Thursday and felt slightly ridiculous about it. It was not dark. It was just grey, in that particular way October is grey, where the light goes flat at three and then gives up entirely somewhere around half five without ever having properly arrived.
But you put it on anyway. And before you had even sat down, the dog had crossed the room and folded himself into the corner of the sofa nearest the light, with the enormous sigh of an animal whose working day has just ended.
He has decided that the lamp means the day is over. You did not teach him this. You are not sure when he learned it. But the lamp goes on and he goes down, every time, with the certainty of a man clocking off.
The turn
There is a week in every autumn when the house changes shape.
In August, nobody sat down before nine. The back door was open. The dog was somewhere in the garden, or in the doorway with his front half in and his back half out, keeping an eye on both. Evenings were long and slightly shapeless and nobody minded.
Now the back door is shut by five. The heating clicks on at some hour you have never actually checked. And the sofa, which was a piece of furniture people occasionally sat on between other activities, has quietly become the main event.
He was ready for this before you were. Dogs always are. They do not spend three weeks in denial about the weather. They simply notice that the good spot has moved from the cool tiles by the back door to the cushion nearest the radiator, and they move.
The ceremony
There is a whole procedure now.
He arrives at the sofa, then stands on it for a moment, assessing. Then the circling, three or four turns, which nobody has ever satisfactorily explained. Then the collapse, always heavier than a dog of his size should be able to manage, and the second sigh, which is louder than the first and is aimed at you.
Then the blanket business. The nose goes under the edge, and then the whole head, and then he shoulders his way in until only the top of his back is showing, and he stays like that for four hours.
By seven he is properly asleep. Not dozing. Asleep, with the paws twitching and the small muffled noises that mean he is chasing something, and winning.
What you are actually watching
You look over at some point in the evening and think, not for the first time, that he has got this entirely right.
Because you spent the week being slightly annoyed about the dark. The walks are harder to fit in. The car needs the lights on at teatime. The whole thing feels like something being taken away from you, a bit at a time, until December.
And he has looked at exactly the same set of facts and concluded: excellent, the sitting-down season is here. He has not lost anything. He has been given something. The long light was good and now the warm dark is good, and there is no part of him that thinks one of them is a lesser version of the other.
He is not being philosophical about it. He is a dog. He just has not learned to resent the weather, which turns out to be most of the trick.
Six o'clock
So you stop trying to do anything useful at half six on a Tuesday, because he is on your feet and moving would be unkind.
The lamp is on. The blanket has a dog under it. Somewhere in the next room something is on the radio that you are not listening to.
This is the bit of the year nobody photographs. It is not a beach or a bluebell wood or the first snow. It is a lamp, a sofa, and a dog who has been asleep for two hours, in a house that has got quietly smaller and warmer around the pair of you.
It might be the best part of it.
If your own dog has claimed the corner nearest the radiator, our dog blankets and the rest of the Sleep range are worth a look. Free UK delivery on orders over £30.
More of the same season: the one who collects things, and the towel moves to the radiator.