two dot on same network, one seems to act as a slave

[timpwk]

I have two dots connected to one network.  What is weird is one seems to act as a slave to the other.  One is on my porch and the other on the pool deck.  This has happened several times.  For instance last night I listened to the dot on the pool deck.  At the end of the night I disconnected it and put it in the deck box for safety from morning dew.  This morning I went out on my porch and tried to use that dot (they have different names the one on the deck is alexa and the one on the porch is echo).  It would say it was going to play music and then tell me the device was offline, which it was not.  I then connected the one on the pool deck.  When I asked the echo on my porch to play music it played it from the one on my pool deck, not the one I gave the command to.  The dots have different wake words so the deck could not be hearing me.  I then tried setting them up as "backyard group".  When I did that if I told the one on the porch to play the group it would say it was playing music, but nothing played.  When I went to the pool dot and said to play the backyard group it played from both of them.

I then tried to repeat the issue and it seems if I play on the deck last, even when it is disconnected the only way to get the porch one to play when the deck one disconnected  is to disconnect the proch one from the wifi point and then reconnect it.

What is going on?

Thank you so much for any insight.  And sorry if it is a stupid question that I should figure out myself.

(I have 2 other alexa devices in my house connected as my upstairs group and they work totally normally!)