Today it is raining, the first real rain we have had in some considerable time. Very welcome too as things were beginning to look a little dry.

I got up early (for me), this morning so that I could make the drive to Covet Ford where I bought my latest truck. It had an engine service light that was on and when I checked in the manual, it mentioned catalytic converter amongst a whole bunch of other things which got me a little concerned as those things are very expensive to replace. Unlike my last truck which I purchased new from the same dealer, this one is out of warranty and although I did purchase an extended warranty when I bought it, I am not sure if it covers catalytic converters and don’t need to find out if at all possible.

As it happens, the check in person told me that it could be one of a number of different things and as long as the truck is running OK, not an immediate problem. He also mentioned that they would need to keep the truck for 4-5 days as they were really busy. I thought about my options which were very small in number. One of them was to try to book a loaner and then bring the truck back when one was available. Based on him telling me that things should be OK for a little while, that is what I chose to do.

After an uneventful drive back after wasting a couple of hours on this problem, I arrived home and worked on other things for the rest of the day. One of those things was to try to locate an RV Park where I could take my rig for a couple of months while going through the intricacies of selling the house and all that goes along with it. After 35 years in the same property, there is a lot of stuff to work through. In the meantime, true to the weather forecasters form, it came on to rain and hard at times which didn’t bother me while I was indoors inside my house where it was nice and toasty.

Around 4:00 o’clock, silly me started thinking that the rain would deter Sandy from going on her usual afternoon walk and draggin’ quite literally, Mikey and I along with her. Obviously, she didn’t know it was wet outside or is she so ingrained in her habits that it doesn’t matter. She jumped and barked and howled and generally threw a hissy fit until I could stand it no more and throwing on a raincoat we all walked out of the back door to feed the fish and check on the ponds. As nothing was amiss, we headed back indoors and Sandy immediately told me in no uncertain terms that that little jaunt didn’t fool her one bit and “Com’on Dad, we gotta go walkies”.

So I looked at Mikey and told him that it looks like we gotta bite the bullet and put their harness on and headed for the door. It was still raining but not really hard and wasn’t very comfortable as the temperature had also dropped quite a bit as we headed down the road. It didn’t seem to deter Sandy as apart from a few extra shakes to get the water off, she tore along at her usual breakneck speed with me and Mikey dragging along behind. I had no intention of walking anywhere near to our usual two plus miles and was doing my best to fool her by going through the motions. We walked probably a half mile and it came on to rain harder and there and then, I decided that really, I was the boss and she had to do what I decided and not the other way around. I mean, really. We turned back and made our way back to the house and into the warmth of the central heat glad to be back in the dry. Well, Mikey and I were glad to be back. Not sure about Sandy although she no longer kicked up a fuss when I took her harness off so it was probably enough.