Those 70ish Girls

It all started years ago. I went to visit Mom and Gus in California and when I got back, Kip picked me up at the airport. I was tired, but I couldn’t help but notice that we weren’t going in the direction of our house.

“I want to show you what I found while you were gone,” He said.

We went to a car lot in the mid cities which confused me because at the moment, we were the proud owners of cars for everyone and unless someone had an unfortunate accident while I was gone…”Oh, no, did someone have an unfortunate accident while I was gone?” I asked.

“Not as far as I know,” he sort of assured me. “Do you know something I don’t know?”

Since neither of us knew anything, we went on to the subject at hand. I asked what we were doing at a car lot and he said we were there to look at a small used motor home.

We looked at it, we bought it, and then a few weeks later we got a boat and all the other paraphernalia that goes with it. We spent every weekend we could at one of the many beautiful lakes close to the Dallas area. We became quite good at water skiing, knee boarding, and tubbing.

At the time, we had a little westie named Sadie and a wire haired fox terrier named Pixie. We bought life jackets for them and brought them along on our camping trips.

Sadie on the left and Pixie on the right

The second summer we had the motor home, we decided to buy a couple of bicycles. Several of the lakes had bike trails and we thought it would be fun to go for a ride in the evenings.

One day we saw a lady riding on the trail and she had a double baby carrier attached to her bike. Right then we decided that Sadie and Pixie would like to go with us on our rides, and that they would enjoy sitting in a double baby carrier.

We had a Sears Store near where we lived so one Saturday we went shopping. We were discussing the pros and cons of two different carriers when a young salesman came and stood by us. He patiently waited while Kip and I continued our discussion about which carrier would work the best.

Kip: Do you think they’ll sit up or lie down and sleep? We won’t have to hook them to a harness if they sleep. The zipper net will keep them from falling out.

Me: We would have to be sure and remember to zip it up. This one looks dangerous. If they fell out and we didn’t notice right away, we could potentially drag them by the neck.

Kip: Wow! These are expensive. Maybe we should just continue to lock them in the motor home with the air on. At least until we find a used carrier.

At this point we noticed the young man waiting to help us. He looked horrified. It took us a minute to figure out why.

“Sadie and Pixie aren’t babies,” I assured him. “They’re our dogs. Not that we would want to drag our dogs.”

We didn’t buy a carrier that day, but we found one at another store that was perfect. We took the dogs, their carrier, and our bikes to Lake Ray Robert’s one beautiful fall weekend. We couldn’t wait to take a ride on the trail. The dogs looked comfortable and secure to us.

The problem was that they didn’t like bike rides. Well Sadie did, but Pixie howled the whole time.

The carrier sat in the garage for a couple of years until we had a garage sale. People looked at us funny when we told them our dogs didn’t like being pulled behind our bikes. It was one of those ideas that sounds good when you say it real fast.