June 11

13C and o/c
First Game of Presidents Tournament yesterday M and I on opposing teams - they won.
Have to switch the boat and motorhome positions so that the boat is more visible. I haven't advertised the boat yet as I am still 'sprucing' it up.

Here is some more of Jerry's story.

CHAPTER 4

T

he summer went by quickly, then autumn and winter came.  I grew quite quickly and eventually my size apparently caused a problem and one evening when I decided to go to my bed it wasn’t in it’s corner.  Very shortly I was escorted outside where all three of the family made a big to-do about a wooden box with a roof that they insisted on calling my house.

  House! I already had a house and I had no problem sharing; but in the end somewhat against my will I was relegated to this ‘new house’.

  Actually after I got used to it I found that it wasn’t too bad.  I had more freedom and I learned all on my own to take care of things around our yard, my guardianship grew in responsibility.

  I learned also that although John was supposed to make sure I was fed and had water, it was usually Mom that did it.  With Senior I was at first a little apprehensive, he was away a lot of the time but it became clear that he was also a friend.  When I got a chance to be under the table when the three had a meal I could count on him to slip me something to eat.

  One of the things I learned was that whatever my three people ate Mom was sure to prepare some of it for me, mind you she always slipped in a few vegetables that I was sometimes successful in spitting out. It was years before I really appreciated my meals, it was when I found that other dogs were fed either some kind of dry stuff or horrible smelling stuff out of a can. It was easy to tell the canned stuff was made out of things no one wanted. Yuk!

  Winter passed then spring came and one day everyone was kind of excited, the word was we were moving!  What the heck was moving?  I didn’t know but I got excited too and ran around letting out small barks.  I was quite happy when John got down on the ground with me and we got into one of our wrestling matches, it sort of let off some steam, so to speak.

  Then a few days later, everything we owned (it wasn’t much) was piled into the back of the truck I had arrived in.  All four of us rode up front. That was really pretty neat. John with me on his lap sat against the door with the window rolled partly down and for the first time I was enjoying that exhilarating feeling of hanging out of the window of a moving vehicle! So this was what moving meant.

  We drove along for about an hour, we must have traveled a long distance at the speed we were going.  Finally we came to a small village, Senior said something about Lund a couple times.  We stopped and soon we (I say we because I helped by running about and making sure we were all OK) were unloading the truck and packing our boxes down onto what I learned was a float.  They had been talking about getting on a boat, the only thing I saw was this wooden thing sitting in the water. I was about to learn there are boats and there are boats!  A strange man came and talked to Senior, I was going to challenge him but Senior told me it was OK and I learned that his name was Charley.