"$^!# happens"

I was time for my next practice session, this time I was going to have them pull an old tire where the grass was shorter and it would be easier. It was a beautiful day so I decided to go to a local park that has a very large open area. I talked my wife into coming along to help. We were the only ones in the park so the dogs did not have a lot of distractions. I hooked up the team to the tire with Storm and Lizzy in the lead position with Pepper and Sadie behind and off we went. I had to help them get started because the tire turned out to be a bigger drag than I anticipated. But, once they got it going they did fine. Sadie and Pepper kept getting tangled up in the line and I was having a problem getting all of them to pull at the same time. Storm and Pepper did all of the work while Sadie and Lizzy just walked with them. After about a half hour we returned to the truck and decided to take them around again in teams of two. I remove the gangline and put it in the truck. My wife took Pepper and Sadie and I took Storm and Lizzy. We let them pull us around the park again but this time we went to the wooded edge of the open area taking a path thru the woods that took us out of site of the parking lot and my truck for about 10 minutes. We made a big circle and returned to the truck.

All in all it was a good outing until my wife opened the door to the truck, reached under the front seat and found that her purse was gone. You see when I put the gangline back in the truck I forgot to lock it. There were no other cars in the lot and no one around. Her purse was under the front seat and with the tinted windows it could not be seen from the outside of the truck. (Does it sound like I am making excuses for not locking the truck) The only explication that I could think of was that someone was hiding in the woods watching and when we went out of site for 5 minutes they got into the truck stole the purse and ran away. She lost her ID a couple dozen credit cards and $250 in cash. Needless to say I don't think she will be too willing to go with me again. I later found out that they had been having a problem in the area with someone doing just that. In one case a jogger locked her purse in the trunk and they broke the front window and went thru the back seat to get it out of the trunk while she was jogging. As it turns out I was probably better off not locking it because they would have most likely broken the window to get it anyway.

At this stage in my life these things don't bother me like they did when I was young after all its only money and no one was hurt. We just reported the incident and I went home to prepare for my next adventure.