The Tacoma's Inaugural Outing (attempt #2)

Miles hurts himself, pt. 1
Yesterday while I was at work, The Girl went to take the dogs out to the beach for a jog. This never happened because she had issues getting the dogs into the back of the newly-christened Tacoma. Well the day ended because at one point, Miles went to jump down (something he had attempted multiple time aready and succeeded at), and somehow missed his footing on the leap-down and just face-planted instead. Ouch. Apparently, he yelped pretty wildly for a minute, and you guessed right, that’s a picture of his face: Check out the skinned-job on that snout, eh?



Miles hurts himself, pt. 2
Today I decide that I’m going to succeed where The Girl has failed. I load them all up (success!), get to the bay (so that I could try out the new 4x4 toys in the sand), and upon letting down the gate to let the puppies out… Miles twists his ankle on the landing in the sand. In the sand. Of all places, you’d think that the sand would be the last that you’d twist your ankle. Apparently, not.

This is the third time for Miles since we moved up here last year. Twice, in fact, in this very same spot, and once more at the actual beach when he turned to chase a ball I had just thrown over his head as he approached me.

Yea, Miles, the old Venerable Miles, may actually be getting old. This sucks. And you know what? I’m hoping the Truck isn’t Cursed or something, either.


They Caught a duck. Or something. Definitely a Bird. I think.
This spot on the bay I take them to is nice because it’s a gradual decent into the water. There’s a long shallow so I can throw the ball out and have them wade through chest-deep water (and get a really good workout). Well they dropped the ball for me and I look up, and there’s this bird right along the shallow part. The dogs, of course see this and give chase (even the recently-disabled Miles, who – believe this – turned out to be The Dog who finally caught it). It was sort of my fault, perhaps. I saw the bird and pointed it out, so…

Hey! It’s a BIRD. I figured, you know, that it would fly. Fly away. Not dry to duck under the water and swim. Which is what it tried to do. And then it managed to swim… in the exact wrong direction, and beached itself at one point.

Calm down, all’s well that ends well, right? Well they’re labs, not pit bulls, so they have soft mouths. I coaxed them (read: beat them with a stick) to drop the bird, and then had them sit & stay while I scooted the bird to the deep portions and thus to his/her eventual freedom. After it stopped bitching at us, that is. Yeah, it stayed and bitched at us for a good minute before it turned and dove to swim away.

Stupid bird; I would probably have done the duck/bird/fish/whatever-the-hell-it-was gene pool a great service in letting the dogs play with it. I mean c’mon, seriously? You try to sneak up on 4 sharp-toothed rifle dogs? And then try to swim away? And beach yourself because you swam the exact wrong direction? the only direction that you could have swam that would have led to such a circumstance?

I’m about positive the bird was Republican.



Want to switch out the tires before I sell the 4Runner
The tires on the Tacoma – Rugged Trails from blah – suck in the sand. I can feel a definite grip difference between the tires on the 4Runner and the tires on the Tacoma when playing in the sand. Yeah I know, they’re called “Rugged Trail” not “Sandy Dunes,” but still, I expect that my new rig, equipped with A-TRAC & an actual locking rear differential, would far and away outclass the 4Runner. And with these tires, it just wasn’t so. I actually felt like at one point I might get myself stuck. Truck was bucking. But thanks to the read locking diff, we made our way out. I will be outside later this evening, seeing if the sizes hopefully match up between the two vehicles. And then I’ll be swapping them out, already-incurred-mileage be damned.