The Long And Winding Road

No not The Beatles, our walk to the shops. Today Mike, Toni and of course me took a walk to buy Toni a few pet essentials. This was partly due to the fact that somehow over the Christmas period, what with one thing and another, I or A. N. Other member of the family managed to misplace Toni's harness that she wears when she goes for a walk. I realised it was missing early last week and had been using her car harness as a short term remedy, but it wasn't ideal.


So this morning we set off on our walk to the retail park which is about a mile and a half away (that's each way!) I have to confess I was a little apprehensive, but Mike said he felt fine so off we went. Now to be fair, as the crow flies it is actually less than a mile, unfortunately there is too much housing in the way to get there using less shoe leather.


We bought Toni her new harness, a new bone and three squeaky balls. While I was paying Mike was showing Toni the tropical fish. She stood there on her hind legs, front paws on the glass, I was just waiting for the assistant to say "can you keep your dog away from the fish!"


We walked back through the park expecting the usual Sunday League matches to be on, but the field was deserted, but for the rooks and seagulls. Toni loves chasing big birds, so the second her lead was off she took off like a rocket. She never catches them, but it  doesn't stop her trying.

The round trip took about two hours, we wouldn't have won any races. But if you think that it is only 22 days since Mike got his stem cells back, I reckon it was worth an honourable mention. While I was visiting Mike in hospital I spotted a notice board with QE patients on it who competed in the last Transplant Olympic Games. I noticed that one of them was a BMT patient. So there is still hope that Mike might get that Olympic gold.