Anybody want a dog?

Oh, man.

I've been loosening the leash on Little Bear for some time, and thinking we were making real progress. He maybe goes down the slope alone for activities in the pursuit of which any of us would prefer privacy, but other than that he's been really good about not wandering off.

Until Friday evening, when I turned my back for a moment, he and Ghost disappeared, and less than ten minutes later I got a call from D&L. Right back to their old ways.

This morning, a morning for which I had serious plans, they pulled something really different. I loaded the Jeep's trailer with two very heavy batteries and the woodstove's concrete pedestal. Loaded the boys in the Jeep and went down to the Meadow House to pick up some stuff. Left the boys in the Jeep with the door open; if they get out they won't go far, because they know damned well the Jeep will be leaving again.

Come back out - no dogs anywhere. I figure, well, they'll hear the Jeep leaving and chase. So I drive out of the meadow.

No dogs.

Now I've got a problem. I can't unhitch the trailer because its load is too heavy. I can't go trolling through the desert for the dogs, because the batteries won't survive the jouncing. So I've no choice but to go to the Lair and unload the trailer. Hopefully the boys will either come back home or I'll get a call from D&L. Neither happens.

So by the time I get the trailer unloaded I'm in quite a state. I go home, no dogs. I drop the trailer and troll through the wash, no dogs. I go to D&L's. No dogs.

Up the road, no dogs. J&H's, no dogs. Back home, no dogs. I can't find them anywhere.

I've left word with all my neighbors to call me if they see my dogs, then there's just no place left to look. I go to the Lair and try to work, but I can't relax when I don't know where the boys are.

Finally about 10:30 my two miscreants show up at D&L's like there's nothing wrong. I'm ready to disembowel them both, but at least they aren't hurt. Here there really be monsters, and they really shouldn't be running around the desert loose. There's apparently nothing to do but go back to being LB's jailer, because there's no question in this world that he's the ringleader. One way or another this shite has got to stop.

I did, at least, get some good work done today though not all I'd hoped. I knocked down some old pallets for their 4X4's, and used them to build a heavy table for the batteries. I now have three big gel cells that have responded well to charging with the solar panels, and this afternoon I strenuously levered all of them onto the table - Oh, how I wish I'd made it less high - and cabled them all together. That felt like I broke my back, so in the morning I'll put together some sort of rack for the solar panels and wire them together, then connect them to my new, improved battery bank. That should give me some serious depth at last.

Maybe I'll even be able to use power tools!