The events of Today

Today has seen a few interesting events:
Firstly the cylinder head for the Mondeo went to get skimmed and is now shiny.. on one side atleast. I also combined that with heading to Halfords to pick up the remaining bits, which normally would've cost over £80 but on trade it was just over £40 which is great!

Shortly after returning home Claire spotted a dog wandering past the car without an owner, we waited for a moment but still no-one came. So for what seems like the 10th time I attempted to capture a stray (it was a proper male staffy with all it's bits intacta nd was only young) dog. I changed my tactic this time and first grabbed Patch from the house and brought him on his lead, leaving Rosie in the house (she wasn't sure what she'd done wrong!) and pinching her lead for the stray. By the time we'd caught up with the stray it was in the park and just as I was approaching it another dog ran over to it, they seemed friendly enough at first but the other dog (some small black dog) began to provoke the stray. I managed to grab hold of the stray who seemed a well behaved dog and was defending itself but not attacking. At this point one of the owners of the black dog was coming over just in time for their dog to go mad and start attacking the stray, which still wasn't doing anything back. Since it was getting little out of the stray the black dog turned its attention to Patch which Claire was holding on the lead. Patch began barking enough to scare the dog back to the stray. At this point the female owner became completely hysterical and shouting "No <what ever the black dog was called> No!" she promply burst into tears as if the dog was being ripped to shreds... which was in no way the case, Patch was barking and the stray was trying not to get bitten. I quickly realised the woman would be useless at controlling her dog so I held the strays collar in one hand and then waited for the little bugger to attack again, eventually managing to yank it off the ground by it's full body harness, unfortunately what I didn't see when I pulled it up was that it was currently latched onto the strays ear! I gave the dog a bit of a shake and it let go luckily and the owner was holding at that time aswell. Somewhere in all that the 2nd owner (we're assuming the mother) had attempted to grab the little dog and it had cut her hand open. Then we went our separate ways and the stray didn't seem bothered by the small cut on its ear at all.
Luckily it had a tag with a number which I phoned but after a few times of it going to answer phone I left a message saying we'd taken the dog back home. He was fine coming with me and I let him loose in the garden with Rosie and Patch who he had no trouble with at all. Eventually there was a knock at the door and a young lad came round (without a lead) to collect the dog, before even getting to the door he'd lost the dog up stairs, so it's anyone's guess if it actually made it home or not! Got a phonecall from the mother just after the lad left and she'd said her son was walking it and it ran off, turned up in someone's garden and they apparently chased it away with a spade!!! I know people think they're rough breed but I've never had any trouble with any of the staffy's I've met its all about the owner, and anyone who uses a full body harness and cries at the sight of a dog barking, in my view, should probably own a different animal.. maybe a tortoise or something!

Now you'd think my day of adventures was done by this point.. while that probably is the main event (so far), I had to head into uni for a meeting and lo and behold just as set off on the bike the wind picks up and it begins to rain.. because of waiting for the stray I'm delayed so can't turn back and press on... only to have a large stick or branch fall off a tree and land on my head as I'm going along! It didn't hurt but made a loud bloody bang and gave me a little wobble!

Other than that it's plain sailing. I'm planning on putting some pictures from doing the car on here so you can see how it looks etc. Also I've asked Claire to 'follow' this blog so I can see how it would work from your side of things. On that note she was asked whilst signing up to 'follow' if she wanted to follow it privately or publicly. Did you get the same option?