**** Chapter Twelve – The Bitch called Mila ****

It’s a funny thing how the distraction of business can make time truly fly by, the GPS was telling me to take the next off ramp seemingly minutes after we left the mad house traffic of San Diego behind. Getting to the campground was a short bit of grueling work, I wasn’t used to driving a rig this large on side streets and every maneuver took extra concentration. At one point I actually had to snap at Sonya to leave me alone before I forced her to drive us to our reserved camping spot.

We made it to the RV camping ground and we thankfully had a pull through spot, they were slow this time of year and that made everything easier. I didn’t know if I was ready to try to back the trailer up into a tight spot yet even with all the electronic assistance.

After we pulled in and stretched our legs Sonya walked back up to the office to register us into the camping ground. This was the one and only time we were staying in a commercial campground, after this we would be staying in private lots where horses were allowed. While Sonya took care of the paperwork I set the trailer up and disconnected the truck, I was here to purchase a dog and didn’t feel like dragging the rig around to the breeder’s semi-suburban home.

With the truck disconnected from the trailer I put it in park and looked back to Matilda. “Out”, I told her, “go help Sonya set up the camp”. With that Matilda stowed her knitting, grabbed her voluminous shoulder bag and slipped out of the truck. I breathed a deep sigh of relief and watched as she walked back to the trailer and slipped into the living quarters.

I texted Sonya and let her know where I was going and drove away, it was a relief to have a few minutes alone after the last 24 hours and I really just wanted to breathe.

A text came in from Sonya reminding me to pick up our deliveries before the Post Office closed, a quick change of course and I pulled up to a medium sized building plastered with US Mail slogans and a prominent US Flag out front. The wait in line wasn’t long and after a quick show of my ID I was directed to pull up to the loading docks out back and I could load my packages.

I found the loading docks easily enough and carefully backed up to the loading itself and got out to greet the two workers waiting there. I hopped up on the dock and introduced myself to an attractive woman (about my age), and a young “just out of young adulthood” aged man – both were dressed in the official uniform of the United States Post Office. They pointed out the three pallets of goods they had for me.

One pallet only held only my much-desired Smoker/BBQ, it was a charcoal unit and was portable; camping was going to be a lot more fun. As we surveyed the other two boxes of pallets I explained that I was travelling and noted that most of those boxes were probably not even close to full. I also noted how it might be easier if we simply combined the boxes before we loaded them. The young man admitted that they did have a cardboard baler and the cute lady added that it wouldn’t be a problem.

We quickly worked our way through the boxes, combining or even eliminating them complete and started loading the truck. It was made much more sense to only have a 5-gallon bucket of flour than a box containing a 5-gallon bucket of flour. Within twenty minutes the truck was loaded and we were carefully loading the BBQ into back of the Ram. There was a pile of cardboard and packing material left on the dock; I felt a little guilty and a very grateful for their help. I shook their hands, thanked them and slipped each a fifty-dollar bill and then made my exit.

Off I went to meet a dog named Mila, apparently she was waiting for me just ten minutes down the road.

The breeder’s house was in a good neighborhood where each house had about an acre of land around it, the house itself was well maintained and basically just your non-descript ranch style home. I knocked on the door, introduced myself and after your standard pleasantries was led a large, fenced back yard where a troop of happy, tail-wagging Rottweilers greeted us.

All were bade to Sit and sit they all did, tails still busy bruising the world around them and happy grins on their faces. Mila was called forward, she popped up happy as could be and trotted over. We leashed her and I took her from the pen while the breeder gave treats to the rest of the pack and fawned over them for being “Soooo good”.

The breeder came out and proceeded to run Mila through her paces, she was a well-formed and well-trained bitch of very impressive bloodlines. Most importantly she liked me and I liked her. My situation had been well discussed between us via email beforehand, including his ability to visit and examine the dog at any point in the next 18 months and reclaim her if he felt she was being abused. This guy truly cared about his dogs.

It was an easy decision to make after only spending about a half an hour with Mila, she needed to come with me – this was the travelling companion I had been looking forward to.