I may be crazy for doing this, but my old car was 9 yrs old, approaching 100,000 miles with close to $3,000 in immediate repairs (exhaust system and a/c) pending, and possibly looking at some other major trouble (my mechanic said the ominous oil leak around the engine may be the beginning of head gasket failure) in the near future. Could I have made all the repairs, spent less overall and still had that car for a while? Sure, and I wrestled with that thought for a long time, but the thought of the car breaking down when I’m alone with 3 dogs (one of which has a traffic phobia) in the middle of nowhere early on a Sunday morning prompted me to upgrade to something newer, hopefully tipping the odds of many miles of trouble-free driving back in my favor!

I cleaned out my old car yesterday – it’s amazing how much stuff can accumulate in a CAR in 9 years. I sometimes joke that it looks like we all live in my car – apparently that wasn’t so far from the truth! The new one’s a little smaller so I’ll need to be a little more selective about what goes back in – that’s not altogether a bad thing.

Here’s the old dogmobile:

Lots of memories with that car – among the papers I found under the seats were directions to obedience trials (I haven’t done obedience in YEARS) and scribe sheets … for Sally!

I got the Outback when Bryce was 2 years old and just starting to trial – the car I had before it was tiny and even though it was an awesome car, with 2 crates in it there wasn’t room for ANYTHING else! (And I had 3 dogs – Tiffy didn’t go to trials with us, but heaven forbid I had to take the three of them anywhere!)

I still had a corporate job at that time and my friend/work “neighbor” Scott was a serious auto enthusiast – as crazy about cars as most of you reading this blog probably are about dogs! He had a growing family to support and to earn some extra cash he had a lucrative little side business going where he would detail and sell cars for people and take a percentage of the sale as commission. He was really good at it – he sold my small car and my jaw dropped when I found out how much he’d gotten for it! He really should have been a car salesman. And I really do mean that, because unfortunately instead of hawking cars in a dealer’s showroom, Scott was in his new office, with a window view, around the ninety-something floor of the WTC (north tower) on a certain sunny September morning in 2001.

Like I said – lots of memories…

So meet the new Dogmobile:

It’s another Subaru. Not really “new”, its a 2005 Forester, but with only 9100 miles on it! It is a little smaller than the other but everything fits. Not sure if “everything” includes 10′ lengths of PVC that I occasionally buy to build agility weaves, jumps and whatnot, but I took the Outback for one last PVC run to Home Depot and stocked up on Monday, so I’m good for a while :).

On the plus side, it makes better use of the space it has, including dozens of little storage cubbies all over the interior – no more excuse for stuff scattered around on the floor! And of course, it has 85,000 fewer miles on it and everything works! I do wish the roof rack had raised side rails like my old car, but we’ll manage.

So now off to make some new/good memories in this one!