September 27 is my favorite day of the year. This is because the fall foliage is at its peak. The leaves put on a good show before they start to die, en masse. Next year it will be 27/27 – This will be a double luck day. Actually, 2027 will be a very good year. This year, though, it’s the year of the red horse, lucky in and of itself.

Today we did get out for a ride. Tyra and Raudi were both sluggish, I think because their winter coats are coming in and because they haven’t been getting enough exercise. This has got to change.

It was actually an up and down day. I took Shadow and Ryder out for a walk and a neighbor dog lunged at Shadow. In all the years that I’ve owned dogs, I’ve never had one get in a dog fight. I was angry because the owners of this dog let it hang out on the property. Shadow is not a fighter and was just defending herself. The dog, I think, is a Norwegian Elkhound or a variation thereof.

Shadow was off leash. I had just let her go thinking that she’d be safe. Ryder was on leash. Ryder was very interested in what was going on.

I lost it as this was going on. The owner, a very athletic woman, jumped around and finally got her dog. I didn’t say anything, which is pretty amazing considering how pissed I was. I didn’t have anything besides my feet, to break this up. I felt pretty helpless, for sure.

Neither dog was injured. After, Shadow was strutting around like she’d won the fight. Dogs are strange, but people are stranger still.

The question is, will I be able to walk my leashed dog around the loop without her getting into another fight? The place that this woman inhabits, a shack turned into a tiny house, is right by the road. I guess I’ll carry my riding crop with me.

I was still angry when I got back home. Odd, how it works. I heard that women are slower to move on in such instances than are men. I could not immediately locate my cellphone, which added to my ire. I would have been a lot calmer had I not been dealing with what I call residual emotion. Hey, this is a term that I just coined.

Tonight, another instance of something happening that raised my ire. We were in the ice cream store, and I asked Pete to order me a pumpkin cone. He instead ordered me a cone with the moniker “Be Happy.” I took a bite into it after he handed it to me – and said, “This is the worst thing I have ever eaten.” It had big chunks of something that clung to my teeth. And something in it made my throat hurt. Pete said “honey and cayenne.”

Bad combo. An hour late,r and I’m still paying the price.

27/27 will be better than 27/26.

Next: 258. 9/28/26: Be Forewarned