Bennie is 4 today 🎂- the perfect dog age.

Bennie is 4 today. We don't usually remember on time to do anything but we got him right after I retired and we spent his first month with my Dad. Bennie is the first dog we've had that's gotten this old with only us for company. All of our others had companion dogs to keep them company while we were at work.

I say 4 is perfect because they're old enough for us to all understand expectations but there's energy and less illness - we're between the eating of random junk and organ failure. 

He's been a gift. He slept through the night from the day he arrived and is very solid on house training. We've always wanted a dog that we can just leave at home without setting barriers and he's it. We've never come home to random destruction.

For his birthday we got lots of treats and he got a bone...his first. I was expecting him to hoard it or maybe cover it to keep for later. Instead, he ate some of it, came to hang out by us with his bone while we ate ice cream, and eventually left it on the deck under the stairs when he realized it didn't get to come in the house.

Bennie had been a challenging pup in many ways. We'd forgotten what it was like to have a puppy when he came along and we forgot, oddly enough, how reactive cairns are to other dogs. I used to have two dogs tangle at the end of a leash when another dog looked at them funny and now I have just one. It's a little more manageable and there is less excuse for not being proactive and recognizing when Bennie's at the end of his tolerance; clicks and treats are the coin of the realm. 

If you have a challenging pup, take heart. They do grow up.

One Month with the Cayenne E-Hybrid - I regret nothing

With gas prices so high a lot more people are thinking of EVs. Just want to say, to save money on gas NOW - slow down your speed and carpool if you can't take transit. That said. we did plan for our vehicle to be a hybrid and we've had our Cayenne E-hybrid for over a month now. I did a first impressions post and, after a month of typical driving - we made the right decision.

One thing I would definitely advise is getting a home charging station if you can. We got a Level 2 charger installed in our garage and it's great. We can charge at up to 40A which will fill our small (19 kWh) battery in a couple hours.

The battery may seem small but it's great for limiting my driving - without it, I'd be driving all over just for fun, which was one of my fears. Usually, I'll walk if the weather is good and I'm not carrying things. EPA gives 4.2 L/100km and the only way we can think to get that is by a mixed city/highway commute. With ICE you have the worse consumption during city trips, EV or hybrid is reversed. We did a ~1000km round trip and got 8.5 L/100km averaging ~ 105 kmh. That included a full charge when we started and no more charging. We did top up the gas at one end but that's more of a range anxiety thing since we got home with over 1/2 a tank and have just left it.

I loved my Macan but the Cayenne really upped the experience. I'm surprised to say the Cayenne feels more refined. It doesn't feel any larger to drive, I park it a lot better, and with the higher ride I have better visibility overall🤷‍♀️ Handling is smooth and steering is responsive. I didn't think I needed any PCM upgrades but that was a lack of imagination. Porsche uses Google Maps for nav and now that we've had more chances to use it there are ups and downs. We drove into the city and the instructions included things like "turn after the gas station on the right" - nice. On the downside the day the maps updated before our long trip, there was a road closure so we couldn't set the nav to take that route. The back seats are, naturally, more spacious but they also can move back and forth so you can get more cargo space without flipping down the seat OR accommodate people with long legs more comfortably.

So what would the wrong decision look like for me?

Less fun driving experience than the Macan (other than brapp noise), unable to find a seat position with good visibility (happened with the Panamera), variable handing depending on road conditions, not feeling solid on the road, handling like a truck, OK Porsche not handling PCM directions (I don't expect it to be able to tell me the population of Nutavut), no Android Auto support (it's wired which sucks but is manageable), not having enough EV range for our short hops in winter (touch and go but it is a hybrid so ...).

Like I said in the title - I regret nothing.