LAKE ARROWHEAD STATE PARK, Texas — As the saying goes: There’s a first time for everything.

Now that we’ve stipulated that truism, I hereby disclose that for the time in my life, or my wife’s life or in our life together — which covers more than 46 years — we no longer are tethered to a physical address. We no longer have a house we can call “home,” a place that sits on terra firma.

Our mail goes to a post office box. Our home at this very moment sits on four wheels and it follows along behind a pickup truck.

We closed on the sale of our house this morning. We said goodbye to the place we called home for more than 21 years.

My wife and I — along with Toby the Puppy — are officially footloose. Fancy free? Not really.

For the past several weeks I have taken great joy in seeing the faces of those who ask us about our plans once we sell the house: We look at each other and say, occasionally in unison: We don’t have any plans.

This is where our retirement journey has taken us. We now are doing what we want to do on our own time and on our own terms.

After signing the papers that closed on the sale of our house, we hooked the truck up to our fifth wheel and headed southeast along U.S. 287. We’re going to spend the next few days visiting our granddaughter, her parents, her brothers and her other grandparents.

We’re going to look around the Dallas Metroplex for a place to park our RV. Then we’ll counsel with each other. We’ll return to Amarillo for a while longer, park our RV at the park where we’ve been living for the past few weeks.

Then we plan — eventually, but likely quite soon — to decide where we’ll haul our home on wheels to set up our next temporary residence.

But you see, this vagabond existence upon which we’ve embarked fills us with great joy and a certain sense of relief from the trials and travails of “traditional home ownership.”

We intend to travel. Yes, this new life has been a dream of ours for quite a number of years. We have wanted to see much of North America while hauling an RV. We have seen a good bit of already, but there’s about 7.5 million square miles that are beckoning us. Will we see all of them? I won’t guarantee we can do that.

We intend to give it our best shot.

Yes, we’ll resettle. We need to determine the precise location. That, too, will come in due course. But … hey, what’s the hurry?

This blog enables me to discuss any topic I wish. Thus, this Happy Trails series has fulfilled that need for me.

This post is intended to tell you about a huge change that awaits my wife, Toby the Puppy and me. We are about to become officially fully mobile. I won’t use the term “homeless,” because our home now sits on four wheels and we pull it behind our pickup.

In just a few weeks, my wife and I are going to signs some papers that turn over our house to someone else. We will in very short order no longer own that southwest Amarillo structure we’ve called home for more than 21 years.

We vacated the house this past autumn, living full time in our fifth wheel RV. The house went on the market in late January. It got a lot of showings and then we got an offer. We countered the offer, spent a sleepless night and then decided to accept it.

There you go. Done.

So now our retirement journey will take us somewhere else in due course.

You know already we intend to relocate in North Texas. Our plan is to move nearer to our precious granddaughter, who is growing way too rapidly to suit her grandmother and me. We don’t have a precise landing place just yet. We’ll make that determination eventually.

You see, the beauty of this retirement life my wife and I have chosen is that we are able to remain somewhat flexible.

For my entire 68 years on this Earth, I’ve always had a roof over my head. Even though we will be without a roof attached to a house planted on the ground, we shall remain covered and out of the elements. The difference for us will be able to haul our roof with us as we hit the road for this or that unknown destination.

I posted an item on this blog about the travail of disconnecting our telephone land line. We have gotten through that transition with a minimum of angst.

My strong hunch is that we’re going to get past this next obstacle with comparable ease as well.

But … this is a big step on our ongoing journey.

We are ready.

Take a good look at the face in this picture. It’s the face of a smart puppy. It’s Toby the Puppy, who’s been in our family now for more than three years.

It’s also the face of a pooch that understands complete sentences and catches on quickly to new words and phrases.

We took Toby for a walk this afternoon around the RV park where we’ve been living for some time. We approached a pasture on the east end of the park where some horses often graze. Toby has made the horses’ acquaintance already, has barked at them while his “mother” has stroke their foreheads and noses; the horses give him no particular never mind.

Well, today my wife asked about the beasts. “Where are your horses, Puppy?” she asked Toby. The instant he heard the question, his ears perked up and he raced out to the end of his retractable leash looking for horses in the pasture.

I hope you get my point.

Toby is smart. I’ve boasted already about how “Lassie smart” he is. He understands complete sentences. He understands enough English that my wife have to spell certain words out to avoid having to respond to his hearing the actual words and, thus, react accordingly; however, he’s also learning how to spell, too! We might have to consider developing hand signals … kinda like they do in baseball.

Yes, puppy parenthood is quite the adventure.

May it continue for a long, long time.

My wife and I have been catering to Toby the Puppy for a little more than three years. We’ve grown used to spoiling our newest family addition.

Our lives have changed since we moved full time into our fifth wheel. I mean to say “all” of our lives: mine, my much better half’s and Toby the Puppy.

Here’s the deal. When we were living like a “normal” family in a house with walls and doors, all the puppy had to do was traipse outside whenever he felt like it. That presumes, of course, that the weather would allow us to keep the back door open for him to take care of his, um, business. If not, well, we were at his disposal.

The fifth wheel presents another set of concerns for us.

Puppy cannot just go outside. The RV park in Amarillo — just like every RV park where we’ve stayed — mandates dogs must be on a leash. He cannot run around on his own.

No sweat. We get the rule.

My wife and I do spend a lot of time during the course of a day leashing Toby up and taking him outside.

How do we know when it’s time? He “tells” us, more or less.

Since the puppy doesn’t speak English (even though he understands it as well as most human beings I know), he speaks to us with body language and a most expressive face.

He might walk over to either my wife or myself. He’ll start to scratch our leg. We’ll ask, “Do you have to go outside?” Then he’ll shoot a glance usually to the other parent whose leg he isn’t scratching.

We leash him up, take him outside, follow him around the neighborhood, wait for him to, um, “mark” every bit of territory he feels like marking and then we return to our RV. If he has some serious “business” to complete outside, well, he does that, too.

We’re getting used to this increased level of catering Toby the Puppy demands of us. When we resettle eventually in a permanent location, then we’ll have to re-learn how to merely let him have his complete run of the place.

We’ll figure it out … quickly.

I have boasted about my own adaptability in the face of upcoming big changes in our life. However, I am a piker compared to Toby the Puppy when it comes to adaptability. For that matter, so is my wife.

Toby has adjusted quite nicely to RV living. That, full-time RV living.

We have taken the plunge. We have vacated our house and moved full-time, all the time into our 28-foot fifth wheel.

How has Toby the coped with the change? Just fine. Thanks for asking.

He’s a puppy with relatively few needs. All he seems to insist on is for Mommy and Daddy to be nearby. We are happy to oblige.

Yes, he has been forced to make his share of adjustments, just as my wife and I have made them. Perhaps the major adjustment in Toby’s life has been for him to tell us he needs to go outside. It’s a non-verbal request, to be sure. He goes to the door of our RV, stands there looking anxious. My wife and I have become quite fluent puppy body language.

It used to be easier for Toby. Going outside meant he would open the back door of our house and turn him loose into our fenced-in backyard. These days, the process requires us to attach a leash to his collar or his jacket. Then we have to go out with him.

That is not an issue for either my wife or me.

We still toss his toys and he still fetches them and brings them back to us.

Toby sleeps through the night and in fact gets so comfortable he’s often the last one to roll out of the sack in the morning.

Adaptable? Yep, Toby the Puppy is the canine definition of the term.