So, I've been moaning about how I've spent the past couple of weeks looking for conventional hard news stories. And failing miserably.
The week ended with me marking the retirement of a police sniffer dog called Bill.
I enjoyed meeting Bill and his handler and companion for the past seven years,Pc Terry Durham.
Bill bowed out on Friday having helped police trace all kinds of drugs and guns. He's going to live with a real friend of the paper, Leicestershire's beat bobby of the year, Pc Harvey Watson.
The happy pic on the left of Harvey and Bill was taken by one of our snappers.
The story was fun to write and it went down well with the bosses, it's today's page five fluffy story.
Knowing how stats-obsessed the modern public sector has become, I asked the police semi-seriously if they could provide Bill's detection rates.
They couldn't, but I wouldn't have been too surprised if they'd said: "No, but we can say he has consistently scored 90-plus per cent in public satisfaction surveys."
I love the mad directions this job sends me in.
The stories we cover are often distressing and it's easy to go home feeling a little blue about the world.
Hopefully next week will bring something a little harder my way, but I hope the fluffy stuff keeps coming.
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