A Dog’s Life #10: A Wee Bit of Spark
How to puppy proof your renovation.
Harriet is a responsible puppy. And that’s not an oxymoron. She’s just a few months shy of her 3rd birthday, so strictly speaking she’s not a puppy anymore; however we call her the perpetual puppy because firstly, she looks like a puppy; secondly, she’s soft like a puppy; and thirdly, I believe as long as a dog has bathroom accidents now and again they qualify as puppy.
Mindset is everything
With everything in life, it’s all about the mindset. When you interpret bathroom accidents as a regrettable bi-function of puppy ownership, it suddenly doesn’t feel too bad when you have to clean up after the four-legged family member. Bathroom accidents are hence the logical highlight of anyone who loves a puppy, not so much a burden of dog ownership.
About last wee
The last wee accident we had was one of a kind though. It was one of the freak accidents you could read in The Sun about. And frankly, while reading it you would think what a ridiculous and improbable story it was.
You are likely to think that the story could have only been made up by a freelance writer with a Master’s degree in creative writing and a regular habit of consuming above recreational use of cannabis.
So what happened to us, and that in real life if I may stress this again, was, that we spent the weekend in our newly redecorated weekend home. A small quirky house from the 1920s. Precise style: Arts & Crafts — with a lot of charming quirks as estate agents like to describe the mix-match of an architectural époque. Anyhow, this centenarian beauty underwent a small renovation project as we joined the rest of the U.K. in upgrading the interior during the pandemic. It was more a lick-of-paint job, than brick-and-mortar. And we were able to turn this ageing beauty into a modern, fresh, peaceful, calm, and zen oasis — away from the hustle and bustle of our busy central London life.
The stuff dreams are made of
When I went to bed last night, Harriet had already positioned herself on her favourite spot at the bottom of the bed. So far so good. And while her and I snoozed off into our respective lands of dreams — mine probably related to Manolo Blahnik shoes, hers related to chasing squirrels around Regent’s Park — the man of our dreams — Mr. York — was burning the midnight oil working late on his latest invention.
While I was blissfully asleep, and Mr. York was blissfully working, Harriet must have sneaked out of the bedroom and relieved herself in the reception room. In her defence, there was no human present to open the patio door and I have no doubt that responsible and respectful as she is, she would have tried to find a way into the garden first. And considerate as she is, she picked the darkest floor in the house to do a number 2. Nicely blending her bowel creation into the newly stripped and dark brown stained floor boards. No lasting de-colouration damage to be expected. So far, so good. Good puppy.
A puddle made for wellies
Unfortunately, she also did a number 1 — the size of a puddle. When I mean puddle, I mean the size of an amount of water that would normally encourage my delightful 3-year old niece (aka the human puppy) to grab her wellington boots and to jump all in for a BIG splash…you get the picture.
In all fairness, I did not even witness all of the number 1 and number 2 business myself, as you might remember from the paragraph above, I was blissfully sleeping while all of that happened; however I benefited from the detailed description of Mr. York aka Harriet’s Dad, who gave me the details of his nightly cleaning action, which in turn allowed me to write it into the latest column for you to enjoy.
A slippery slope
As fate has it, the floor board Harriet picked for her nightly business was slightly sloping down, because who can expect level floorboards in an old lady or any English house for that matter: and unfortunately it was sloping down direction skirting board; more precisely direction skirting-board-and-socket; to be more precise direction skirting-board-and-socket-with-a-damaged-wire; an unfortunate casualty of a botched electrician job way before our time, aggravated by the fact that the floor sanders last year must have reached the wire in an unfortunate turn of event.
Now I let you use your full imagination: A damaged wire, a sloping floor board, liquidity of any sort moving towards the cut wire: Sparks flew!
A few shades paler than apricot
Responsible as she is, she was not trying to hide the damage. From a safe distance, Harriet started barking which alerted Mr. York who came for her rescue. Although at that time, he did not ever realise it was a rescue mission. He found her outside of the reception room, not looking guilty as a bathroom accident puppy usually would look, but rather looking deeply worried and almost frightened. Even her fur was a few shades paler than apricot. While Mr. York couldn’t quite fathom what was going on; you dear reader are reading the story with the benefit of hindsight. And hindsight is a beautiful thing.
Accidentally (almost) wee-electrocuted
We can only imagine the luck Harriet had to get away in time, and to not get accidentally wee-electrocuted as she was doing her sneaky midnight business. Basically, her wee had run into a space of 0.3 cm (or 0.11811 inches for the Brexiteers), touched the damaged wire and caused a mini explosion and sparks to fly, the floor board to burn, and the fuses to blow out.
Had we both been asleep, without the fuses to blow out, the ending would not have been so happy. So today, instead of being annoyed by a hefty bill for an emergency electrician, we are deeply grateful and relieved, that the story didn’t end as badly as a Sun ‘journalist’ would have embellished it.
More often than we realise, we are all probably blessed with a lot of luck in life. And only sometimes we become aware of our blessings. And last night was a big reminder of that. And how important safety standards and professional workmanship is. The electrician who hid a cable nicely concealed and neatly painted over in a skirting board — decades before Mr. York bought the house — is probably not a reader of my column, hence he will never find out about how his cutting corners exposed us to such a risk. For today, we are happy and feel blessed; and for tomorrow we know to take every bursting fuse seriously.
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If you enjoyed reading this article, please check out previous columns and share with people who would appreciate it. A little lightheartedness, a few words of hope, and the occassional cute dog photo can make all the difference to bring a smile on someone’s life.
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