This bloody dog. The one we named Jazz when she was the cutest,sweetest, naughtiest little puppy. Is she laughing in this photo or what?
Our beloved Hazmat is the "What did she do now?" individual in this house.
I wouldn't even like to add up on a calculator how much money she has either wasted (by breaking stuff around the place in her almost five years with us - awwww our little doggy's growing up fast!) or caused us to spend on vet bills due to her stupidity.
Have you ever come across a 28-kilo, bounding (literally.... she can jump to Steve's head height, he's 198cm tall, from a standing position.... I think if you listen hard enough you hear the Lee Majors-patented bwannenenenenenenen jumpy sound when she does it, although she doesn't do it in slow-mo) maniac of a dog who uses any solid surface to smack into in order to stop? No? Then you haven't met our Spazz.
She did this, this one time back in 2007, and looked like she'd somehow lodged a tennis ball under her skin, such was the resulting tissue damage she managed to inflict on herself by whacking into the pergola poles, instead of doing what any other normal dog would do and ... stop in time.
Then there was the time I had to rush her to the vet after she projectile-vommied what sounded like shards of glass (as well as torn bits of tennis ball, matted grass, quite possibly some of her own poo and the likes). That one was an overnighter, an xray, a stomach pump and some meds to prevent infection after she shredded her oesophagus from eating what turned out to be an extreeemely sharp plastic object of some description from our garage.
There have been others but, frankly, it's not a trip down memory lane I'd like to stay on.
Last week, I had to get the ducted heating repairman out. "I don't know what happened, it worked fine last winter," I told him, wide-eyed. What he didn't know was that Jazz got under the house, several times last year, and after one of those times and much banging, clanging and digging could be heard under the floor, the heater stopped working.
He came back out from looking at the heating unit. He couldn't explain it, he told me, equally wide-eyed. Something had happened to the ducting itself. We needed to replace about 6 metres of it. And it wasn't going to be cheap, even if we do it ourselves. "About $700 or more if someone comes out and does it for you, a couple hundred less if you do it yourself... is your husband handy?" I replied he was about as handy as a 6'5" Maypole could be in a floor cavity the width of one's head. But damn, he's going under that house if it saves us $200.
He then handed me a receipt for the $165 he'd just racked up in 20 minutes and bid me a cheery "Good day!".
Rud-dy dog. I can't even take this out of her pocket money. For the rest of all time.
