Roscoe

The other day, I wrote a Facebook status regarding a little feud with my next door neighbor over…well, over dog poop.  About 15 people weighed in with their comments so I learned something valuable.   🙂

To recap the canine situation in my home, let me explain the logistics.  About 2 months ago, my darling 19 year old charmed me into paying for a puppy from the Humane Society. He is precious and, the bonus, he will live in Tallahassee with Nick and not here with my two dogs. W and I went over the finer points of dog ownership and responsibility until we were blue in the face and Nick “gets it”. Here is a picture of the little, angelic Roscoe on the day he was rescued.

Well, the semester ended at FSU and Nick, with a larger Roscoe, came home for a break until Session C begins. It’s been an adjustment, to say the least. Roscoe wants to play with Kahlua (which amounts to him pinning her down with his paw) and Roscoe wants to play with Wally (who I now recognize as a 7 year old grouchy beagle). What Roscoe wants, he gets. He’s 25 pounds now and well on his way to being about 60 pounds by year end.

Nick has been diligent since being home, taking Roscoe outside constantly, feeding him on a schedule, etc.  Outside of a little chaos now and then, things have been just fine…. and then there was yesterday.

I got a text from Nick around 4pm saying he was going to his friends house for the night and that Roscoe had been taken out and fed and was in one of the bathrooms until I could get home from work. So far, so good. Now I will admit that when I was driving home from work around 6pm, I was already envisioning an evening of unrest. W is out of town on business and so the 3 amigos were going to be solely my responsibility…and I’m too old for this.

Oh, if the evening could have only turned out the way I envisioned in the car. But THAT was not meant to be.

It began alright. I took my two dogs out for a walk (saw the crabby neighbor we feud with over dog poop) and then proceeded to the bathroom to retrieve the angel from captivity. Bad sign #1 was that I heard running water before I opened the door so unless Roscoe had been trained how to brush his own teeth, this was definitely concerning. I opened the door to a soaking wet dog who dashed by me like there was a fire he needed to put out. Let me try, in my limited vocabulary, to describe the scene that was in front of me. Water, about 2″ deep, covered the tile floor. As I made my way to the toilet, the origination of the water became quite clear. Roscoe had put a sweet little tooth clamp on the tubing from the toilet to the wall. The tubing had a stream of water coming from it that had created enough force to put a hole in the wall.

So the bathroom floor and the bathroom wall took a hit, right? Well, sure….but did I mention that apparently the foundation of our home is a little slanted? I have learned that massive amounts of water in the guest room bathroom area will travel to the adjoining room. I learned this by opening the door to the room where I retreat when I need PEACE (yes,please note the irony) and stepped into a squishy carpet. Not a little squishy…no, more like saturated. Soaked. Immersed. Permeated. You get the idea.

That saturation extended about 3/4 of the way through the room. At this very moment, my darling Nick sends me a text that read something like  “How was he?”. I tried to text back ~ I really did. But my hands were shaking and my eyes were crossed. I think it was the beginning of a nervous breakdown.  It was then that I realized that the angel, now known as idiot, was running amuck elsewhere in my home. That realization came to me via barking and galloping noises up and down the stairs. Clearly the flood in these two rooms would have to wait while I put him in a CRATE (novel idea that didn’t occur to Nick, I guess).

It was then that I called Nick and screamed something about a hole in the wall and flooding and he responded with “I’m leaving. Be right there.” Thank you, Jesus, for putting those words in his mouth. Anything short of that response would have sent me up to my roof where I would have jumped. Since it’s only two stories, the result would have come up short of my expectations.

Suffice it to say that Nick and I spent 4 hours with our new best friend, the wet vac.  He deserves a picture ~ he worked hard.

Nick and I vacuumed and dumped the water reservoir about 40 times and I wish I were exaggerating that number. We washed and dried wet towels.

The bright side? Hmm…. let’s see. My carpet is now super clean. My son knows he will always use a crate from this day forward. I never uttered a mean word to my son. My son never made an excuse.

We just saw what needed to be done and got busy. Today, my mission is to find someone who does drywall. Oh, wait, there is one more little piece of bright sunshine in this scenario. My husband will read about this mishap via this blog later today because I didn’t want to bother him with it during his meeting last night. He’ll know that Nick and I made it through a minor catastrophe intact. He’ll know I’m working on getting it all fixed before he gets home and he’ll know that Nick and I actually laughed about it at around 11pm last night….yes, we were delirious, but that’s not the point.

And the angel, Roscoe, is still welcome to live with me ~ for about another 4 weeks.