"The Dog Ate My Floor" or "How I Got A New Kitchen"

In July of 2004 we got a puppy. A beautiful puppy.

Isn't she adorable?

 

Most expensive dog I've ever owned.

 We got her when I thought our Terrier was on his way out (my mother always did this, it made the loss of the first dog easier to bear) a plan which failed stunningly as he lived 6 more years.

Nevertheless, she was adorable and we were delighted to have her. Well, delighted when we weren't fuming over the latest sacrifice to puppy teething. Quite a bit of my house still has little nibbled-on places if you look hard enough.

Fast forward 7 months to one of the only real family vacations we have taken since 1990. 

We were right on the edge of getting picked up by King Features (after 14 years of trying) and grabbed our last chance to take a 10 day trip over spring break. Our plan was to spend two days in Chattanooga TN (where John had his first graphics job after college) and then the rest of the time in a rented condo in Florida with my brother in law and his wife.

I really should have known that the vacation was doomed from the moment when, on the night before we were scheduled to leave, John called from his office to ask if I was sitting down. You see, he and his brother had planned the whole condo thing and he called my sister in law for directions and info on where the key would be if we got there first and sundry details like that.

They had a lovely conversation which ended with the words, "See you next week, then!"

These words were uttered by my sister in law.

There was a moment of silence.

John's response, "What do you mean, next week? We're leaving tomorrow!"

It turns out that when you plan a vacation using only the words "spring break" and don't actually throw any dates out there, there is quite a large possibility that the two of you are not discussing the same time frame.

After confirming that I was, indeed, sitting down, John dropped his little "it turns out we don't have a place to stay in Florida" bomb on me. Followed by the words "Don't worry, I'll fix it. I'll go on the internet and make reservations in a hotel. It will all be fine."

So - finding a hotel in Florida with any availability at all on the eve of spring break? Not so easy. He did eventually find something, but it took quite a while and, I suspect, involved a fair amount of swearing.

After that little bit of excitement, we managed to get ourselves down to Tennessee in one piece the following day and get settled in at our hotel. (That, at least, had not been a problem - although, thank goodness he went for the new hotel and not the one he remembered fondly from 15 years earlier - it turned out that hotel had become the sort of place where one rents rooms by the hour. What a lovely education for the kids that would have been.)

One of the places John most wanted to show the kids was Look Out Mountain. We drove up the mountain and parked in the tourist lot. At which point we discovered something exciting about our brand spanking new Honda Odyssey van. 

It had a security system. 

Which, apparently, activates if everyone except one person gets out of the van and one person hits the auto lock button on the key ring and then that last person in the van opens the door from inside.

At which point the horn starts honking. And a red light (which is not pictured on the dashboard schematic in the owner's manual) starts flashing. 

As we didn't even know we had a security system, (the salesman, great at pointing out all the cup holders - the alarm, not so much) we were pretty confused. I think I remember one of the kids asking if the car was going to explode. Even more confusing was the fact that it turns out that the system is on a timer. So, when everything stops honking and flashing after five minutes and you think you're safe - five minutes after that, it all starts up again. 

In a parking lot full of tourists.

Who are staring at you.

And who are pretty sure that you are a certifiable idiot as you are whipping through the manual desperately trying to figure out how to shut this thing down and your husband has the hood open to see if there's anything helpful in there and your kids are running around in circles screaming "We're all going to die!"

So this has all been the prelude to the big moment 30 minutes later when (car alarm finally silenced) we find ourselves on Look Out Mountain standing in line to ride the Incline. And my cell phone rings.

I should probably mention here that my cell phone number is virtually unlisted. And, at the time in question, only two people in the world had it. The woman watching our house (and dogs) and the man standing next to me. As he didn't have a phone in his hand at the time, I was pretty sure it was the house sitter. And I had a fairly good idea it wasn't going to be good news.

I was not disappointed.

"Anne, I swear - I had no idea one dog could do that much damage in an hour!"

Let me back up and outline my cunning plan for dealing with the then 7 month old Border Collie/Lab puppy. Riddled with guilt for leaving such a young, energetic dog alone for 10 days confined for hours at a time in a crate, I had devised a schedule that involved a professional pet sitter and two dear friends. Between the three of them, someone was scheduled to go to the house roughly every 1-2 hours to let the puppy out of her cage for some exercise and companionship. Because she had a penchant for chewing anything wood, we had confined her to the kitchen and moved all the wooden furniture out of it. 

Another of my brilliant ideas was to rotate "crate" time with "free" time. If you entered the house and she was out of her crate, you put her into it when you left and vice versa. This way she would never spend more than 2 hours at a time in the crate.

"Linda" (not her real name) had taken the first watch that Friday and had let the puppy roam free for about an hour before she came back to check on her.

"Anne, I swear - I had no idea this would happen!"

"Linda, calm down, get a hold of yourself. What happened - what are you talking about?!"

"Well, your kitchen floor....."

"Yes - what about the kitchen floor?"

"Well, it's kind of....."

"Yes......?"

"Well it's kind of gone."

"Gone?"

"Well, chewed up. Peeled up, chewed up, thrown all over the place."

Pause.

"Come again?"

"It looks as though she dug at all the corners and peeled everything up and spun around like a tornado."

Deep breath.

"Look, Linda - don't worry about it. It wasn't your fault, I'm the one who wanted to let her run free unsupervised. You couldn't have known. We'll deal with it when we get home. Just keep her in her crate from now on when no one's there and make sure the other sitters know what's going on. Thanks for calling and letting me know."

At which point I turned to my husband, "You know that kitchen floor you hate?"

I'll spare you the details of his reaction as well as the rest of our vacation which was, unfortunately, still to be laced with various other small disasters.

We returned home to an amazing scene. Linda's description hadn't really done it justice. Not only had the dog dug up every corner of the floor she could get her paws on (and there are a lot of corners in my kitchen - the house was built in 1928 and the kitchen area once had 8 different doorways) she had also ripped all the cove base off the walls and chewed that up as well. Talk about separation anxiety. 

Here is a small sample of her handiwork after I cleaned up the scraps and tidied up the edges. The green you see is the original 1928 linoleum. Doesn't she look pleased with herself?

Over the course of the next year, I would scrape off the rest of the vinyl floor to reveal the original linoleum in hopes that the earlier floor could be salvaged. This was a bad idea which I don't recommend to anyone. I am fairly certain that I poisoned myself with something toxic between the two floors.

So how did I wind up with a whole new kitchen, you ask?

Well the floor was just the first of many dominoes. 

Another was the harvest gold sink with the damaged finish. And the laminate countertop that split at the mitered corner, heaving up about a half an inch on one side. And the dying refrigerator that was walled in on three sides in an alcove that would never hold a new fridge of the sizes they sell nowadays. And said laminate countertop rotting away to the point that any time you opened the dishwasher door, you had to hold onto it for dear life to keep the whole dishwasher from falling out on to the floor. And the eventual death of the aforementioned dishwasher.

They were all variations of a theme. A kitchen in a state of disaster. 

The floor was just the visible ambassador of the destruction.

So, I suppose I should thank the dog, after all, because I eventually got a very nice kitchen out of the whole thing.

But somehow - I don't think so.

 

 

 

Comments

[Kathy Carbone]

Hm, maybe the dog didn't like your previous kitchen floor... How long have you had that flooring? You should thank your dog - he must have felt it was time to have them replaced!