Gertrude knew the vet visit wasn’t for her. She was just there to laugh.
Gertrude knew the vet visit wasn’t for her. She was just there to laugh.
Kenneling Gertrude, my Rottweiler, has been a problem recently because she paws and flings herself against the kennel door until it opens.
I like to keep the rottweiler kenneled when I’m away because of her propensity to eat cellphones, and after a week of successful rottweiler escapes, I get the brilliant idea to secure the kennel door with my U-bike lock.
This, of course, is a disaster: 1/3 of the time the bike keeps her in the kennel, 1/3 of the time she escapes and the other 1/3 of the the time I come home to this:
Fail.
A few days ago, I find my Rottweiler half-hung with a pool of dog drool and hair on the carpet in front of the kennel:
Turns out that she really hurt herself when she got her head/collar stuck that day. I noticed puss and bleeding and skipped Friday morning’s bail hearing to take her to the vet.
I’m standing in the vet’s office with both dogs, thoroughly convinced that they are going to call the police. Gertrude had three wounds around her neck from rubbing her skin raw, but the worst part was when the vet tech looks down and says, “And she’s also missing a canine tooth.”
I am mortified. She ripped a tooth out while trying to escape from the kennel?! What the hell?
A hospital stay, sedation, antibiotics, and $509 later, she’s back home, looking decrepit:
She destroyed the plastic kennel, but Judd gave me a metal crate that he had from his prior dog.
The metal crate works and Gertrude doesn’t even try to escape anymore…probably because she doesn’t have that many teeth to spare.
I came home yesterday and two of my four toads were dead.
All the plants in the tank were dead too. I have no idea what happened, but I was over it. I phoned Petsmart and told them that they were taking my remaining frogs back. I then chucked everything in the tank.
Pfft.
By the time I got Petsmart I was pretty cranky. I didn’t buy a fish net and had to pluck the dead toads out of the tank with my hands. Let’s think about that for a second. Dead toad. Bare hands. Dis-gusting.
And yes, handling a dead toad is worse than handling a dead fish… I could still feel the slime as I drove to the store…
The Petsmart manager was nice. He could see that I was annoyed and grossed out, so he didn’t bitch at me for killing two animals. He also, somehow, managed to sell me an allegedly hardier pet. We’ll see how this goes…
Yes. It was gross.1
1 I bleached my hands afterward. And no, that picture is not of a dead toad. I wouldn’t do that to you…