Of Puppies and Plumbers

 

Here’s a simple question. You’ve just moved house. There are two bathrooms, one of which is gutted and the other three-quarters functional. The decorators are occupying one of the main rooms you want to live in. The outside of the house is shrouded in scaffolding, with more delivered every day. At any one time there are probably seven workmen in the house. What would be the most sensible response?

Answer: bring a puppy home, obvs.

And so it was that three days after we moved in permanently, we collected Mishka, our miniature schnauzer, from the breeder. She was designated our therapy dog, a calming presence when all around was chaos. 

And the signs were good. On arriving home she went straight into her crate (or “den” as the puppy book likes to call it) and curled up on the bed. She almost slept through the night. She played with the toys we’d bought. She liked being held. There was just the matter of the house training.

"What is this 'outside' of which you speak?"

The puppy book said house training could take up to 20 weeks. As I reached for the Luger, Helen gave her view that 8 weeks might be more realistic. We decided to start as we meant to go on. The puppy book said take her outside, wait for her to perform, and praise her hugely.

We took her outside. She ran in again. We took her out again. She ran in again. We held her motionless outside and commanded her to perform. She struggled and tugged, ran straight inside and weed on the kitchen floor.

After a day of this ritual, by which point she no doubt regarded going outside as some kind of punishment, we switched tack and decided to try training pads. For the uninitiated, these go on the floor, you encourage the puppy to go on them, praise her, and when you have achieved some kind of containment, you then move the pad to the back door, then outside, and all is well.

We put a pad down on the kitchen floor. We put her on it and made encouraging noises. She picked it up, shook it, ran round the kitchen with it and shredded it into pieces.

Still, at least it took our mind off the bathrooms. We’ve lost count of the number of weeks it has taken to get to the point of having one bathroom with nothing in it apart from a couple of cupboards, plus a bath on the landing, and a shower room which was looking complete until we turned the basin tap on. A tiny trickle of water came out. We tried the hot tap. The same thing happened. We asked the plumber for an explanation. 

“It’s gravity fed.”

“Meaning…?”

“You won’t get enough pressure just from the tank.”

“But haven’t we got a pump?”

“Yes, but that’s for the shower.”

“But why have we been given taps that aren’t fit for purpose?”

“That’s what you ordered.”

“   “

He added helpfully “I just do what I’m told,” and left for the day, before we could go passive aggressive and ask what he would do if his boss told him to jump off a cliff. Outside, scaffolders were busy blocking all our doors with upright poles. The builder rang to say our guttering was about to be delivered  and where did I want it. (Helen’s acid response was “I want it fixed to the top of the wall just below the roof, like it was supposed to be a month ago”).

Current status of guttering work

I’ve had a few correspondents saying they found last week’s blog “scary”. I may have opened the window on my soul too wide. Rest assured I’m on the road to recovery. I’m not enjoying the experience of a house full of strangers ripping things from the walls, but I’ve managed to persuade myself it’s only temporary. The decorating will all be done by the end of the week, the guttering people should be stuck into their work by then, and the bathroom people… well let’s just say my logistics team have submitted a 325 page report on the company's organisation of their work. Exhibit A: sending decorators in to paint the bathroom walls and woodwork, waiting till they’ve finished and gone, then replacing a length of skirting board. (Let’s leave it there, we’re all a bit bored with the bathroom saga.)

While I was out today, Helen reported Mishka had done the deed on one of the training pads. Cue much fuss made of her, including a firework display and a flypast by the red arrows. The minute I was in charge though, she found a point as far as possible from the pad and let go with both barrels.  Good job the bathroom people aren’t in charge of her toilet training, otherwise it would be due for completion sometime in 2026.