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Tag Archives: yaris

In which Yaris is blasé about the whole thing

Yaris is a very mellow dog.  Yes, she does have her moments when she’s terribly excited and will tear around the house or whatever in her excitement.  Yes, she does forcibly unpack her bags in excitement when I come and collect her from our neighbor, who is so very kind to dog sit for me when I’m away.  Yes, when Yaris forcibly unpacks her bag—really it’s just one, I don’t know why I said it was plural before, I dedicated the KPCC tote bag for her things—when I pick her up from our neighbor’s house it’s really counterproductive because she’s excited to see me and to go home but now she can’t go home because I have to pack her bag again.  But overall, Yaris is a pretty mellow dog.

So really, I shouldn’t have been surprised when she did this.  Well, actually I wasn’t.

Hmm, no.  I’m not going to show you what she did just yet.  First, I’m going to tell you about Mishka.

You know who Mishka is right?  Mishka is the talking husky.  Here, I’ll show you.

Mishka is an exceptionally vocal husky.  She also has her own youtube channel, which can make for fun times if you have a dog of your own.

Thus, my brother sent me this not too long ago.

That’s a video of Noushka reacting to a Mishka video.  I figure my bro sent me the clip because Noushka is a GSD, like Yaris, and she seemed really confused by Mishka’s talking.  Or really she’s probably just trying to make sense of all the noise.  Or possibly, she’s trying to figure out where the sound is coming from.  No one seems to really know.  But anyway, it’s fun to watch and to speculate what head-tilting dogs are thinking.

And so, I thought maybe Yaris would do something similar.  And since my bro so nicely sent me the video, I figured I would just play it for Yaris and see what kind of reaction I’d get.

Now, I say that I thought maybe Yaris would do something similar, but…I don’t think I really did.  Because one time, Yaris and I went into a Petco to find her a new harness because she nearly chewed through her old one in a fit of anxiety (this was close to the time when my neighbor first started dog sitting for me and before Yaris developed a close relationship with my neighbor’s son who relieved her of some of her anxiety from me leaving her with then-strangers).

Well, we walked into the Petco and they were having an adoption event for small, stupid, yappy, noisy dogs.  And true to form, the moment we walked in, the small, stupid, yappy, noisy dogs started to be yappy and noisy (because they are already and were always small and stupid, they don’t suddenly become that way when someone walks into Petco).  Yaris, on the other hand, completely ignored them unlike many other dogs who were stirred into a frenzy and barked at all the noise coming from the entrance of the store.  All the dog handlers and Petco employees were duly impressed with Yaris’ mellowness in the face of annoying, small, stupid, yappy, noisy dogs.

Can you tell I don’t like small dogs?  I’m not sure if I made that clear.  ANYWAY…

With this as the background, I wasn’t really expecting a lot of reaction from Yaris as she heard another dog howling.  I mean, she can’t see or smell this other dog.  She can only hear the other dog.  This pales in comparison with the plethora of annoying, small, stupid, yappy, noisy dogs that she could hear and see and smell and did not react to.

So without further ado…here’s her response to the video I played for her.

Seven years bad luck

Early last week, I broke a mirror.

Well, I did not personally go over to the mirror and then punch it (that’s a thing, right?). I was very calmly minding my own business when I heard this loud crash in the hallway. Yaris did not appreciate this loud crash. She let me know immediately that she did not appreciate this loud crash in the hallway. Her hallways are supposed to be crash-free.

Anyway, when I went over there to look, I saw that the mirror that hangs off my old bedroom door finally grew tired of hanging and decided to fall off the door.  Or perhaps, it just finally got so hot (it’s been very hot) that the adhesive I was using to keep the mirror stuck to the door melted and the mirror came crashing down.

Anyway, I broke a mirror last week.  And you know what they say about breaking mirrors.

AND THEN, what happens on Thursday that same week?  My aunt calls me at work (Clib) and tells me that my house is drowning.  She had stopped by to pick fruit and whatnot, because I am not inclined to eat all the fruit in my backyard by myself, and she noticed that there was a small waterfall coming down my front steps.  There was a water leak somewhere in the house.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have the keys and so she couldn’t get into the house to see what was going on.  The best she could do was shut off the water to the house.  And then she went home.  Because what else was she going to do?  Go kayaking in the river that was forming in my yard?  She had gone to my house from work.  She was obviously not dressed for kayaking.

Welp, when I finally got home, fought through the current of the river that was my front walkway, and opened the door, I heard the sound of rushing water right away.  Apparently turning the water off to the house did not immediately solve the problem.  There was still a lot of water pressure in the house.  And the leak was still leaking.

I waded through my living room to see where the sound was coming from and saw that my kitchen was now a swimming pool.  And there was a small waterfall coming out from the cabinet under the kitchen sink.  Sugh.

At least it wasn’t the kitchen sink that was leaking.  That would have been much worse.  It was actually one of the drinking water filters that had sprung a sizeable leak.  And at least, that means that it’s easy to isolate that one leak and turn the water back on to the house.  Which means right now, even though my house is quite waterlogged, at least I still have water.  Hot and cold water.  Because the last time this happened (a leak in general, not the filters leaking specifically), I didn’t have hot water for months.  MONTHS.

Sugh.  So, here we go again with the wall replacement (the house is old and there’s asbestos in the walls), floor replacement, air movers everywhere, dehumidifiers, insurance adjuster wrangling.  Yay.  And since this is the most extensive water damage ever, EVAR, this will probably go on for seven years.

Shakes fist at mirror.  (Btw, my beloved watch also broke last week and my Fitbit refused to charge for awhile.)

Incidentally, the mirror broke some more when the “sanitation engineers” came by to pick up the trash.  Do you think they share the seven years of bad luck with me because it’s the same mirror that’s breaking again, or do they get their own seven years of bad luck each?  And if we’re sharing, how is the bad luck spread out between us all?  I mean, if enough people break the same mirror, does the bad luck dilute itself so much that it’s really not discernible anymore?  Is there like a quota of bad luck and once we all collectively meet the quota, we don’t have anymore bad luck even though the seven years aren’t up yet?  Or maybe there’s a quota per day so that the bad luck is indeed spread out over the seven years, but not everyone experiences bad luck each day because other people are filling the quota before the bad luck gets to you.  These are all very important questions.  Someone should research this.

Oh, and if you’re wondering if Yaris had drowned or something while I was work, she hadn’t.  Yaris has a very active social life and was visiting friends when this happened.  And then when she found out that I was going to be bailing water out of the house all night, she opted to spend the night at her friends’ house instead of helping me.  Granted, her paws aren’t really capable of holding a giant squeegee.  And I wasn’t terribly keen on her drinking any of the water.