Lloyd Lloathes Vents

I was looking through some old posts and I realized how much Lloyd used to love lying on the furnace vents when the air conditioner was running.  If you click on that link you can see a very young Lloyd piled on top of the vent, snoring away.

How times have changed…

Shifty vent

One day, several years ago Lloyd was sleeping on the furnace vent as usual.  I guess the tags on his collar slipped into the vent and got tangled with the grill.  Thankfully I was home at the time and heard the smashing and clatter and general mayhem.  I came downstairs to see Lloyd running all over the house with the vent cover stuck to his neck.  I removed it for him, which he was very grateful for (see what I did there?).

However since that day, Lloyd no longer trusts furnace vents.  At all.  If at all possible he will never turn his back on one because now they are known to attack without warning.  He will avoid walking near them, and would never ever lay on one again.

You could say he’s no longer a fan.

Arsehole goes AWOL

Forgive the title, but it’s by far the only one that suits.

The other day I got a text from Nikki that has basically been a foregone conclusion for a while now:

Dog is gone, I can’t go look for him right now, what do I do?

I answered from work with the only answer there is:

Don’t worry about it, I will look for him when I get home.

That’s all we could really do.  A service guy had come to the door and had left it a little too wide open and Lloyd took his shot.  Given his history of running out the door, it was just a matter of time before he took another jaunt around the neighborhood.  It was about another three hours or so before I got home from work, changed and then started walking the neighborhood looking for a giant moron terrorizing the townsfolk.  Lloyd can be aggressive to other dogs while he is walking on a leash, but allowed to run free he’s far more easygoing.  That doesn’t mean that the whole city is completely cool with 160 pounds of drooling moron running free, so my sense of social responsibility led me to walk the area for the next three hours, calling his name.  Several scenarios came to mind, and the rather real possibility that I might have to fix someone’s car because they ran into the big lug was one of the more likely ones.

Needless to say, I didn’t find him.  Nikki meanwhile had been manning the phones for a while at this point and got a call back from the Ottawa Humane Society and they said that they had the felon in custody already.  This was good news, but they were going to close at 7pm and we wouldn’t make it through traffic in time to go and get him.  So Lloyd spent a night in the clink with all of the other hardened canine criminals.

When I finally got to pick him up the next day he was a pretty subdued dog until he saw me, and then he went absolutely nuts with happy.  I got him home safe and sound for a good rest, needless to say he was happy to be there again.  Not that I think he learned a damn thing mind you, and I fully believe that he would take off again in a single heartbeat if given the chance.

Sweet drooly freedom

So, here’s to the fine folks at the Ottawa Humane Society for all that they do.  I even got a tweet back from them, that’s a darn good bunch of people there.

Twitter with Ottawa Humane Society So, there you go.  The tale of Lloyd’s Kanata Tour this month, hopefully never to be repeated.