The tale of five houses and how I almost (accidentally) killed Rusty …again

We have been house shopping in Campbell River on and off for almost two years and we have bought exactly zero houses. Our friends have bought houses. My one friend and her partner have actually bought three properties. I should also mention that over this period, we have also been dumped by two realtors. Yeah – apparently that is a thing. Apparently we have made not one, but two realtors so frazzled and pissed off that they were like “Fuck it – you fucking Jonsson’s (pun intended) are making me so insane you can take your commission and shove it up your ass.” 

I don’t even know how it happened as I was thinking we were a pretty nice and laid back family, but that being said, most assholes I have ever met have thought they were nice people too. Man – realizing you may be an actual asshole is a jagged little pill to swallow. 

But then along came Lynda. And she hung with us through some weird shit. We had one seller come back on us with her own subject - subject to her finding a house to buy. I didn't know real estate worked that way. I thought you put your house on the market, took an agreed upon amount of money and then got the fuck out. Guess not always. And we also had some tough negotiations where I can admit I probably did act like an asshole. But damn – Lynda stayed strong and as of like 30 minutes ago, we finally bought a house. Sweet baby Jesus and all the fucking disciples. We did it Lynda! We did it! 

Possession on August 5^th – deck party on Aug 6th. At which we can try out the roulette drinking game my friend and I bought at a garage sale last weekend. Yes you read that right. My friend and I went garage saleing. You can judge me all you want but do you have a brand new, never opened roulette wheel drinking game that you got for $3? Yeah – I didn’t think so!  (I need a job.) 

Which brings me to topic number two – how I almost killed Rusty. 

Ever since I have had Rusty, (aka Reno, Rusta-Reno, Krinkles, Krinklenator, The Krinks, Stinkachino, Stinks and Fuzzbutt) one of the first question people usually ask is along the lines of what is that and my usual response is, “Yeah – good question. I am thinking dog for sure. And maybe some feral cat? A Faggle Rock maybe? Possibly some Falcor (flying dragon from NeverEnding Story). Meerkat may be an option, and I am also pretty confident there is some possum somewhere in there.”

But now – with the miracle of modern science - we will officially know in less than a week just exactly what makes up the fuzzy little weirdo.  

We ordered two of those DNA my dog kits to test both Rusty and his sidekick Nina. We went in to this super excited and thinking this was going to be like a hair, blood, urine collection super sciencey thing. Like CSI Miami style with the clear computer touch screen everywhere and Anders turning to me and dropping his shades and slamming out something super awesome and David Caruso-ish like, “All this science is making me dog tired.” 

Not so much. We opened the kit and were both like what the fuck? The kit contained a (not even glossy – like some asshole printed it off his Dell InkJet 5100 in his basement) brochure and a couple “sterile wrapped” Q-tips. And I use sterile wrapped very loosely. 

We swallowed our disappointment, turned off The Who and plowed on following the instructions to the letter. We took the Q-tips and rubbed them around on their gums and inner cheeks for 20 seconds each to grab some cells, then slipped them into the provided (paper, not even a ziploc - again – WTF!) envelope and mailed them back for testing. 


The next day when Rusty woke up I was like, “Whoa Rusty – get your shit together man – you look like hell! Your weird third frog eyelid is all stuck up on your eye and you look kind of like a dog needing to be put down due to rabies. I just read an article about a rabies riddled hitchhiking raccoon in Ontario. Don't play with me Reno - I wont hesitate to put your diseased ass down.”

Mr. Rabies. Yikes.

As the day went on – the crazy rabies eye kept getting worse. And then I noticed his face was swelling as well so I packed Mr. Rabies up and off we went to the vet.

Turns out that he has a massive root abscess infection that broke through the bone and up into his eye cavity. Next stop if not caught would have been the brain followed by Rusty croaking. Due to timing – I think my overly enthusiastic cheek swabbing while humming the CSI theme song may be to blame. The vet says it was probably a rogue kibble but my money is on the God damn Q-tip and David Caruso.

The poor bugger is now resting comfortably with a shit-tonne of pain killers racing through his veins along with some serious antibiotics. He goes in next week to have the bad tooth – nicknamed David Caruso - pulled and will hopefully be good as new. I will post a pic of Rusty and David next week.