the bathroom floor quilt and a silly little brown sausage
2010
What * a * day! I work Wednesdays at the bookstore so this morning it was a busy round of school lunches, porridge, bed-making, doggy breakfasts, tidying kitchen, stacking dishwasher, washing darks, and hanging out school blouses before farewelling the doggles, who spend their day in the back garden, and heading up the road to work.
But then … when I checked my phone at lunch I had a trio of missed calls and messages from persons unknown. I began listening to the messages – O!M!G!.
“Hello … this is Ron. I live nearby. I just found your little black fellow (Simon the cavoodle) running up the street, followed by a little brown fellow (Toph the dachshund). I tried to hold onto them but they were too much for me and they got away again. So sorry. Hope they are okay!”
“Hello … this is Christine. I’ve just chased your little dogs up the street. The black one was easy enough to catch but the little brown sausage put on such a performance I dropped her. But it’s okay. When I carried the black one into my house, the little brown sausage followed.”
“Hello … this is the vet. I’ve just had a lovely lady drop Simon and Toph off. She found them running up the street and called us to see whether they were our patients. So if you could come by and collect them, that would be great.”
Did I say O!M!G! I was standing in the baker, mouth open in amazement when Julian called.
“I’ve just had the vet call. Apparently Simon and Toph have been dropped off. You’d better go get them.”
Thank goodness for lovely, lovely, lovely locals who care. And thank goodness our dear little idiots didn’t meet with nasty accidents whilst running wild. And thank goodness we had already found and met our local vet. Despite the alarm and horrror (tinged with nervous giggles), I felt very “watched over”.
When I arrived at the vet, there was a lone barker out the back letting the world know of her misery.
“Ah that will be my naughty dog,” I said to the smiling vet.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s Toph!” she said a bit sheepishly. When she reappeared from the back with Simon and the little brown sausage, I understood her certainty. Said sausage was sagging in the vet’s arms, her bloodshot eyes almost closed. Turns out, Toph had indeed put on such a performance and was so terribly distressed, the vet gave her a mild sedative to calm her down. You should see her now – she’ll be out till the morning. Simon, however, is full of cocky excitement and energy – he loves the thrill of a grand escape.
As for the bathroom floor quilt – as mentioned last night, it was looking so pretty – until Toph peed on it. Wretched thing! From the moment I put it down, she assumed ownership, curling up on it everytime any of us were in the bathroom so why she decided to pee on it I don’t know.
I stitched it from a bath sheet (big towel) folded in half. I then pinned the centre square in the middle of the folded red towelling square and began adding strips around it in the Court House Steps pattern. Once I’d reach the edges, I trimmed the towel to match and then bound the edge with an extra wide binding.
It’s not to stand on when wet, but to be warm and soft under our bare feet when we’re cleaning our teeth or brushing our hair etc. I’m pleased with how it turned out but next time I will only use one layer of towelling when quilting it. Two was almost silly thick and quite difficult to keep flat. A learning experience :-)
Hopefully it will be dry tomorrow – two layers of towelling takes a while to dry indoors in wintery Melbourne. As for the little black fellow and the little brown sausage – they’ll be cooling their paws in the kitchen until we ascertain how they pulled off the escape.
I don’t think Toph will be putting in any complaints. I dare say she’ll be taking it easy for the the next few days …. but will she learn from this stupefying experience – I doubt it ….
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that sounds like a hairy mcclary adventure! How funny, but also, how wonderful that 3 different people took the time and care to try and stop the little rascals!!!
Oh dear! Poor naughty babies! Those must have been some startling messages. Glad they are home safe and sound. Guess you’ll have to make another rug for the bathroom as that lovely one looks quite claimed!
OH MY, what a tale of adventure!! I can just hear them egging each other on in doggie language, heading for the horizon. We had to put our sweet pup on a sedative once in a tricky sailing situaiton in the islands. We couldn’t believe how strong and fast it worked. He was hung over for quite a while, poor fella.
I love how your community took care of you! That’s how I feel about Zach and the marina… there’s no getting away with anything around here for that boy. It’s a great feeling, isn’t it?
Love the bath mat idea!!! and I am thinking I will copy your brilliantly simple format!!! Fortunately for me, my dog is too big to claim it as a bed…. so I think it will safely stay a bath mat. Going to wait until after the move to see what colors will be needed.
Sorry to hear about your escapees… and glad all worked out well with friends and neighbors assisting in the capture and return!
What a day with the duggles. I was laughing though. What characters they are. I love your bathmat. How could the dog pee on your mat? It’s truly lovely and I will make one next week over here when little man is at camp.
LOVE the bath quilt!!! Such bright, happy colors (: Oh my…sounds like your little ones are much like my little doxies!! Sneaky, rambunctious, but loving (;
hysterical! so glad it had a happy ending!!
beautiful quilt too!
Great rug. Sorry the pooch peed on it. What is up with that? Ya gotta love ‘em.
I love that you call your dogs doggles. We call our dog a doggle and I call my cats silly sausages! Funny – I live in Canada – you in Melborne – yet we have the same terms of enderment for our babies. Wonderful to see, and so is the bath quilt! It is beautiful, I love the colors you used. Good luck getting your doggles off of it. All my silly sausages and the doggle are always on my projects. Drives me crazy!
oh…that’s quite an adventure, Toph and Simon, had. So sweet of the neighbors to keep them safe and a happy ending to the story :)
The floor quilt is beautiful and cheerful just like the curtains!
gosh you make quilting sound easy! And I’m so glad the puppies are both OK!!!
Thanks for sharing such a funny story!
Simon and Toph were just trying to get back to sunny and warm Brisbane :)
That is SUCH a cute story- I can’t get over the whole EPIC tale!
I can’t get over the fact that the sausage was sedated!
I have a dog that drives me CRAZY.
I wrote a post about him a while back- If you are interested here is the link:
http://ladyofthearts.blogspot.com/2010/03/my-dog-spike.html
SO nice to ‘meet’ you!
The floor cloth is beautiful. What makes this post so funny to me is that my daughter just phoned. She left home hours after everyone else. She said when she opened the door to leave, our little Shadow dog ran in. Who knows how he got out and who let him out? We are pretty careful with him.