Pet Messes - Page 1

One thing pet owners have to resign themselves to is that at some point, they are going to have to clean up pet messes. Whether it's a cat chucking up a hairball, a dog that's eaten grass in the spring, or the inevitable 'accidents' you're bound to encounter when raising a puppy, it's a fact of pet ownership. And, as I own a kennel, I've cleaned up a LOT of messes! Well, this one was new even for me... The phone jack for my office phone is located on the floor, next to the wall. It's the corner of the dining room where Ranger's day bed is located. A couple of times, he's managed to disconnect the jack. I've thought of relocating the jack and attaching it to the wall, but there's really not enough slack in the cord for that, and I'm worried I'd do something wrong, and wind up without a phone connection. Ma Bell charges $100 just to install a new jack these days, and I can think of better uses for my money! When I went to make an outgoing call this morning, I found the line was dead. I checked the usual spot, and found out the problem wasn't a disconnection this time. Ranger had vomited a very large amount of very watery vomit all over his bed, and all over the phone jack! I've spent the last 20 minutes cleaning up the floor, the bed and the outside of the jack, and I STILL don't have the line back. I am about to pry the jack apart, and try to clean up the innards. Wish me luck. The phone is the lifeline for my business! What a way to start off the day!   Hope it gets better from here!

Sounds like you need a cheap cell phone for the business. Though he might just eat the phone. Try a power blower or HV to blow the water out of the unit. Good luck.

I now have my phone line back, but it took 2 hours out of my day to fix it. There is corrosion on some of the wires inside the jack, so it's been wet at some time in the past, and really needs to be replaced.

I did try replacing it with a jack I'm not using (from the spare bedroom) but I couldn't get the wires to clip in place. After tweaking the wires on the original jack a bit, I was finally able to get it to work.

Y'know, Fry, I have a really cheap cell phone plan. My first thought was I could put the business line on call forwarding to the cell phone!

Uh-oh...Catch 22...you NEED the phone line to be working in order to do that! 

I now have the jack screwed to the baseboard, so, hopefully, it's out of harm's way.

Ranger's phone chewing days are long past. He's 12 now, but he did nearly electrocute himself once shortly after I rescued him. He decided to chomp on a lamp cord! (He was only 3 at the time...  ) I think he must have learned his lesson, because he never bothered with anything electric from then on.

What a mess this was! The baseboard doesn't quite touch the floor, and there's no quarter round, so a lot of the vomit trickled underneath. I was tempted to pry the baseboard off the wall, but made do with scraping out as much as I could.

Pass the bleach, please! 

For watery messes and sometimes loose stools, I swear by Swheat Scoop Natural Wheat cat litter.  It soaks up the mess in no time and becomes pretty solid and easy to pick up.  Then I can clean the rest of the mess.  I had a dog vomit on my cell charger and ended up putting it in a bag of dry white rice to dry it out after I cleaned it.  Worked wonders but I am not sure what you can do for something in the wall.  Gotta love our dogs, they do come up with things that make you go "REALLY?" lol