I bought Isis a new toy on Thursday. Because our house isn’t completely littered with dog toys. It was one of those elongated Bobo Loofa dogs, but it was dressed like a skeleton. As she was enjoying it, I congratulated ourselves for having a dog who knows which objects littering the floors are her toys and doesn’t accidentally pick up a shoe or book to chew on.
During the night, I heard the sound of fabric ripping, and because Isis had already eaten the ear off her Halloween toy, I assumed that she’d manage to tear a hole in its body too. When I bothered to sit up and look in the direction of the tearing, I saw that my precious angel had torn an eight-inch hole in the carpet, through the padding all the way to the hardwood floor underneath.
“Bad dog!” I said, and I never call her that. But as usual, she looked so adorably pleased with herself that I couldn’t muster up any real anger…
Wait. There’s hardwood under there?
Most of the rooms in our house have lovely, fairly new wood laminate floors. The four bedrooms have (had) blue carpet, but the bedroom carpet was looking a little worn. And as of Thursday night, had a gaping hole in it.
So we ripped it out this weekend. To find that the hardwood had been used as a dropcloth during a pre-carpeting paint job. Or else Jackson Pollack owned our house before we did.
A little Murphy’s Oil, a little elbow grease, and I tell you, that hardwood cleaned up pretty good. I mean, it’s probably 30-year-old hardwood, but it doesn’t look anymore beat up than the carpet did.
Kari Neumeyer 