Friday, July 22, 2011

Why you should never let your dog pee on your air conditioner

This is Tobey. He used to be our dog. He was a good dog, just nervous and anxious. He also did not like our young kids which although he never hurt them, he would growl every once in a while which made me nervous. He also barked quite a bit. He was really sweet though and we loved him so we put up with it.

Until we went to turn our AC last month and it didn't work. We called a repair man to come look at it. As soon as he opened it up, you could smell the dog urine. As it turns out Tobey had been peeing on it all winter long and we didn't really realize how much damage it could do and how much he was doing it. He had me spray it down and all the aluminum things came off.
Then we could really look at the coils and they were completely corroded. All of our refrigerant had leaked out because of all the leaks in the coil. He said it was the worse he had ever seen. It was too much corrosion to just repair so we had two options, replace the coil or just replace the whole thing.

We were leaving in a week for our 3-week CA vacation so we decided to just wait it out until we got back. I was so mad at the dog though. It was the final straw. We had 5 days until we were leaving and I decided that he would be gone before we left. I put ads online for him, but in the end no one responded so we took him to a shelter that had a very high adoption rate (I think it is 98%). Hopefully he is in a happy home with older kids who love him and play with him.

We came back to a HOT house. By opening up the windows at night we could cool it down to about 75-80 degrees by the morning, but even by closing everything up and all the blinds it would still get to 87-90 degrees by the early afternoon. It was miserable. We were all so sweaty.

Finally on Wednesday afternoon/evening, we got it replaced. We decided that it would be more cost effective to upgrade to bigger unit that was slightly more energy-efficient and used the more environmentally friendly refrigerant. It was a big chunk of change, but so worth it. Just look at the new beauty:
Isn't she pretty :)

Don't forget... Just a few more days to enter the giveaway.

8 comments:

  1. I can't get over your treatment of your dog. In spite of him being sweet in spite of his flaws & you "loving" him anyway, you kicked him out! Tells me a lot about your character. Pity your kids as they grow up and dothe things kids do - are you going to kick them out to? Maybe you should put them up for adoption too so that your life won't have too many hiccups that you can't deal with. Maybe you should have learned your lesson about the a/c unit and put a fence around it!

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    1. I'm sorry you feel that way...this was just one of many things that he did that we just could not deal with. There were hard choices that we had to make and you should not judge me based on one small snippet that I decided to share on this blog. I loved this dog and really hope that he found a home better suited for him then ours. It came down to the safety of our children, he was not comfortable with children and we were constantly afraid of what would happen if we left him and a child in the room unsupervised for even one minute. This was a sacrifice we had to make for the safety and well-being of everyone in our family. If we had waited until he bit someone, then we would have had to told the shelter and they would have automatically put him down. We gave him a chance at a better life and how dare you judge us for that decision.

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    2. When you explain it that way, I can understand. I just picked up on you wanting to get rid of him because of him peeing on your a/c unit. I apologize.

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    3. My husband & I just discovered our new unit of 1 year has this issue - although not as bad as yours. The repairman told us on the phone last night that it may be because our dog, Cosmo has been peeing on it. We'd never heard of such a thing and my husband was looking online to get confirmation of this. (When it was installed, no one said to watch out for this - otherwise we would have put a fence around it. We've lived several places with a/c units & have never had this happen & we've always had outdoor dogs) He came across your blog & forwarded it to me. As I was talking to him & reading it, I came across your statement about being so mad at the dog. I am so very sorry if I upset you. My brother's been sending me all kinds of things about cruelty to pitt bulls and I'm getting so tired of cruelty to animals....not that you were being cruel...please don't think that. Although I sure made it sound like it. My husband make a crude comment that he was ready to shoot our dog.... I guess I took my anger at him out on you and I'm truly sorry. Now I have to go home & face my husband who's now mad at me for telling him that I didn't want to continue our conversation about the a/c unit after he made that comment. Life sucks sometimes!

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    4. I feel your pain, and I am sorry too. Sometimes we say things in the heat of the moment that we don't mean...I'm sure that is the case with your husband too. I hope you guys can get your AC fixed or replaced soon and that it isn't too much of a headache. We would have fenced ours too except being in a townhouse and having a tiny backyard, it wasn't really an option.

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  2. It’s too bad that you had to let him go, but I understand why you had to. Not only does he pose as a threat to your kids, he also had a destructive nature. Anyway, it’s good that you were able to replace the AC unit soon after you got back. I hope you haven’t had any troubles with it afterwards. Take care!

    Tommy Hopkins @ AccuteMP

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  3. Funny how you were okay with the dog and your kids until he peed on your AC. If you'd really been worried about their safety, why didn't you put the dog up for adoption earlier? Doesn't ring true, sorry...

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  4. Way to back track ...lol. sure. Just off to the dog pound you go.. $$$$ :(

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