Hi, my name is Coco. I’m the family mascot. Some people may say I’m the family dog but I don’t like to refer to myself by those terms.  After all, I don’t fit in at the dog park and much prefer to stand with the humans and discuss the local property market.

I'm so cute

Anyway, I wanted to drop by and tell you all about the stress of renovating. You see we’ve been renovating for a month now. First of all the boxes and suitcases came out and we spent weeks wrapping every single thing and putting it all in boxes. Everything, I mean EVERYTHING, was packed up. That was my first clue that we weren’t going on holidays. I hate when those suitcases come out and the stuff gets laid out on the spare bed. I know that usually means I’m off to the holiday park for a week or more.

Packing

So after all the boxes were packed, we moved some of them over to another home. The new home is much smaller and it has no garden. It’s upstairs and has a balcony, but I’m not allowed out there because I can see lots of people moving around in the street below and I bark at them. I also hear people in the hallway outside our door and I bark at them too. Boy do I get in trouble when I bark.

On our way to the house

When the family go out, my friend Pablo and I get taken over to the old house. The fence has been moved around the side garden and our day beds have been moved to the front porch. We have a good area to run around in and shelter when it’s hot or rains. But I don’t like it one bit.

The fence with reinforcing

As soon as the family leaves us there, I spend the next hour or so trying to find a way to get out. Every day for the first three weeks I succeeded. One day I walked back to the small apartment but dropped in to the school on the way, to see if I could find Sophie and tell her where I was going. Someone grabbed me and took me to the office. I didn’t see Sophie at the office, which is probably a good sign, and they locked me in the printing room with one of the staff members. After about an hour or so, Mum came to pick me up and took me home.

They cannot keep me in

Other times when I’ve escaped I pop around to see what all the noise is at the back of the house. There’s loud music blaring and lots of yelling and engine noises. I found this huge monster and as soon as I saw it I ran back to the little hole I’d made in the fence.

Big, scary, noisy monster

On another day, I managed to get back all the way to our apartment. But the door was shut and I couldn’t get in. So I walked the way we walk in the mornings to see if I could find anyone. Someone started yelling at me so I ran back to the apartment. The person followed me in his car and grabbed me. This time I went for a long drive in his car to the vet. I don’t know how he knew it was the vet we go to. I spent the afternoon with the girls there and watched them treat sick dogs and cats. Eventually Mum came to collect me. She spoke to the vet and now I’m on pills every morning. They are supposed to help me relax and get through this upheaval. I don’t think Mum was very happy with me because she didn’t speak to me all the way home. We picked up Pablo from the house and went back to the apartment.

I get very dirty when I escape

The next time I escaped the builder saw me and chased after me as I disappeared through the hole in the fence. He came and moved big pieces of timber over the wire so I couldn’t get out anymore that day. But Mum must have been worried because she sent her friend to come and collect Pablo and me. She took us home to her house and washed my muddy feet then drove us to meet Mum.

Apparently this is what I'm meant to do while everyone is out

The next day I tried all the usual parts of the fence that I had been breaking open but someone had come and put more wire and timber on the wire and timber that they put there last time I escaped. It’s not fair! I can’t get out anymore.

It's very exhausting all this escaping

It’s very stressful this moving and renovating stuff. I’m much happier when everyone is at home and I can stay with them rather than being locked in the garden with all that noise and dust going on.

Now if I'd dug a hole like that in the garden I'd be in BIG trouble

They tell me it will be much better when it’s all over. I hope so.

Look what they've done to my house!