Tails from the Highway with Roady the RV Dog

Sometimes, we get distracted by life’s little details and fail to see the really big problems in our lives.  Darla, a very attractive strawberry blonde poodle from Phoenix who has a Class C Motorhome recently presented me with just such a case a few weeks ago.  She wrote:

“Roady, sometimes my human flushes the toilet while I’m watching my favorite program on television.  When she does, the TV goes off.  I’m desperate, it always happens right at the best part of the show or it makes me miss the end of my story.  What’s going on?”

Well Darla, there appear to be several things going on.

The biggest problem is that your human should never use the bathroom while you’re watching your favorite TV show.  She should be setting attentively at your side. Remember that it won’t hurt her to wait a few minutes until there’s a commercial. Beyond the fact that her wandering off demonstrates a lack of attentiveness, there is a serious problem associated with humans and bathrooms.   They are a strange bunch and will drink almost anything.

I have to watch The Professor like a hawk.   I’ve actually seen him try to drink blue water! It was from a bottle that he keeps beside the sink next to our toothbrush and thankfully he spit it out almost immediately.  He seemed none the worse afterwards, but I have been watching closely for any unmentionable side-effects (here in Texas we call it Carpet Scooting Syndrome).

Controlling your human can be bothersome at times, but it’s critical that humans are never in the bathroom alone!  I can’t stress this enough.  Instead of following her around and watching her every second of the day and night, here are a couple of tips that you might try.

I sometimes lay across The Professor’s lap until his legs fall asleep.  This is pretty effective when you’re in the mood for a long quiet evening, but I can see from your photo that with your svelte build, this might not be possible for you.  Some dogs use the old ‘scratch my belly routine’ but you don’t strike me as that type of girl.  Personally I recommend that you try crying every time your human acts like she wants to get up. When they finally learn (after a week or two of repetition), it might be enough to just wrinkle your brow and pitifully squint your eyes.

Let me know if you’re successful in keeping your human out of the bathroom when she isn’t supposed to be in there. There are other, less pleasant methods of controlling humans, but they should only be used as a last resort.

Also, I conferred with the Texas RV Professor about your TV issue. He says that

 It’s either a low battery issue or power relay problem.

I just look at him with that “Yep, You got that one right” look on my face when he comes up with these off the wall solutions.

He said that the TV was using all the power from a low battery and when the water pump comes on it pulls down the battery power.  The TV sees the low power as a brown out condition and shuts down….but like I said earlier…that Blue water does strange things to these humans.

Thank you for writing me and I really enjoyed the photo (nice bow!).  I’m sending you a bottle of Roady’s Toilet Water as a token of my appreciation.  It’s not blue and is best served with something fragrant found beside the road.