As I woke this morning, tears welled and couldn’t stop – knowing our Grommit puppy will be taken to the vets at 5pm tonight, I wanted to share some of my memories of Grommitt . We have had for (we think) 12 or 13 years, no one can really remember when we got him.
We saw advertised in the paper that a Staffy for sale. I remember picking him up and he wasn’t that glad to see us or leave his mother. He sat on Josh’s lap all the way home and promptly thru up on Josh. Not a good start, but all I can say is he only had very few car trips from that day on.
One of those future car trips lead to us explaining to Josh’s grade 4 teacher that Josh had lost his homework book from the dog vomiting on the book in the back of the car and the book flew out the window on the south east freeway while trying to get the vomit off it. Needless to say I thought it was a great excuse for not doing his homework – his teacher wasn’t amused.
On one of the first couple of night he was with us I remember sitting on our veranda at Corona Ave, him asleep on the deck and a giant owl swooped down to take a look, I guess Grommit was the size of a large rat at the time and the owl thought he could be a meal. I’ll never forget the look in the owl’s eyes – thinking mmm dinner.
Years went on and he was a very cheeky puppy. He use to have a great time escaping out the front door and running to the park across the road – there would be myself or Stuart yelling to one of the Kids – “Grommit’s out again”. We would spend the next half an hour watching one of the kids trying to catch him in the park, quite funny most of the time.
Grommit particularly loved Hannah – Hannah was the only one who would share her biscuits. Hannah (probably around 3 or 4 years of age) would grab a handful of biscuits and walk around the house, Grommit would follow her patiently waiting for when Hannah would decide to share her biscuit, unless Hannah wasn’t looking – then he would gently take a biscuit from her hand.
Teaching him to walk was a huge struggle – he loved to pull – I remember walking him in the streets of Ashgrove, listening to Gomez being pulled up the hill when I needed him to. Eventually we bought him a harness and he stopped pulling and he would listen to all our commands. Josh was able to the last couple of years have him run beside him without a lead – he loved to run with Josh.
Grommit loves Teila (our great dane) we were very concerned bringing Teila into the family as Grommits socialisation issues was a worry. Mostly he wanted to kill most other dogs. But I believe it was love at first site for Grommit and Teila – or Grommit was thinking, wtf is this stupid black puppy who is bigger than me already. Grommit taught Teila manners and how to kill possums. I also believe that Teila thinks she is a Staffy stuck in a Great Dane’s body.
We have lost count of the number possums he has presented to us. At one stage at a house in Ashgrove we lived in for 2 years – he had done 18 maybe 19, he was always so proud of leaving them out for use to argue who would put it in the bin.
We love our Grommit and will miss him terribly – I know the crying will stop soon – but our house is very sad right now. RIP Grommit.
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