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Contractor's Negligence = Our dog in the hospital

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cjm11

Junior Member
AZ
Water runs from our house to my landlady’s house (through a hose attached to the pipes under my house). This winter that hose was wrapped in heat tape, the heat tape was plugged (via an extension cord) into an outlet in my kitchen. The pipes in my landlady’s house froze; she came to me to see if I’d unplugged the extension cord, thus turning off the heat tape. The cord wasn’t unplugged. She then called her maintenance man out to resolve the problem.

On February 2nd the maintenance man came out to fix the problem; it turns out the extension cord was broken.

From there, he began to “fix” the pipes, hose, heat tape, etc, as follows:

 He re-wrapped the hose and head tape in aluminum foil.
 Attached a new extension cord that is now plugged into my landlady’s house.
 Covered the pipes (water spigot, etc) coming out of my house, with a large black plastic bag (stuffed with something, the bag was tied so I couldn’t see what it was stuffed with).
 The bag was held down with pieces wood (that was taken from our personal wood pile), and a piece of a cinder block (you can imagine what an eye sore it was).

I didn’t know, nor did I ask what was in the plastic bag. I left it all alone.

[Keep in mind that I have a 7 month old dog, who spends a considerable amount of time in my yard. I have permission from my landlady to have a dog, and the maintenance man knew about her as well.]

About a week later, Feb. 10th, I noticed pieces of magazine pages scattered around my front yard; at first I thought nothing of it (I figured it blew in or something). A day later, I walked to the side of my yard (where the water spigot is) and found magazine pages and other trash all over the place. Also, I noticed that the black bag (covering the pipes and spigot) had been either blown or torn opened and that it was where all of the trash and paper had come from.

Obviously my dog had gotten into the bag, but I don’t understand how the maintenance man would think that paper and trash was a sufficient way of insulating pipes. Especially in the manner that he did it; all while knowing that there was a puppy in the yard.

We cleaned up the papers and trash, I intended to tell my landlady about the incident when I saw her next.

On Saturday (Feb. 12th), my fiancé and I noticed that our dog was acting out of sorts. Not only had she not eaten anything all day, but she also began getting sick (4 times throughout the day). Hoping that Sunday would be better for her, we tried to entice her to eat; though she had a little food, she threw it all up again. We checked the yard to see if she’d “digested” anything, to find that there wasn’t any fresh “stool” (sorry if this is too detailed). At this point we began to worry. We ended up sending her to visit a veterinarian. My fiancé’s sister, works for a great vet in a different part of the state, so we met up with her in at a half way point on Sunday night and gave her our dog. My fiancé’s took our dog to work with her on Monday; where they’ve since been taking care of her.

As of yesterday (Feb. 16th) she still had yet to properly digest anything. The vet, with heightening concern for our dog and after several x-rays and other treatments, did an exploratory surgery. The surgery ended up lasting 2 hours (a very long time for a K-9 procedure). They found the following in her stomach – tons of paper and plastic (from a plastic bag), pieces of a brillo pad (from the back of a sponge), chunks of wood, and other items that the vet couldn’t recognize. (I can send you a picture of it if you’d like.) They also had to drain her stomach of all liquids because nothing could pass due to the blockage. The vet says she’s the “Miracle Dog” for making it through all of this.

I am willing to account for the wood that they found in her stomach, I know she likes to chew on it and while my fiancé and I try to deter her from doing so, we can’t always get the wood away from her. However, she’s been doing this since we got her in September and she’s never had a problem until now. Also, we know for a fact that none of the other items they found were from our trash.

We can pick our dog up on Tuesday (Feb. 22nd), but no sooner. This will mean that she’s been gone and visiting the vet for 9 days! Due to the extensiveness of the surgery she had to have staples to close the area that was operated on; and has to stay near the vet for monitoring and to have the staples removed (Tuesday being the earliest this can happen).

I’m not upset with my landlady; she’s a sweet old woman and didn’t know what was going on. I’m upset with her maintenance man; who’s careless and negligent “fix” landed my dog in surgery.

I haven’t contacted our landlady about any of this yet, and don’t have the maintenance man’s information (I believe he’s “freelance,” and I doubt he’s licensed). But my mom suggested I inform her of everything and give her a copy of the vet bill and suggest she pass it on to the maintenance man. I haven’t gotten the bill yet, but I’m sure it’s going to be around $1,000.00… Do you think it’s worth getting into with them?

I’m not looking at suing them or anything, but know that none of this would have happened if not for his faulty job.

More than anything, we are so happy and thankful that our dog will be OK, and can’t wait to have her home (I know she’s a dog, but she’s literally our baby).

Unfortunately, after the vet bill, not to mention the trips to and from picking up/dropping off our dog, we are going to be out over $1,000 and that's not a small amount of money for us.

I've been told there's not much we can do, but we appreciate any help we can get.
 


tranquility

Senior Member
To even claim a duty to the dog in the first place and proving up proximate cause of the damages when there were contributing factors in the second would make this a very difficult case in grown up court. In small claims? Who knows? You might be able to make a case that convinces a judge. There is no way any insurance company would pay without a judgment against them.
 

Hot Topic

Senior Member
You knew work was being done. Puppies will chew on anything they can get their teeth into. The fault was yours because the puppy was outside.
 

divona2000

Senior Member
...Water runs from our house to my landlady’s house (through a hose attached to the pipes under my house). This winter that hose was wrapped in heat tape, the heat tape was plugged (via an extension cord) into an outlet in my kitchen...a new extension cord that is now plugged into my landlady’s house...
1. I've very happy your puppy is ok.
2. Are all these water hose/electric items shenanigans even up to code? ...because this sounds like a garden hose being used to move water from your house to her house...is this just laying on the ground?
 
You knew the bag was there without knowing what was in it. You let your dog into the yard unmonitored. As the owner of two dogs myself, we make sure the yard is dog-proof, and when we know maintenance is being done, we supervise the dogs outside to make sure they can't get into anything. Knowing about the bag, why did you let your dog outside by himself? Especially after the first time he got into things? You have responsibility in this matter.
 

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