Black cockatoos and stray dogs are all in a day's work

It all started when Sk8erBoi, aka the nephew, came back from one of his delivery runs with a passenger.

This passenger had four legs.

Yes, it was a stray dog he’d picked up somewhere, and no, he didn’t know where. As usual he just left the van doors open, and luckily the dog jumped in rather than all the computer deliveries jumping out.

But we didn’t need a stray dog in the shop, so he was told to find its owner.

This was also an exercise in teaching him some resourcefulness, since
the pooch had no identity tag on its collar.

We didn’t have to wait long before he’d cracked the problem, but we had to wait quite a while to get the answer.

Why he couldn’t just take the dog to the vet is beyond us.

No, not to have it put to sleep – we might be rabid but the dog didn’t have rabies – to see if the pooch had a microchip. You know, those things they put under the skin so the vet can see if they have a registered owner.

Anyway, the vet wanted to charge a fee for the chip-checking service.

So, Mr Resourceful, aka Sk8er Boi, decided to buy a microchip reader on eBay and check the pooch out himself.

Yeah, the logic escaped us too, but Sk8er Boi claimed it would save time if any more stray dogs jumped into his delivery van.

We figure it would save time and money if we had the nephew microchipped and then despatched to the South Pole, where they no longer allow dogs, so there’s little chance anybody would have a microchip reader.

And even less chance of him darkening our doorway again any time soon.

So, after waiting a week for the eBay auction to end, then another week for the microchip reader to arrive, we finally discover that, yes, the stray pooch has indeed got a microchip under the skin.

Of course, boy wonder was way too cheap to pay the extra $10 the seller was asking for the decoding service.

Now all we knew was that the dog had an ID, but we had no idea what it meant. Sk8er Boi was convinced you should be able to get the decode information for free via a quick Google search.

All he discovered via Google was that he’d have to visit the local council so they could access the doggie database. Well, he’s out and about in the van all day anyway so a quick trip to the council shouldn’t take longer than, say, most of the next week.

Yeah, the bloke who has the password to the database was on a flexiday and when he came back to work the computer he uses had been sent in for repairs.

That was the last straw. We rang the council and demanded to speak to their IT support people.

OK, it turns out that we are the council’s IT support people, and the busted PC was in the back room waiting for the nephew to fix it.

His excuse? You guessed it – too busy looking after the stray dog and trying to find its owner. So, a bit of prioritising, the PC gets fixed, delivered to the council and hey presto! Yeah, all right, tomorrow when the dude gets back from his flexiday – has it really been two weeks already? Finally, everything is in place, the PC is fixed, the dude is at his desk, and the nephew has the code.

Let’s hope the owners kept their address details up-to-date on the database.

Now, who would have thought there were different code readers for different regions? We can’t think of any other reason why the microchip in the stray pooch claims he’s really a black cockatoo from Dubbo.

Anyway, he’s been here for two months now and he’s a much better alarm system than the cheap and nasty video monitor we got from Uncle Tony.

If only we could train him to bite the nephew.

Gotta go! Cockatoo is barking again!

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