Help sometimes comes from the most amazing sources. I am not a believer in fate, or pre-destiny, or forces beyond our ken swirling around us, moulding and shaping our lives. I am more a Newtons third law believer, you know, the “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction “ principle. That said, there is no doubt that we received a bit of help from unexpected sources, in a manner that we could not have anticipated. It would seem that sometimes, the world just works out in ways that you can not predict. It all started with a small stone on the highway, a big truck, and Janas new(ish) car. Janas little Ford Figio is the first car that she had ever bought brand new, in fact it is the first car that either of us had ever had out of the box. And it was a huge step up for her. Janas first car was a dreadful old crock of a student jalopy that she bent and battered, and that laboriously hauled her around for five years. Many was the time I had to explain to her that petrol was not optional. The cooling system was about as water tight as a sock. The cars paint had faded from the original dog dropping colour to an even more nauseating horse manure hue by the time Jana took possession of it, and the styling, which had never been that wonderful, even when it was new, looked positively awful as it advanced in years. There were hols in the floor that let water in from the road, and the windscreen leaked, the battery was held in place by wooden floor tiles, the seats were uncomfortable, and the thing looked a wreck. All that said, it got her, and me at times, from point A to point B, and Jana at least had the distinction of driving a car that was older than she was. Janas second car was a hand me down as well, properly second hand, but she bought it herself with cash money she had earned tutoring, and she was very happy with it. However, it was nowhere near new even when she bought it, and after a few years was also showing its age. It was also a bit small for our dogs. Her third vehicle, a bakkie (open load bed LDV for those not familiar with the South African term) with a canopy served her well until she took a job seventy five kilometres from where we live. Thereafter, as it piled on the kilometres, the little bakkie, which was the apple of Janas eye, become less and less reliable, and eventually Jana reluctantly had to trade it in against something newer and less prone to unscheduled road side holidays. The decision to buy a new car was predicated on the fact that, by the time the HP payment period was up, the vehicle would have done about two hundred thousand kilometres. If Jana took a second hand vehicle, with a fair number of kilometres already on the clock, this would mean that Jana would have to drive the vehicle way past the point that we both considered to be a safe mileage for a vehicle doing the daily distances that Jana travels. The heart searching, advertisement searching, computer searching and showroom searching that went into the selection of the car that Jana finally bought is another story altogether, but needless to say, once Jana was in possession of her new car, she was as proud as punch of it, and wanted to keep it new for as long as possible. She agonised over each and every tiny scratch, dust was her enemy, and fellow road users were instruments of the devil. After one painful try, carrying the dogs was a task she would have preferred to be the exclusive job of my Range Rover. Jana was determined to keep her car new. A South African Highveld thunderstorm when she had only had the car a month put paid to her aspirations to keep the car pristine and undamaged. The heavens opened while she was on her way home, and dropped tonne after tonne of ice from on high. This resulted in a very expensive insurance claim, and a very expensive rental car that the insurance company had to pay for while Janas car was being fixed. The insurance company was not pleased, but paid up and the car was sorted out. Since Jana had had a fender bender with the bakkie the previous year, and had stayed with the same insurance company when she bought the new car, they were definitely in the red with regard to Janas account. The insurance company reacted in the manner that all insurance companies react, and put Janas premiums up by a whacking amount. Jana felt that they were within their rights to do so, in light of her recent claims, but was still not all that happy that she was now paying so much more. An errant chip of granite flicked up from a newly tarred stretch of the highway was the next disaster to befall the little Figio. It left a minute crater in the middle of the windscreen. Jana immediately took the car in to see if this blemish could be sealed before it became worse, but it was evidently too large for that particular procedure to work. The chip did not stay a chip for long. A crack appeared in the middle of the glass a day or so later, and the ends of the crack then moved both up and down, getting larger by the day, and becoming a distraction. The insurance company replaced the glass, but this latest claim and expense must have woken the sleeping monster computer system, as evidently red flags popped up all over the place. The smell of the quick drying glue used to secure the new windscreen was only just gone when disaster struck again. A friend of the stone chip that had done for the previous windscreen shot up from the road surface one rainy Friday evening, helped on its way by a large truck. It skimmed over the bonnet of the car at speeds not short of those attained by a bullet, and impacted the windscreen in the darkened area at the bottom of the windscreen where the windscreen wipers normally would have been at rest. This was bad for two reasons. One, the windscreen wipers were not in their customary position as they were being used to shift water of the glass. Had they been where they normally are when not in use, the stone would have struck them. Two, when we pulled over to inspect the damage under the forecourt awning of a roadside filling station, Jana obviously switched the wipers off, and they came to rest directly over the chip, hiding it from sight. We thought there had been no damage, and drove on. Two days later, a crack appeared at the bottom of the windscreen, about five centimetres (two inches) long. But this was an industrious little crack, and was not content with its initial size. Day by day it grew, twisting and turning its way across the drivers field of vision. Jana did not want to claim for the windscreen, but this crack was a real problem. Its zigzag course across the glass in front of Jana was a real distraction, dangerous under certain lighting conditions. A new windscreen was required. After putting up with the crack for a week, with it gradually getting worse each day, Jana contacted the insurance company and asked to have a new windscreen fitted. The insurance companys monster computer system baulked, and the agent informed Jana that she had been flagged as a “frequent claimer” and that, if she continued with the claim for the windscreen, they would have to “review” her policy. Jana was distraught, I was furious at what I considered to be intimidation, and I advised her to continue with the claim, and if need be, change insurance companies there after. A new windscreen was fitted, and nothing happened. A month later, Jana was startled when, out of the blue, she was informed that the general excess on her insurance policy had been put up from one thousand Rand to three and a half thousand Rand, and the excess on glass claims had jumped from two hundred Rand to two thousand Rand. Jana was in shock, I was upset. I suggested that Jana start looking for another insurer, and she got busy. “What has this to do with dogs?” you might ask. Nothing, on the surface of it! But the world works in strange and wonderful ways. Anyone who has been following the progress of our dogs will be aware of the “famous” Flea Market walks, and the fun that we have with them, but one of the problems is that, although the dogs walk in among a great number of people, they do not get the opportunity to interact with that many of them, and when they do, it is often the same people, month after month. The other thing is that, as we have been doing it for so long now, the dogs are used to the Flea Market, and it is not a big stress-er for them. It is great as an outing, but except for the younger dogs, is no longer the best training exercise. Because of this, and particularly because Stirling, our little girl Wolfhound, needed exposure to children, we had taken the dogs back to Kariba Ranch for the first time in a while. It was lovely. Kariba Ranch is situated on a large, farm scale property on the river front near us. To get to the parking area in front of the building, one must travel past fields of ostrich and emus and goats!. The restaurant itself is a double story, barn type structure with a mezzanine floor and enclosed mezzanine level deck that serves as a protective roof over the entrance. The whole place is beautifully done out is a style that I would describe as upmarket, stylish rustic, with wood and polished natural stone abounding. On the lawn area behind the main building are a number of thatched or wooden pole covered gazebo type structures with bench-table wood furniture. The back lawn is surrounded on three sides by paddocks containing donkeys, reindeer, sheep and more goats, and a massive number of swans and other water fowl. The one side of the lawn contains a huge outdoor bird enclosure with everything from guineafowl through ducks to pigeons. Peacocks roam the lawns, rabbits bound around, and there are massive jungle gyms, trampolines inside safety nets, and swings and roundabouts for kids to play on. Tractor rides are on offer to children young and old, and a fenced pathway leads to a stilted lookout tower at the edge of the river. This is a place where one can get a nice light lunch and a coffee for a reasonable price in lovely surrounding, and the dogs are welcome so long as they stay on lead. The only thing is, because of health regulations we have to sit outside in one of the gazebo like structures. Since many parent choose to hold their young kids birthday parties at Kariba Ranch, it is a great environment to introduce dogs who are not accustomed to kids to a variety of children aged between three years old and about ten years old. We have never been there when there are not at least two childrens parties going on. Fortunately, because of the size of the grounds, one can avoid the kids for the most part if one wishes, so it is ideal for the dogs, as when they have had enough, we can take them out of the firing line, as it were. I happened to mention to our trainer at the next Saturday morning training class that we had taken Stirling and Wallace to Kariba Ranch the previous week to get Stirling more used to kids, and that it might be nice for the group to go there some time with their dogs. This quickly grew to an agreement that I would see if the group and the dogs would be welcome, and that we might go there instead of to the Flea Market for the next socialisation training session. Now our Saturday mornings are busy with dog related activities. We have a twenty or so kilometre trip to get Wallace, Stirling and Chelsea to training by half past eight in the morning, followed by various training activities for an hour, then back home to drop off Chelsea, warm up towels, and then a forty five kilometre trip in the opposite direction, towards Johannesburg, for swimming therapy for Stirling, and swimming exercise for Wallace. We have to be at the animal hydro for Stirlings therapy session by quarter to eleven, and the drive takes almost exactly thirty minutes, so between the drive, the towels, and loading and unloading dogs, there is no time for anything else. Most weeks this is fine, but sometimes one has a “wading through treacle” day, and everything is rushed. The Saturday in question was one of those days, and although the dogs had had breakfast, we had not! Anyone who knows Jana knows that to keep her happy, one has to feed her every now and then. A hungry Jana is a force to be reckoned with, and to use a Star Wars analogy, it is definitely from the Dark Side of the Force! That Saturday we had a difficult therapy session with Stirling, and a difficult exercise session with Wallace. Not only had they both missed their previous weeks sessions due to ill health, Wallace with an inner ear infection, Stirling with gastroenteritis, but although it was not too cold a day for the middle of winter, the wind was gusting up to at least forty five kilometres an hour, cold and unrelenting! For only the second time since she started swimming, Stirling was really not enjoying herself, to the extent that she was rebelling and not working with Michelle, her physiotherapist. Wallace, for the first time in a long while, did not want to even get into the water. After Stirling had done thirty laps of the twenty five metre horse pool in a most begrudging manner, Michelle decided to call it a day. Wallace lasted another two laps, and then he made it clear that he too had had enough. We dried the dogs of with the warm towels, got them into their coats to warm up, fed them sausages as treats (necessary protein for after the exercise), and got them back into the Range Rover to go home. However, the lack of breakfast coupled with the fact that Jana had been starting at the sausages as they were fed to the dogs led me to suggest that we stop in at Kariba Ranch on our way back home, and have a spot of lunch ourselves. This would also permit me to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone, and make arrangements for the therapy group to visit. Jana agreed with enthusiasm, and we were on our way. When we arrived at Kariba Ranch, the wind was still basting away without let up, and the prospect of having to sit down and try and eat something in the open in those conditions was not all that appealing. However, there is one small area tucked up alongside the one side of the building that is shielded on two sides by tall hedges, and of course the building itself, and the third side is the donkey paddock. The people at Kariba Ranch, obviously in an attempt to create at least one outdoor sitting area that was protected from the worst of the weather, had constructed a canvas back wall on the paddock fence next to the gazebo. Very sheltered, pleasant and cosy, and warm in the sun. By this time, the dogs had warmed up, and Wallace wanted out of his coat. Stirling was initially happy to keep hers on, but not for long. As we waited for someone to come and get our order, up strolled a very, very pregnant donkey! A lot of the animals at Kariba Ranch are very tame because, although one may not feed them any old thing, the Ranch does sell brown paper bags of carrots, and said carrots may be fed to whichever animal will eat them. The donkey obviously considered the arrival of people to be a signal that she was going to be fed carrots, and arrived at the fence in anticipation of a treat. Wallace was fascinated by the donkey, and the donkey was clearly fascinated by Wallace. They stood and talked to each other for a while through the fence, neither of them in the slightest worried by the other, obviously enjoying meeting new friends. This mutual admiration might have continued indefinitely had things not been interrupted by the shrieks of several unruly five or so year old s in hot pursuit of a very small golden coloured rabbit. The rabbit was in no danger, although obviously not wanting to hang around, but this upset Jana, so our two dogs were settled down at the table, just out of reach of the fence, Wallace still watching the donkey, the donkey still keeping an eye on Wallace, and us, although for a different reason. Wallace she seemed to like. From us she wanted food. Jana decided that a trip to the powder room was in order, and she left her phone on the table with instructions for me to answer it if need be, as she was possibly expecting a return phone call from another insurance company. It turns out that the whole search for an alternative insurance quote had not gone exactly to plan, and I am sure that I would have lost my temper with everyone involved long before things reached the stage that they had. What had happened was that Jana filled in an on-line questionnaire for a competing insurance company quote. A representative of this new company phoned back, and evidently, by the end of the conversation, they said they had already linked Janas bank account, etc. She told them to hold fire, she had not agreed to their quote, and she wanted to talk to her current insurers, and make certain that she was not going to end up paying a double premium. When she had a look at her bank account, she discovered that her insurance premium had been reduced, a fact that she had not been aware of, and her current insurers looked like a good deal after all. She then contacted the new insurance company, explained this to them, and they gave her a million words, and a new, better offer. So Jana phoned her current insurers, explained the situation, and asked to cancel the policy. So far, so good. Jana was transferred to a supervisor who said that they would cancel the policy without an issue, but that the company who was quoting her the batter rate was infamous for a nasty little trick. Evidently, they would quote a very low rate in a situation like this one, because they would mark the insured persons record as claim free for a period of years. The problem with that, of course, is that if one does have a claim in the future, the claims people check on your record, and then repudiate the claim on the basis that one was untruthful when applying for the cover in the first place. Jana was very upset by this news, and phoned me and asked me to contact a friend in the business to verify whether or not this was in fact true. I did, he did, and so I told Jana the bad news. She contacted the new company again, told them that she now really did not want to go with their offer, even though it seemed competitive, thanked them for their help, and was again jerked around for a full fifteen minutes about cancelling the policy. Eventually, the representative said that he would have to hand this over to his superior, as he could not deal with it. Jana said that was fine, only to find out that, because it was Friday afternoon the superior was not available. By this time I would have lost my rag with the whole lot of them and insisted on speaking to the Managing Director, CEO or someone like that, but Jana is a far better person than I am, and agreed to accept a call back. And that is exactly what happened. With Jana nowhere in sight, her phone starts ringing, and the lady on the other end of the line identifies herself as the superior from the insurance company who Jana had been trying to get hold of the previous day. I was trying to explain to the lady, who had obviously not expected the phone to be answered by a man, that I was Janas husband, and I would very much like to help. She was having nothing of it, and wanted to phone back on Monday morning. I was trying to convince her that this whole matter would be better settled today, when Jana appeared at the other side of the lawn. I frantically gestured for her to get back to the table as quickly as possible, at the same time telling the woman on the phone to hang on. Jana arrived, took the phone, listened for a few seconds, and then, obviously getting more of the same type of nonsense from the insurance company superior, launched into her master-plan. Jana had previously told me that, if the people from the insurance company gave her any more flack, she was going to give them the biggest cock and bull story of all time, replete with karma, cosmic warnings, fear of payback, acid dreams, prophetic visions of complete insurance meltdown and every other illogical piece of nonsense that she could come up with. Jana started of down this path with gusto, a huge grin on her face, talking rubbish on an industrial scale. It was a plan that backfired spectacularly! Obviously the woman on the other end of the phone line was a true believer in karma and all that goes with it, or more likely just a more experienced purveyor of mind boggling BS. Whatever the reason, as good as Jana was able to give, she got back with interest. After a few minutes of this, Janas smile was gone and she was looking worried. I was considering incurring my wifes wrath by offering to take over the conversation and end it in my typical blunt fashion, when the donkey intervened. The donkey had obviously noted that Jana had left in the direction of the main building. She had also obviously noted that Jana had come back from the vicinity of the main building. The donkey was no doubt acutely aware that it was from the main building that good things in the form of carrots came. And one can deduce from her subsequent actions that she was getting impatient, and wanted to remind us of our duty as she saw it, when she did not receive a fair offering of carrots. Whatever the reason, let me tell you, a braying donkey a few feet away is loud, very, very load! Jana was all but next to the donkey when the donkey started her vocal protest. I was further away, and I practically had to cover my ears. Before the donkey had finished, Jana put the phone down and burst out laughing. Evidently, on hearing the donkey starting to bray, the lady on the other end of the line, with great haste and more than just a touch of nervousness told Jana that the policy was cancelled, and hung up! I must say that Wallace seemed to enjoy the song.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 13:04:44 +0000
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