Have to share a horrifying frozen dog story. My girlfriend called over for coffee this arvo and regaled me with the latest story from her strange parents. Her parents were holidaying on the coast when their favourite mutt died from kidney failure. They had the dog put down humanely by a vet in the town in which they were staying. This horrible dog was the nastiest, nippiest, most bad tempered thing that ever roamed the Earth. It was a golden cockerspaniel with the most imaginative name of “Goldie”. The owners’ grandchildren all bear scars inflicted by this four-legged horror. They have previously owned six other cockers, all of which have been buried on the family farm after meeting their assorted fates.
The owners of said horrible creature got the vet to plastic bag her up, and they then proceeded to freeze Goldie in the deepfreeze at their holiday unit. They wanted to take her home when they were ready to leave so that they can bury her with the other dogs.
Now, I don’t have a problem with that - but there’s a visual here, “Where are the peas?”, “Oh, just move the dead, frozen dog, they’re under her”. Eew.
Then I started thinking. A cockerspaniel is a fair-sized dog, which probably wouldn’t fit into an esky. They have a 10 hour drive back to their home. Frozen things thaw, whether they be sausages, or chops, or dogs. Double Eew.
If you put it in a cooler for the trip, it would stay pretty well frozen.
My neighbors had a mid-size, poodle-ish dog (Muffin) that died during the winter when the ground was too frozen to dig a grave. They put her in the freezer until the spring thaw. I avoided going to their house for dinner until poor Muffin had been interred.
A solid chunk of meat takes along time to thaw, and the frozen core will keep the outside cool as it thaws. Wrap it in insulating newspaper or better material, and keep it out of the sun. I would expect moisture though, so I hope they keep it on something to catch the run off or the car material might forever have that dead smell.
Heh-heh. My brother was house-sitting for his girlfriend when her cat took a dirt nap. He didn’t want to dispose of it while she was gone, so she could handle the disposal as she saw fit, so he popped it in the freezer. I mean, what are you gonna do?
I realize this was a freezer in someone’s house and it contained a dog and all, but this is what they do with dead people when the ground is too frozen to dig graves.
When my grandfather died it was February and in Pittsburgh that means frozen ground and probably snow. The cemetery owner told the funeral director that they couldn’t dig the grave until the ground thawed, so we had a mock-burial at an accessible grave site (the car path to his actual grave was impassible because of the weather) so his body was in cold storage for a good while until they could dig the grave.
My parents own a small farm in Ohio. The family pets that have died over the years are buried in an area known as the ‘pet cemetery’. They once parked a boston terrier in the basement freezer. He died in the middle of one very cold winter and ground was frozen solid. He was buried the following spring as soon as the ground was soft enough to dig.
Allow me to congratulate you on the loss of your not-so-beloved pet.
I was so very afraid reading your post that your folks were going to forget the dog at the holiday house. See, when I was a kid, my friend April and I froze her piranha after it’s death (same reason as many - the ground was too cold to dig, and a piranha is just too substantial a fish to flush) and then we forgot about it. Her mom thought her dad had gone fishing, and her dad thought her mom had gone to the supermarket. So the dead frozen piranha sat in the freezer for about two years until her little brother punctured the side wall of the freezer with a knife while hacking off bits of ice. Suddenly there was melted food everywhere, and Delbert the Piranha made his last appearance.
On a practical note, I keep meat frozen solid (and I mean SOLID) for the better part of two weeks while camping using newspapers, a couple of towels, and a layer of dry ice on top (important, as cold “sinks”) in a 20 year old cooler. I’m sure I could get it to stay a freezer even longer in one o’ them newfangled coolers. Dry ice rawks when you’re car camping with a family.
Arvo = Afternoon Esky = A brand of cooler box that has become the generic term for cooler boxes. We, in NZ, call them chilli bins.
And what is it with you Australians and your imaginative names? Our neighbours had a Blue Healer called “Blue.” Across the road lived a Jack Russel called “Jack.” Not to mention the “Snowy Mountains.”
I had a neighbor who named his Japanese Chin dog, Chin-Chin. (I remember in a long ago dog-related thread, a doper claimed that chin, in Japanese, had something to do with male dangly bits but I can’t remember his exact wording.)
Back when I was grooming, cocker spaniels were 1 or 2 in the AKC most popular dogs list. We had a ton of them come into our shop. More than half of them had the very original name of Brandy. A good portion of the others were named Mandy.
After a hockey game one night a good friend came up to me with the tale that a mutual friend had a dog in her freezer because her son had not come over to her house to bury it. Gave a whole new meaning to “Dollar Dog” night at the games!
