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CONFESSION #0827 — SHOWING GONE WRONG
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Closing was at 2pm. Final walkthrough at noon, standard stuff, buyers wanted one last look before signing. We get there and the sellers have moved out but they left their dog. Just left it. Golden retriever, maybe 60 pounds, been alone in the house for what looked like two days based on the situation in the master bedroom.
The buyers are standing in the foyer and the wife starts crying. Not because she's sad for the dog, which okay fair, but because there's dog waste on the hardwood floors they specifically negotiated a credit for because they were in such good condition. Three rooms. The hallway. Some got on the baseboards.
I called the listing agent and she goes, oh the sellers said their son was picking up the dog yesterday. That's it. That's her response. Their son was supposed to.
We had to delay closing four hours. The sellers had to hire an emergency cleaning crew, 800 dollars, and the dog went to animal control because the son never showed and nobody could reach the sellers because they were on a flight to Phoenix.
The buyers almost walked. Almost. Over a dog nobody remembered to take.
The thing that gets me is the listing agent put in her notes that the house would be delivered broom clean. Broom clean. There was a living animal in the house. The dog had knocked over a floor lamp and broken the shade, which then became a whole thing about whether that was included in the sale.
I still don't know what happened to the dog.
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Judge Reginald Escrow III
⚖️ Presiding
GUILTY OF CRIMINAL CANINE ABANDONMENT, AGGRAVATED BROOM-CLEAN PERJURY, AND FIRST-DEGREE EMOTIONAL DEVASTATION OF HARDWOOD FLOORS
The Court is APOPLECTIC. Reginald has presided over many horrors in his distinguished and entirely legitimate career, but this, THIS, is a new low in the annals of real estate jurisprudence. Broom clean, the listing agent wrote. BROOM CLEAN. Was the broom intended to sweep up a sixty-pound golden retriever, counsel? Was it a VERY LARGE BROOM? The Court cites the landmark decision of Abandoned Labrador v. Basic Human Decency, 2019, in which it was established that living creatures are NOT staging materials to be left behind like a decorative bowl of lemons. And speaking of being abandoned by people who claimed they would show up, The Court's own brother-in-law once promised to help Reginald move a sectional sofa and instead went to a Jimmy Buffett concert in Reno, so The Court UNDERSTANDS the sting of familial betrayal, but at least the sectional did not defecate on baseboards that were SPECIFICALLY NEGOTIATED FOR. The phrase their son was supposed to should be grounds for immediate license revocation, because The Court has HEARD that excuse before and it is NEVER true, it is NEVER the son, the son is always at a Jimmy Buffett concert or spiritually equivalent event. The buyers negotiated a credit for those floors and instead received a crime scene, a broken lamp of disputed ownership, and the haunting question of what happened to the dog, which The Court ALSO does not know and will now be thinking about at 3 AM for the foreseeable future. This Court hereby rules that the listing agent must personally locate that golden retriever, apologize to it, and never use the words broom clean again unless she is prepared to MEAN IT.
The Forgotten Retriever Incident
Have a confession? Judge Reginald Escrow III's docket is always open.
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