Thursday, March 12, 2009

Bath Night


Tonight was bath night. Bath night is a huge production in my house. You would think in this day of modern convenience that baths would be fairly standard, however when you have dogs, baths take on a new dimension.

I have one small 10 pound terrier and one 120 pound shaggy sheepdog. The terrier is fairly easy … well as long as he doesn’t see you coming. Because if he sees you coming then you have to chase him through the house and usually end up wedging yourself under the bed while you try to snag a growling angry ball of indignant fur. But the sheepdog, I don’t think that the term bath really conveys the whole picture. First of all finding something to bath in is problematic. She doesn’t fit in the shower, it is too cold to hose her off and she doesn’t fit in standard bath tubs. But in my little farmhouse we have an anomaly. We have this enormous tiled Jacuzzi bath that you could bath 3 or 4 people at a time in. So that means that there is just room for one large hairy sheepdog and me. I want you to picture an extra large bottle of shampoo, a 4 quart pitcher, gallons and gallons of water, a large dog who would rather be doing anything else and me.

First of all I had to drag 120 pounds of unwilling dog through the house to the bathroom and then climb in the bathtub full of water and say with authority, “Up Charlie”. (I watch the Dog Whisperer and I am the leader of my pack) she looked at me with disbelief and headed out of the bathroom. So I drug her in again and climbed back in the tub where I immediately slipped and fell full length into the tub of water. I looked up to see Charlie trying to make it out of the bathroom again. I immediately jumped out and took a large portion of the water in the tub with me and grabbed a handful of fur, backed up dragging the dog with me. I kept applying pressure and backing up until we both ended up in the tub. Me on the bottom and Charlie on the top. (she did not want to get wet) I pried myself out from beneath and began the long process of pouring water over the dog, pouring shampoo over the acres of dog and scrubbing and rinsing and scrubbing and rinsing.

In the end I had a very wet, but clean dog, a tub full of hair and dirty water, I was soaked, the bathroom flooded and I had more hair on me than the dog. With any luck she will refrain from wrestling with skunks, digging in the mud or doing doggie things for a few days.


Just Connie

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