Bathing dogs

Today the kids played at the farmer's market. While there, I met a woman with a black lab who had a gorgeous coat. I asked how she did it, and she said he swam in the fish pond quite a bit.

I thought, "Oh, that could be messy." Little did I realize.

We came home to find that Harry had gotten the ten pound container of flour off the counter and opened it--on the sofa. He looked like a polar bear. The sofa looked like his iceberg.

I took off the slipcover and threw it in the washer, and EG scraped and washed the floor.

Then I bathed Harry. When the water hit him, he became kind of pasty, but I refrained from trying to stick things to him and scrubbed him with Dawn dish soap, and he eventually came clean. Then I bathed Nash outside. He hates baths, but he simply stands and whines when they happen to him.

Then I decided to bathe Penny. First thing, she saw a butterfly in the yard and lunged for it, dragging me with her. I tied her to the porch railing. Then the boys started barking at the female beagle behind us and took off running. Penny tried to follow, yanking the railing out of its fittings. I held on to the leash, and she dragged me, across the yard. I looked as if I was water skiing. Eventually discovering that she had some kind of ballast behind her and/or the blood flow to her head was cut off by her collar, she slowed down enough for me to wrangle her back to the area of the hose. I thoroughly wet her, and she shook all the water back on me. I wet her again. She started to shake, and I grabbed her shoulders, so she leaned on my thighs. When I jumped back, she shook again. Finally, standing on her leash, I managed to suds her up and rinse her. She saw a rock she wanted and lunged for it, making my feet spin in a circle and me to sit down on the wet driveway. I finally got her rinsed, adding only about four gallons to my own clothes and thoroughly flooding my shoes in the process, and tied her to my chair. She alerted to a bit of fluff in the air, and I sat down fast as she careened by, only to be dragged halfway up the driveway, a journey which was interrupted because she saw "her" rock again and detoured after it, attempting to swallow it once she got it. I pried it from her jaws. It was covered with dog slime, some of which remained in her mouth, and she wiped on my legs.

I tied her to the garage, thinking that there was little chance (but still some of a possibility) that she would take it halfway up the drive as well. One time we tied her to the conduit, and she tore that off the building, but I felt pretty sure that a two by four would hold her unless a big herd of cats, some shifty looking people, and the ice cream truck came all at once. Of course, in order to repair the railing, I had to take the whole thing off the porch and disassemble it, starting with putting WD 40 on all the rusted together parts. In the process of trying to pursuade the reluctant bolts, I pinched my finger with the pliers, giving myself a gigantic blood blister. I sent Nita for the first aid kit, which she decided to pursue through the house in her skates. I heard her fall five times in the kitchen, which averaged to once every two feet or so, on her way to the hall closet. Before I resorted to amputating my have a nice day finger with the pruning sheers, Dorothy Hammill swooped back up, dropping the first aid kit as she arrived, and spreading the contents across a ten foot by ten foot area of dish soap suds and dog hair. I picked up what I needed and tended to the wound as the talented Dorothy fell flat on her behind, reclined dramatically on the concrete, and announced that her leg was broken, but a pizza might be an incredibly fast cure.

Now the house smells like wet dog, the porch rail wobbles dramatically, my middle finger hurts like crazy, and Nita is walking like John Wayne.

I think I'll take them to the lake in the future.