The room smells of incense… clouds of the stuff are billowing through the dim light. Ani is chasing moths and ignoring me. She may not speak to me ever again… or at least for five minutes; she’s had a bath and the incense smells infinitely better than wet dog.
I’ve been trying for the last couple of days to get her upstairs and in there, but, reading the signs she has wedged herself so tightly into small corners that it would be easier to coax a snail from its shell. I’d given up. It is not as if she doesn’t like water. Show her a muddy ditch with a stream and a dead badger and she’s straight in there.
She is in the late summer moult and itchy… which means rubbing bits of her anatomy quite ecstatically against the corner of the sofa… a cream sofa, or it was, idiot that I am…. It is just the right height for her rump…Think Disney’s Baloo and you’re about there. When I look round and catch her, she stares at me with this innocent, half offended air and pauses as if caught in some nefarious act…then dives down the front of the sofa, leaning into the edge of the seat cushions instead, up and down several times.
The usual routine is to close all the bedroom doors, she gets a bath, I get soaked, clean the bathroom … walls, floor, woodwork, the lot…and then get a shower. This was obviously not going to work. She is wise to it. I tried stealth tactics, bribery and a nonchalant pile of ironing in the back bedroom, all to no avail. She wouldn’t come out.
Which only left me subterfuge.
I ran a bath, and prepared it for me, leaving all the doors open so she could come and go… Thinking I was the one going in the tub, she cautiously slid into the bathroom to keep an eye on me. I think she likes to protect me from spiders or something. So far so good.
By this time I’m down to the underwear. I shut the door and the two of us are in this tiny bathroom together. There is not a lot of room and that cold nose gets in places that don’t bear thinking about.
She wedges herself in the furthest corner… so I get in the bath. Okay, she’s thinking, that looks safe… I pick up the soap… very safe… she comes to investigate …
Ten seconds of legs and fur later we have changed places. She is now in the tub glaring at me, I am dripping on the mat. Shampooing goes fine, as long as I keep her nose under my arm… the first slip and she is attempting to climb onto the little bathside cabinet less than a foot square which bears the cheerie-uppies…. the lotions and potions sent by a friend that are now flying in all directions. Another momentary inattention proves that apparently a setter sized dog can balance on tiptoes on the rim of a bathtub with no problem at all.
By this time there is more hair on me than the dog. Dare I let go and reach for the showerhead? Apparently not. I coax her out of the few inches between toilet and wall, heave her back into the bathtub and finish rinsing with the jug, my feet slopping around in the puddles. She makes a final bid for freedom as I lurch for the towel. Inevitably she is quicker than me and shakes… there is now loose hair and water just about everywhere, but mainly on me. Somehow her face is still dry.
I beat her to the bedroom doors though and she shoots downstairs at interstellar velocity, wet fur looking as if it has been crimped, leaving me with the soggy battleground to clear and as hairy as a yeti. The hot water, it seems, all went in her bath… I clean the bathroom and get a cold shower… she probably thinks it serves me right…
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
Our big boy, Bishop the Australian Shepherd, is dropping his coat. Wherever he lies down, when he gets up, he leaves a small dog worth of fur behind. He’s much too big for us to groom, so we are saving up pennies and hoping we can get the deed done soon. Some days, it looks like someone slashed up a mattress and spread the contents everywhere. Fortunately, the other dogs don’t shed like that … but he’s more than enough. Good luck 🙂
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I’ve never known a setter shed like Ani does… though Dad is a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever… so perhaps he sheds more..
Used to have alsations though… the hair came out in tufts, but at least they would stand still for grroming. Ani just thinks the brush is a toy and wants to play… 🙂
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Twice a year – by the bucket load! 😉
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That’ll be why then, Dad 🙂
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Priceless, Sue – how I wish I’d been there! Reminds me of many a tussle with Jumble! xxx
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I’m sure they must be related… 🙂 xxx
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Sounds like a two-human job to me lolol!
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It is… unquestionably… but the last human I offered it to simply laughed and turned me down flat 😉
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Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
eeeeeuuuuuu—wet dog!!!! 🙂
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this sounds like a crazy adventure, sue and ani )
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But she looks so pretty this morning, all fluffy and shiny, that it was worth it 🙂
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LOL!!! Oh boy have you ever taken her to self-serve? You can actually hook her up in a tub and you don’t have to clean up, and it’s less than half the price of grooming. And you can still wash her yourself. But I have to admit your method sounds fun, and it’s always great to succeed at a challenge like that. 🙂 They always get all the fur on you, probably learn it as puppies!
I’ll have to wash my furry one this week too, he got to romp around in the ocean this weekend. 🙂
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I don’t think we have one here 🙂 There isn’t a groomer for some way either so it is all done at home… if I can catch her for long enough!
I need to take her to the sea though… she hasn’t met it yet. I am about as far from the ocean as you can get in England.
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I once had a grey dog and a wine-red carpet. It pays to think ahead and have furnishings to match fur (the clue is in the word). Cats are cannier though: clever Muffin left his black hairs on light-coloured things and his white hairs on dark things.
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The carpet is brown… it is only the sofa that is light… but the stuff seems to show up everywhere, Lizzy. On the other hand, I would rather have the hairs and the smell of wet dog than be without her. x
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She is sooo cute!!!
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She is… and knows it, Nicholas. Knows just how to melt your heart… and get away with murder!
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I’m sorry, are you talking about your dog or mine? When Meli (our dog) makes those puppy eyes at us, I can practically see her thinking, “Dance my puppets, dance!” 😀
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Perhaps they are related… They seem to have that uncanny knack of ruling us quietly and confidently through the heart 🙂
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How true! And don’t even get me started on the cats… They’r not even subtle with *their* ruling!
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Ah… now mine won’t have anything to do with cats (well, nothing the cat would be happy with anyway!)… the ginger tom next door is her main tormentor.
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Rolling on the floor laughing 🙂 The joys of Dog Noses!! We had a German Shepherd when I was (theoretically) growing up; we would vacuum her with the upholstery extension. She actually liked that. But hair everywhere. We never dared try a bath. Between the wire brush and the vacuum cleaner we managed to get rid of SOME of it… Then there are our cats: They have a penchant for color contrast design. Unfortunately they don’t make maroon and pine green colored cat hair…
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My Echo would let you vacuum her too… a bigger version of Ani who looked very like her :)Molly would just run a mile… as does this one. The hoover-mosnter is a no go area 🙂
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Bath time can only be described as awesome!! lol 😉
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Or awful 🙂
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Wow Ani – this sounds awful! Maybe it would go easier on you if you just gave in.
I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter, since I’m *really* little (like, in a plastic dishpan in the sink, little) – so I just give her the stink eye and hope she hurries. But BOY do I get the great treats when I’m done. Little bits of hotdog and cheese, and all kinds of good stuff I hardly get otherwise. And I have to admit it’s nice to be silky and not tangly after I’m all dry and chomping on a treat or two.
Woof! TINK
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It is a matter of principle, Tink. I don’t want to smell like a bunch of flowers 😉 xxx
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Mom doesn’t use the kind that smells too much of anything, exactly. But I’m not as big and I don’t spend as much time digging in the dirt as you, so maybe that’s the only kind that works on that much mud?
You know, if its true that 2legses brains don’t have good nose cells like we do, I don’t understand why they all seem to go on about smell!
Woof! TINK
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I know, you wouldn’t think they would mind… AND mine gets insulting when she says that she smellslike a dog when she’s been cuddling me…. xxx
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WOW – slobber all over her when she says that. She deserves it.
Woof!
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I normally just squish her 😉 xxx
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That would work if I were bigger. I lie on her head when she’s trying to fall asleep when she doesn’t do the cuddle time right.
Woof!
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Hey, I lie on hers too…but she says that’s too much 😉 xxx
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Mom says I pull her hair. If I don’t move on, she puts me down, and I’m too little to get up by myself, so she usually wins that round. Woof!
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Mine doesn’t like trying to pick me up. She says bad words… 😉 xxx
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An advantage to being little, I guess – I get picked up all the time. No bad words involved. Woof!
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Heh 😀 xx
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