“Walkin’ the dog,
Just walkin’ the dog
If you don’t know how to do it,
I’ll show you how to walk the dog.” ~ Rufus Thomas
NOW substitute ‘washin’ for ‘walkin’ and you can sing along with what I’ve been doing for the past couple of hours.
At the Lewis house, we enjoy two-dogs-in-one: Fuzzy Molly that you see above and Sleek Molly, below, after she has been to the groomer.
Molly is truly at her FUZZIEST right now. Add to that the fact that she is NOT a sweet ‘lady’ dog, but a ragamuffin who LOVES to stick her nose in the dirt; bring all manner of stinky things out of the woods and into the front yard; dig up moles, voles, and other oles; and you have an idea of how very dirty she gets. Usually about the middle to the end of March, she starts her once-every-six-weeks or so trips to the groomer. We get her hair cut short all over so that we can save her from the ticks and/or fleas who manage to get on regardless of collars, sprays, and medicines made to help with that. There is also a time of the year that she runs through the grass, coming back to the house COVERED in tiny awful burs from her nose to the tip of her tail. With her hair short, I can use a comb to remove most of them without causing her much grief.
Another adaptation to the virus outbreak is that we can’t take her to the groomers. We’ve had off and on yucky rain for at least a couple of weeks now, and she comes in, dirtier and dirtier, with her hair starting to mat, no matter how many times I brush her.
This morning I spent about 45 minutes with the Furminator tool we got that you use like a brush.
Furminator
It removes a lot of the excess hair without teeing off the dog too badly. I filled up half a trash can (!) with the hair I removed, stopping when her patience ran out.
Then I took her plus three dog towels into the kitchen and lifted her into the kitchen sink. She is quite docile when she’s thoroughly wet, so I scrubbed her as well as I was able with no-tears dog shampoo and spent a LONG time getting her rinsed. She has supe- thick, combination cocker spaniel and schnauzer type hair, so I rinsed her for a good twenty minutes.
It took all three towels to get her to quit dripping enough that I could take her to the back bathroom and use my hair dryer on her for as long as I could before she protested.
She is now lying on the carpet at my feet as I type. She is still coming over and rubbing herself all over my jeans, trying to dry her face more. When she dries a lot more, I will brush her again and we will add a new flea collar we got for her. (We already put one on Amber, our 95 pound yellow lab.) They are supposed to last up to six months, protecting them from fleas and ticks. We found them when we Googled, “best flea and tick collars.” They had good reviews on Amazon. The brand name is Rolf Club and the collar is called 3D. Fingers crossed the collars are worth the price.
My shirt is wet and has white dog hair all over it, even though I tried to use a sticky roller to clean up some. I did get the kitchen sink cleaned up and the towels are in the washer. I hope I don’t smell like I’ve been, “washin’ the dog” …
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