Back when we were still green and eager and trying to turn a buck however we could, we offered some services grooming dogs.
Not cats. I quit law because I was depressed, not suicidal.
Aside from crass monetary considerations, we were marketing ourselves as the first pet resort in our area. Resorts have spas, right?
I had visions of docile, happy dogs eagerly lining up for their turn in the bubble bath. It turns out that the reality was a little different.
It quickly fell to my lot to perform these procedures. John occasionally participated under duress, mostly to put a stranglehold on the bigger victims, so they couldn’t escape the tub.
Did I say ‘victims’? Of course, I meant the lucky recipients of a bubble bath.
I enjoyed bathing dogs about one degree more than I would enjoy torture. This is the mental image I got of myself whenever a client would inquire, “Do you do any grooming?”
The best were the dogs who had been accustomed to being bathed, brushed and clipped to within an inch of their lives since they were puppies. They were not enthusiastic as a rule, but at least they were resigned.
Then there were the others. I’m looking at you, Labrador Retrievers.
The problem with bathing most Labs is that they like water. Yes, that is a problem if you are trying to bath the dog. They think baths are a game, where they jump around and splash and generally try to get as much water as possible on themselves and the lucky, lucky bastard trying to give them a bath.
Like most Labs, Duke was a party animal.
Duke was scheduled for a bath on the morning of the day he went home.
The good news was, Duke didn’t look at bath time as an opportunity for play. The bad news was, he saw it as some sort of evil plot to drown, or at the very least, cripple him.
For starters, there was no way he was going to attempt the climb up to the level of the raised tub. This was clearly an inhumane sort of obstacle course which could only end in broken limbs or even death if he succumbed to my admonishments to get on with it.
I summoned John and between the two of us, we hoisted sixty-five pounds of squirming, protesting Lab into the tub. Duke made a bolt for it. John manfully threw himself on top of Duke to preventing him exiting a lot quicker than he entered. I grabbed the shower head and shampoo and set to.
The grooming room got soaked. I got soaked. John got a healthy dose of dog shampoo in his eyes. The air turned blue, and not just from the blueberry scented bubblebath. But hey, Everest would never have been conquered if Hillary had given up because of a little soap in his eyes. Or in his case, snow.
Some time later, exhausted, but triumphant, we emerged with a glistening clean Duke.
Since Duke was scheduled to go home later that morning, in hindsight, it was perhaps not the wisest decision to let Duke go outside and play with the other dogs. But Duke lived to play. We didn’t have the heart to deny him. John took them all outside.
I stayed in to mop up the flood in the grooming room. Not ten minutes later, John opened the back door and yelled at me that Duke had blood all over him.
With great difficulty we extricated Duke from his game, and examined him all over. The good news was that there were no cuts or bites or broken toenails on Duke. The bad news was that he looked like he’d been sprayed by the brush of a demented Jackson Pollack wannabe who used blood instead of paint.
As it turned out, pretty close. One of the greyhounds had broken open the tip of her tail (‘Happy Tail’ it’s called) and was wagging it furiously as she played, spraying blood drops with every wag, and making every dog who came close to her look they had just toured a slaughterhouse.
A tacit agreement was reached among me, John and Duke. There would be no more bathing. We got Duke back on the grooming table, John held him while I got some wet cloths and wiped the bloody marks off as far as I was able to, with Duke struggling in our hold like a mad thing. After he was as blood free as we could get him, we stowed Duke in the common room to watch TV and wait for his family, while we dealt with the bloody tail and cleaned up the other dogs.
A short while later, I was showing a newcomer around the kennel and opened the door to the common room. There was Duke, covered once again in red spots. He looked like he had measles. This time, he was happily chomping on a red pen which he had purloined from the desk.
I came to grips with the Dukester, prising the pen from between his now gory-looking jaws, and removed him yet again to the grooming room.
Not something I ever thought I would be an expert on to tell you the truth, but Auntie Awesome is pleased to be able to inform you, with authority, that red ink is not as easy to remove as blood.
I did the best I could.
I can only blame some sort of psychotic breakdown for my next action. I shooed Duke outside with John and the other dogs so I could get back to my visitor. Five minutes later, John brought him back to the grooming room.
The pet resort yards got very muddy in the spring.
This photo shows the yard at its worst. We weren’t actually crazy enough to put a freshly bathed dog in a yard that looked like that. No siree. We weren’t crazy.
Nevertheless, Duke was covered from head to toe with mud. John had taken his eyes away from the group for a few minutes. When he looked back, it was to see some of Duke’s Lab and Border Collie pals literally logrolling Duke in the one section of the yard that was muddy.
An apparent group effort at a farewell practical joke. Or maybe a fraternity hazing. Who knows? The dogs weren’t saying.
Whatever. Here’s my takeaway. Dogs can be dicks.