Charlie has never had a formal bath before. I don't know if that's a confession or not - but he's never needed one - and YOU try to life a 120 pound dog into a tub by your self when that dog doesn't want to get in there!
He's always smelled like lilacs and he's always had shiny fur and he's always looked good. I've attributed it to the fact that he's had a good diet, he's gotten wet from being out in all kinds of weather and then gotten very vigourous and fun towel dryings immediately upon arriving home, and I've always brushed him a lot - as well as giving him tons of scratches.
But since his surgery he's mostly been inside and it's really shown - he's developed the worst dandruff you can imagine - he's always show when he's not feeling well through his skin - he's had allergies over the years and they've always shown up partially through his skin - labrador retrievers are known to have bad skin worse than horomonally turbo charged pimply teenagers unfortunately - and Charlie is 1/2 lab - so he's proved to be no different than his genetic brothers and sisters.
But even with the verbal diarhea - long story short - I took him to Metro Dog Wash to have a bath! Who knew how he was going to react! I was expecting chaos - but he once again proved to be the perfect gentleman and let me bathe him - although he showed me his disdain and wouldn't even take a piece of liver from me to placate my own sorry with making him uncomfortable.
I knew there was going to be NO way he was going to walk up the ramps to the big dog tubs - so there was a walk-in tub for small dogs - and it was PERFECT - because I could get in the tub too! I think that made a huge difference - and I am SO glad that that design of tub was available.
Although it did allow all the other patrons to see that I was wearing battleship grey underwear yesterday...
But perhaps the best part of the day as far as Charlie was concerned was last night when he got to go to the DINGLE with everyone else! Boy was he HAPPY! And he did really well too. I was really pleased with how well he did actually. And today he doesn't seem to be any the worse for wear - so hopefully he's on the road to getting better.
I've been rather like the wife who's husband has had a really bad heart attack and doesn't want to have sex with him anymore because she's too terrified that he's going to die on top of her. I've been absolutely terrified he's going to either re-blow his left kneee or blow his right knee while we're out walking - so other than very controlled on-leash walks - Charlie hasn't gone anywhere.
But he did so well last night at the Dingle that I think we'll start going there for awhile. It's got a very even grade and easy walking - but it's got lots of stuff to smell, and at dusk not too many people go there.
So many whole family adventures are going to happen again. I had despaired that they were never going to happen ever again. The last 2 months have been absolutely awful.
And in completely geeky news - I got a new computer yesterday. So I'm going to be wasting horrible amounts of time and the dogs are going to be staring at me even more because I'm looking at the computer and not at them - the creaky Pentium 2 gave up the ghost - so I got a new Compaq with a couple bells and maybe one whistle and it's going to take a while to get everything set up. And the world of downloading music has just become available to me too. So exciting. I'm about ready to pop.
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