Nadi (my dog) gets her least favorite thing: another bath

I probably waited too long before this particular bath because since Nadi really needs a haircut right now it takes substantially longer to bathe her and especially to dry her. Since she is a long-haired low-rider right now, she also picks up a lot more stank off the road when we go on walks, especially since Vietnamese people for some reason just love to throw water all over the roads for any ol' reason. Once she reaches a certain level of stinky, I stop trying to dodge the things in the road that are going to make her dirty such as water puddles. She dodges them on her own pretty well because she doesn't like getting her feet wet either but when she does, her legs work as a "scoop" of sort and she throws the filth all over her underside.

The day had come the other day though when by the time we made it to the tub she had already been stinky for a couple days and also had spaghetti sauce all over her face from my leftovers.

This is her in the morning and she is completely unaware that the dreaded bath is coming later on in the day. I did let her have a tiny bit of my croissant as a bit of an apology for what was about to come. I suppose we did the deed around late afternoon, and when I turn on the water in the bathroom I can see her peeking around the corner as she desperately hopes that the running water is for me, and not for her. When I do call her, she tucks her tail between her legs and reluctantly complies. She has never been one to run away from me when it comes time for baths because I guess over the past 10 years she realizes that there is no escape and to try to hide only delays the inevitable.

I do try to get it done as fast as I can and also try my best to keep the water out of her eyes and ears. When we get to the point where i have rinsed all the soap off, she can barely contain her enthusiasm for getting out of the tub.

But alas, when her hair is this long she has to stand there for a while and drip dry or else she will saturate all of my towels (I only have 2) so I stand there and talk to her while she drips away and she starts to get frustrated and will bark at me saying "hey man, I did my part, now get me out of here!"

There she is after the toweling, but she knows this isn't the end of the road. As soon as I place her on the floor she runs over to her toy corner and attacks one of her plushies, perhaps as a method of stress management. She knows what is coming next and I think this is the part she hates even more than the bath: The dreaded hair-dryer.

I do this process as quickly as possible and only on the warm setting since hot can hurt her even though hot does work a lot faster. I once saw a photo of these little doggy air tunnels they have in salons in Japan and that just seems like a wonderful idea.

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I don't wash her frequently enough to justify buying one of these things and I also don't like how it kind of looks like you are putting your fluffy friend in the microwave. They are effective though and I am sure it is far more enjoyable than being attacked by the hair dryer. I have a friend whose dog LOVES the hair dryer and wants it to be used on him even when he isn't being bathed. I think that is weird but it is cute nonetheless.

She gets double excited when I turn the hair-dryer off because through years of training she knows that it is now treatie-pie time and this my friends, is why she endures all the hardship.

I don't get her totally dry, just dry enough that she isn't going to start to stink again like a wet dog tends to. Right now she smells like whatever fragrance the blue color is from the shop that I purchased only because I thought it was strange to have a shampoo that was blue. I suppose they can make them any color that you want.

Later, she gets up on the sofa right next to me and we have a fan pointing at both of us to finish the job. Sure, she looks miserable but that is just how she looks. She is actually quite happy to have that entire procedure be behind us.

Now it is the following day and we have all this cushion places for her to sit but instead she chooses to sit on the floor between them. Dogs can be strange sometimes. We are at that point in the morning where she waits for me to put a shirt on and then she gets excited because she knows that means it is time to go for a "poopy walk." I'm pretty sure that is her favorite time of day and we will be doing exactly that in just a few minutes.