Missy and Maggie get at least one bath a week. It all depends where they are on the stinky scale on any particular day. I am usually the one to send up the stink flare since I am into my own "house aroma therapy." I have candles strategically placed throughout the house, reed diffusers, a couple of bowls of potpourri and two "Plug in's" that have the smell of the month wafting in the air. So needless to say I am into pretty, girly smells. When the smell of a stinky dog starts mixing in with my fruity, flowery, woodsy smells, I alert the dog whisperer.
Missy, the older of the two dogs, is onto the "it's time for a bath" signals. For years if she heard us use the word bath, (even if we were talking about ourselves) she would go hide and hope we would forget we had a dog. To keep Missy from going into hiding, we started spelling the word bath. The very first time Richard said "I'm going to give the dogs a B-A-T-H", Missy ran to her bed. I'm going to sign her up for the next spelling bee that comes to town. She's sure to get a honorable mention.
Maggie on the other hand is oblivious to anything until she sees Richard walking in with the dog washing towels. She jumps up in Richard's chair and tries to look as sad and pitiful as she can, hoping she isn't the first one to have to endure the water torture. It never has worked before, but she keeps trying, just in case one day Richard has pity on her.
Richard takes great pride in presenting me with clean, perfumey, fresh smelling dogs. He waits for me to bury my face in their necks and ooh and aah over how sweet they smell. Years ago he started bathing them with his own shower gel. I buy this shower gel in a large, industrial size, man size, pump bottle. It is cheap and Richard likes it, so why rock the boat. The shower gel has a very manly smell and makes me bury my face in both my dog's and my man's necks when they are freshly scrubbed, so I know this scent very well.
The other night when I returned home from Bible Study, Richard was happy to meet me at the door with a clean, fluffy dog. He said "Maggie's been waiting for you to come home to smell her." So I snuggled her up close. Mmmmmm......she smelled so good. I smelled her again, something was different. I looked at Richard and said, "This isn't their usual after bath smell. Did you use something different?" He nonchalantly replied, " Yeah, I bathed the dogs in the other bathtub, so I used your shower gel instead." Oh... I couldn't very well get too fussy, because he is the dog whisperer after all, and if he didn't do all the doggie maintenance, it would all fall on.... So anyway, I smiled and walked back to my bathroom to find out what he had used. My almost full bottle of my very favorite shower gel, that I use sparingly so it will last longer, was now 3/4ths gone. It does not come in a man size barrel, nor is it cheap.
A man will never understand the effect smells have on a woman. If we had it our way, we would outlaw stinkiness and only have sweet smells surrounding us at all times. A man on the other hand will wear a shirt for the second day because the arm pits didn't smell too bad. And, pat each other on the back for an explosive, malodorous event. So in Richard's mind there was no difference between our "His and Hers" shower gels.
Since I wanted Richard to maintain his position as "Dog Whisper", I just walked back in the room and made a big deal over how nice the dogs smelled. That was restraint. Now that I only have a precious few baths left in my shower gel bottle, I did the only thing I knew to do. I slept that night with my nose in Maggie's fur. If I couldn't soak in my favorite smell, I would sleep with it. Somehow it just wasn't the same. The soap bubbles never tickled my nose like snoring into a dog's fur did.
Post Script: The above cute picture of my sweet smelling dogs, cost me a half a box of Wheat Thins crackers to get them both to sit still together for a photo shoot. All for the sake of the blog...
It was worth the wheat thins how adorable!!
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