The Exhausted Dad: Personal care secondary to doggie hygiene
Since my kids didn’t have a family pet for nearly a decade, they’ve accumulated the need to smother our new dog with love, affection and unnecessary grooming.
Less than a month into living with us, Marley already experienced the dreaded bathtub three times. Though he sits still in the bathwater like a certified Good Boy, he very much dislikes it.
I’ll be honest, three baths in a month seems a bit excessive for a mostly indoor dog. My wife and I owned the same breed of animal at the beginning of our marriage, and I’m pretty sure we bathed that dog twice a year, tops.
My children, however, insist that Marley smells fresh and clean. After being soaked by the dog scrambling out of the tub last time, I told my kids they could take the lead on bathtime if they wanted to do it so often.
Honestly, it might have been less effort just to bathe the dog myself.
My 9-year-old daughter especially demands the highest care for the dog, even attempting to brush his teeth (he dislikes that, unsurprisingly). She won’t clip his toenails, but she asks me 12 times a day to do it (I’m afraid I’ll trim too short!).
For such a big task, however, my daughter convinced my 11-year-old son to help her with the process. Both, despite watching me bathe the dog two times before, had several procedural questions.
“Should we fill the water in the tub first?”
“Should we take off his collar?”
“Should the water be warm? How warm? Like hot-warm or warm-warm?”
“Do we try to towel him off while he’s still in the tub?”
“What if he shakes and runs away?”
I answered these questions and more, but for my own mental health, I decided to stay in my room to avoid witnessing what would likely be a very wet, messy process.
My major piece of advice: “Be gentle. Don’t traumatize the poor puppy.”
They washed the dog in the downstairs bathroom, and I heard some occasional clunking and some wayward screams of “Marley!” The dog is extremely gentle. And patient. Even if he became angry with them, he’d probably rather play dead than put up any kind of defense.
After a few minutes, I heard rapid thumping up the staircase. I poked my head out of my room to see Marley going absolutely bonkers in the living room. Sprinting in circles. Cramming his wet face into his doggie pillow. Full leaps into the air, as if he were jumping to reach his rope toy during playtime.
The dog, a cockapoo, has quite a bit of fur. Despite soaking two towels, the kids didn’t make much of an impression on his sopping body. Once he noticed me in the room, he leapt into the air and into my arm, transferring much of the water onto my clothes.
The kids came running.
“I think he’s cold.”
They’d obviously gone with “warm-warm,” which, in the basement bathroom, transforms into “cold-cold” within seconds.
I sent the kids to retrieve another towel.
My son asked, “Do you want one of his wet towels or a new one?”
I glared at him until he came to that answer himself.
Once I finally had the towel, I wrapped Marley like a burrito, scrubbed him relatively dry and held him by the chest until his heart stopped running at 1,000 beats per second.
As I did this, the dog stared at me in disbelief. One thing I’ve learned about Marley in just under a month: He’s smart. I understand this look.
He meant: “Don’t ever make me take a bath with these kids again.”
Duly noted, puppy.
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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
The Exhausted Dad