| [Tags**|baths, dear mischa, mischa, river, walkies] [Current Mood** |
loving]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you; and, while my love for you is not constrained to the physical properties of your outward form, it most certainly does include them. You are such a beautiful dog, and one of the many reasons to celebrate you is your self-cleaning coat.Yup: that lovely monochrome pelt of yours practically never needs washing. In dry summer weather you get a bit dusty. In winter, you sometimes collect a smidgen of soot from the wood-stove, so that petting hands may afterwards need to be washed of a dark and easily-removed discolouration. Once in a while you get mud on your paws, and in all seasons you get occasional bits of resin in your fur from where you lie under the pine tree in the garden; but these things are easily removed.You smell good, too, but I rhapsodise over your scent frequently enough that there's no need for me to repeat myself here. Let's merely remark that burying my nose in your fur is one of the many sheer delights of your company.Once in a while, though... once in a while, when the heavens dictate, or when I find my hands a bit grubby after ruffling them through your fur many times during a long snuggled-up session of drowsy cuddly love on the carpet, then a decision is made that, at the next opportunity, you must have a bath.Baths are understated affairs. Some day when the weather's hot, while we're out on our usual round, at a certain point where the river runs slow and deep, I get a hold on your harness and lead you into the cool water and start sloshing it over you. You protest, mildly, making an effort to clamber up the bank so you can have a good vigorous shake and then contine the walk, but I won't brook dissent: "na-ah!" I say, and pull you back while I continue kneading and rubbing and massaging you, squidging river-water through your pelt. No soap; as far as I remember we've never soaped you, not once in all the years of our acquaintance. Today I even subjected you to the notable indignity of hoicking up your tail and washing your arsehole, which (while you're a splendidly clean dog in that respect as well) did have a few peripheral hairs stuck together in disconcerting ways.Finally I'm satisfied, and "Los!" I command, and you emerge like a water-streaming sea-monster and give the characteristic skewed lift of your muzzle that means you're about to shake yourself. The shake starts with a twist of your head, then ripples backwards through your body in a violent contra-rotation to end with a lizard-quick flick-flick-flick of your tail. Water explodes off you in a glittering cloud of spray, bright and rainbow-spangled in the sunlight, and off we go down the sunwarmed path, filled with summer brightness, and I marvel at the whiteness of your backside and the newly enhanced floofiness of your lovely buoyant tail. You've got noticeably more energy afterwards too, as your body's cooled by the ample water still remains as a dampness in your undercoat.Much later, after I've towelled you and you've had a further few hours to dry out in full, your fur will have an all-new softness and we'll curl up on the carpet and once more drowse with each other in a blissful loving daze.We found out early in our acquaintance that being washed with a hose makes you borderline hysterical. Yet you're reasonably complacent about being led into the river and washed there, even though it's considerably wetter and probably about as cold. What can I say?—you are a dog of contradictions.I'm pretty sure you evolved not to need washing, and I know for certain that you'd never wilfully choose to be washed. If you were as distressed by the river as much as you are by the hose, we'd probably never wash you at all. But wash you we do, just occasionally, because it cools you off on hot summer days and also makes you even more beautiful than you already are.And this is one of the many reasons why we love you.Love,me. |