1 post tagged “gloves”

Well, last night after we got home and went to bed, the house grew quiet.  I was reading a book in bed, expecting to put it down and quickly doze off any minute.  That’s when our oldest Border Collie Hope made an interesting discovery.  If you’re biting some itch on your front paw, it’s natural to kick your back paw in sympathy.  This makes the tray in the bottom of the crate smack up against the wire frame, which makes a delightfully satisfying noise.  The noise reverberates around the laundry room and is therefore transmitted to the entire house by some weird quirk of nature.  And if you really itch badly, you can make this noise go on for quite some time.  Throw in a whine or a bark here and there, and your human will appear, looking sleepy and annoyed.  But hey, human is good when you want out of the crate.

Ok, note from wicked dog owner needs to be inserted here.  Hope gets flee (insert long medical word that means she itches) unless we buy frontline and put it on her.  At the store Hubby asked for a cheaper alternative.  Yeah, the stuff is crazy expensive and you’re supposed to do it once a month.  They showed him the $16 stuff and assured him it was the same stuff.  Apparently not.  So we didn’t mean to be wicked dog parents, just cheap skates.  They said it worked just as well.  I wish it was their skin itching.

So I got up once hoping that the barking meant she needed a bathroom break.  So I let them both outside.  One sat in one place and scratched.  The other made her rounds around the whole yard, stopping to scratch.  I felt horrible.  My girls are itching!  I put them back to bed.  So a few moments later after I’m all snuggling back in my comfortable bed…  Hope starts the amplified scratch noise again.  More barking. 

No sleep for anyone.

So at 1:00 in the morning we are outside in the back yard giving them both a bath, hoping that this will hold them until we can get somewhere to drop an obscene amount of money on dog drugs.  Ok, Hope bites.  That means hubby is holding the leash – Hope is straining to get away and squirming.  Hubby is wearing welding gloves to protect himself from damage from any stray teeth and trying to hold on to her.  He’s got a hold of her with the leash and a big paw in a welding glove.  And it is my duty to wash the toothy bugger, while staying away from the teeth, the leash, the hubby, the welding glove… and well, it gets tricky.  I was holding the hose so I fared better than hubby did.  But somehow he managed to get pretty wet.  (huh!)  But she got much wetter.  (I win, I win!) 

They both seemed to appreciate the bath actually.  I guess they’ve learned that baths are good when they’ve been skunked, maybe a bath with work for this new kind of weird itching torture.  Then Misde sat and shivered for a while cause the water was cold, which was both cute and pathetic.  But no complaints from her, never a stray tooth.  We toweled them off and they shook heartily and then shook again.  And again. 

Thanks!  I needed another shower. 

So all four of us went back to bed and finished off the night in comfort.  Only the human two were dry.  The girls had to sleep in their wet coats.  But that’s better than an itchy coat, right?  Poooor puppies.