Bathing Lucy

Okay, so there are few things as difficult as bathing a dog who is afraid of water. Unless, of course, that dog is the size of a small horse like our Lucy.

Lucy needs a bath. The last few baths she’s had have been using baby shampoo, very gentle and cleans okay. However, with the return of her skin flare-ups due to chronic allergies of the environmental kind (she’s allergic to grass, weeds, trees, mold, mildew… basically the Northwest) I need to give her a bath with her prescription antifungal/antibacterial shampoo, which is not so gentle but does the job.

It usually requires a good fifteen minutes just to get Lucy into the bathtub because, well, she doesn’t want to go in. And when her ass is firmly planted on the floor it is quite difficult to move her. I usually lure her into the bathroom with her favorite treat in the world, cheese, but she gets a little leery of my intentions and runs back into the living room to lay down on her bed in an effort to distract me by being a good dog. This usually ends with me picking her up and putting her in the tub and blocking her every move to escape. But this isn’t the hard part. The hardest part is leaving her prescription shampoo on for ten minutes after lathering before rinsing it off. Hey, you try keeping a Great Dane in the tub for that long!

Of course, bathing the dog would be pointless unless I washed all of her various bedding, which includes her two bed covers, the two seat covers on the sofa and an old quilt for the rare instances she gets to sleep on the bed with us. I usually have a temporary blanket on the sofa for her to sleep on during the interim. It all needs to be done. I just don’t know if I’m up for the challenge today.