Dog Grooming

A wonderful Saturday morning. The kids are being adorable. I cuddle with my oldest in the nicely air conditioned room as he tells me, "Mommy, you are the best Mommy in the whole wide world!" What can be better than that.

We trounce downstairs to find hubby and my youngest being equally as cute, pouring liquid breakfast of orange juice and coke over ice and playing computer games. (OJ for the kid, Coke for the Dad!)



Then it happened. I turned around and got hit with an odor that could only be flattered by being called putrid.


I look down to see my adoring smallest dog (smallest at 45lbs!) staring up at me asking for her morning rub behind the ear. Brown, green and orange yuck is smeared here and there up her side and on her face. This is it! She's been escaping into the neighborhood though what we can only figure must be a transporter over our fence and trolloping around. And on the special occasions, she brings home a fantastic smell of the dead to share and spread among our house hold belongings. Well, today this does not go unpunished.



"Terry, do you know where the dog clippers are?" He tells me yes with huge trepidation in his voice. Perhaps he is remembering my last attempt at giving our dogs a haircut. Four hours of painstaking drama on the back porch, trying to figure out how to use the guard and liquid cooling oil, only to have them coming out looking like they went four rounds with a tazer sea of tiki torches.




I went to the porch, plugged in the clippers. It wasn't about two minutes until I called to my assistant, "Terry.. can you get me the cooling oil and some bug spray!" I was getting eaten alive. It was making Brie very nervous when I am shaving her and stomping my legs to get the flies off. As if I wasn't bad at this enough!


Terry come out and sprayed down, with the bug spray not the oil... and I was really off to the races. No going back now.


At this point you might be wondering, why didn't she just take them to the groomers? One answer... $300! I can deal with some patch work looking dogs that don't stink to high heavens and shed all over my floors in an effort to save that kind of cash!

A few minutes into this however, my artistic side started to come out. Famous quotes from movies started to fill my head from "Surfs Up" (remember, I have watch primarily childrens' movies for the last four years!). The dog is in there, I just have to let it out. Smooth strokes... find the dog!"



I was feeling pretty good about the job I was doing. I was onto dog number two and they didn't look nearly as patchy as my attempt on them a few years back, and this time, there was no blood. (Unfortunately I did nick one bad enough last time to bleed.) But this time.. success. Humm.. is this possibly my new calling. Well, they didn't look that good.. but if I was perhaps in dog salon rather than a back porch contorting myself around the stool and table legs, maybe I could do better. Or maybe I could be the one who just gets the bulk off, and gives the mutts to someone else to do the finishing work. Just then as I was doing the finishing touches on Chianti, I squatted down and sat on the can of cooling oil, which allowed it to dispense itself all over my butt. If that's not a sign, I don't know what is... not my calling.