I dread it.  Gavin and Patty are long over due for baths.  Why?  Because every time it’s a struggle to bathe them.  Well, the bath itself isn’t the struggle.  It’s getting them to the tub.

     Take Gavin, he will do anything for a cookie except follow you upstairs.  He hates baths.  He knows all the signs that there’s a bath in his future.  He knows that if you are on the stairs offering him a cookie this is not a good sign.  If you’ve taken the dog towels from the basement laundry to the bathroom, he knows someone is getting a bath.  He hopes it is Patty. 

     It isn’t, he goes first.  I put a leash on him, fill my pocket with cookies, and spend 15 minutes coaxing him upstairs and into the tub.  Once he’s in the tub, things go fast.  He’ll sit in the middle of the tub with his ears flattened to his head but he doesn’t fight it.  Once the bath is over with, he loves the drying part.  Then he dashes downstairs to pounce on DH and show him how clean he is.  I think he also tells Patty that she’s next.  Neener neener neener.

     Ah, Patty.  Patty weighs 65 lbs, as does Gavin.  She hates, hates, hates getting wet.  She makes bathing Gavin easy.  When she gets wind of a bath in her future, she hides in the back of her crate.  There aren’t enough cookies in the world to convince her that a bath is a good thing. 

     Have you ever tried to pry a 65 lb, stiff legged, dead weight dog out of a crate?  It isn’t easy.  Nor is it easy to drag that stiff legged, dead weight dog up a steep flight of steps, into the bathroom, and lift her into the tub.  Whereupon she goes into her ‘you hate me, poor pitiful me’ act as soon as the first drop of water hits her.

     Meanwhile Gavin giggles downstairs because he’s already had his bath and has a tummy full of cookies.