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Spa fixes dog's smell, but house needs help
(by Timmy Sullivan - August 17, 2011)
SENIORITIS, BY TIMY SULLIVAN
Spa fixes dog's smell, but house needs help
You've got to come over and smell my dog. Really. It's a miracle, but you won't get the significance unless I take you back a week or so, when things were very, very different.
It all started one morning about 4, when Pang stopped by the bedroom to wake Rosie up for breakfast. As you may recall, Rosie is our beautiful but intellectually challenged Border collie mix, and Pang is the little orange tabby who strolled out of the woods one day to assume complete mastery over two humans, two horses, two other cats and, most of all, the dog.
But back to the story. As I said, it all started with the usual morning routine. I have no idea why 4 is the magic hour, but it has been for some time, and I actually kind of like it.
Pang, apparently alerted by a twinge in his tummy, wakes Rosie and then calmly does his morning cat stretches while his dog frantically takes on the job of nudging me into action. Once I'm standing, Rosie bows to Pang in submission, and the two lead me to the front of the house, where I open the door to the kitchen so Pang can go straight to his food dish, open the front door to let Rosie out, go to the kitchen and fill both food dishes, go back to the front door, let Rosie back in and head back to bed -- all within about two minutes and all pretty much without waking up. Most days, the next thing I know, it's 7 o'clock and time to get up for real.
On this day, however, I probably shouldn't have gone back to bed. Why? Because when Rosie stepped out the front door, she was immediately greeted by one very angry skunk who got her right in the face and managed to spray the entire front of the house at the same time.
Rosie was miserable -- wide eyed and foaming at the mouth. Pang took one whiff, put his tail in the air and headed somewhere upstairs while I sleepily considered my options. I could mix up a potion and give Rosie a bath or I could clean her face, wash out her mouth and go back to bed. At the time, option two seemed to make more sense. After all, I reasoned, those baths never work anyway, so I might as well get some shut-eye.
What I didn't take into consideration was the fact that Rosie would also be going back to bed -- several beds actually -- the couch on the porch, the couch in the living room, the rug in the dining room, well, pretty much every soft surface in the entire house. Nor did I compute that, while I caught those three precious hours of sleep, the skunk smell would settle into Rosie's ample coat, where all the homemade potions in the world would fail to remove it.
For the next week, the sheets smelled, the car smelled, the garden smelled, and, of course Rosie smelled. Pang remained in hiding, making quick forays into the kitchen to eat but never acknowledging Rosie or me. The real wake-up came when I went to a movie with friends and, in the middle of a particularly poignant scene, caught a whiff of myself. It was time to call in the experts.
Oh, everybody had a potion to recommend -- my favorite being massive doses of medicated douche -- but I chose instead to give Rosie a day at the spa. The Barkley Pet Hotel and Day Spa's special cleansing bath coupled with a chic shorter haircut actually did the trick. Even Pang has accepted her again.
So, please, smell my dog. But, whatever you do, don't smell my house. I still haven't figured out how to handle that problem. As for the skunk, boxes of mothballs seem to have driven the varmint away, but now my garden smells of old skunk and mothballs. I won't be cutting flowers for the table anytime soon.
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