Bath Time!

The day we got back from our vacation (last Sunday) we were obviously very happy to see Maki. While we were petting him, hugging him and kissing him we came to the realization that he smelled utterly horrible. Before he had a characteristic Maki "musky" odor. Maki did not have the characteristic dog odor, his ears actually smell like ferrets! However, the odor at this time was completely different, this was wet doggy smell times ten. Part of the reason he smelled like this (other than not having had a bath in about a month and a half) was that he had been around other dogs constantly for a while now and he had just come back from a hike with Elizabeth's co-worker (this hike has a couple stories that will be explained in a separate post). Despite the combination of reasons, it was time for a bath.

Let's begin by saying that Maki is not a water dog... he is afraid of the rain and does not like getting wet. I suspected this was going to be a very traumatizing experience for him. To my surprise it wasn't! Don't get me wrong, he did not enjoy it... but he did not hate us for it, which is the most we could expect under the circumstances.

The process was as follows: we filled the tub with some water (in retrospect it should have been a little warmer), changed into our swimsuits, got into the bathroom and closed the door! Once he was in the tub he tried to scape a couple of times, this was followed by shivering after being shampooed and rinsed. Before the second rinse we tried bribing him with some treats, he refused to take them! We finished the process as quickly as possible and proceeded to dry him. This took a little while and we decided to turn on the heater in the bathroom... just to avoid getting him sick. After he was somewhat dry we proceeded to let him out of the bathroom. Once out of the bathroom he was as happy as one could be! The experience went much better than it had played out in my mind... We even had some time during the shower to take some pictures!

- Daniel