I gave Kobe a bath last night. This is in no way remarkable, except for the fact at (A) I chose to do so on the night when The Landlord was courting a lady friend with a home-cooked meal, and (B) Kobe chose that time to go bald.
Because of the public nature of this website, I generally decline to discuss other people’s personal matters, so I won’t elaborate further on The Landlord’s date. Suffice to say that his idea of romance probably did not include me in the next room attempting to brush my crying dog’s teeth while Matty played “Let’s Get It On” in hopes of speeding along the evening. Unfortunately, Kobe’s breath smelled like he’d gargled garbage, and a toothbrushing is always followed by a bath. You’d make that a rule too if you brushed someone’s teeth who insisted on squirming and smearing beef-flavored toothpaste all over his face.
The bath itself went off without any difficulty, with the exception of The Landlord coming in to get toilet paper for his date while Kobe and I were in the shower. Date Girl, if you’re reading this, please feel flattered. He must like you, because he interrupted my shower at the risk of seeing me unclothed in order to make you more comfortable. If it were anyone else, he would have told them to use their hand and stop complaining.
Towards the end of the bath, however, I began noticing that Kobe was losing handfuls of fur. He goes through a period twice a year where he sheds profusely, periods that always occur the week after I thoroughly vacuum and clean the interior of my car. He is in one of those periods right now, which is wonderful because I paid Dr. Wash fifteen dollars last week to rid my car of fur. Now my passengers open the door and instantly wonder why I bypassed the leather and cloth seat options, and went straight for the fur. I DID IT BECAUSE I’M JUST COOL LIKE THAT.
I think the stress of the bath induced him into a hyper-shed, because he went from shedding a little to dropping enormous wads of far everywhere. The bathtub, my hands, my legs, and the floor were all covered with a thick reddish-brown fuzz, and no matter how much I brushed him after the bath, more fur just kept coming off. When I finally finished, I picked up my soft puppy, climbed into bed, and snuggled for a few hours. Then I heard a scratching at the door and realized that my hairless dog was actually outside my room, and that I’d been cuddling with his ball of discarded fur.
Okay, that didn’t actually happen. But you get my point.
With any luck, his shedding will be a little more under control now, if only because he only has so much fur to spare. If it should turn out that he is not done, however, I will invite Caitlin over to play the game she has enjoyed playing so many times before, a game that appears to be called I Will Now Pet Your Puppy In Such A Way That Produces Huge Balls Of Hair That I Will Spread All Over Your Bed And Carpeting. If this were an Olympic sport, Caitlin would be a gold medalist, and really, who am I to deprive her of wild success?