So my monthly Iphone alert went off today, which invariably meant it was time for the monthly Heartguard and Frontline applications for the girls. So, I guess I get a +1 for being timely in my care of my animals. From there it went downhill.
I noticed that the girls had been scratching a lot, and since I only try to bathe them every few months, I made a command decision it was time for a flea bath as well as the rest of the monthly treatment. This is where I fucked up. I completely gelled and forgot that when the dogs get baths, Rosie has to go first, otherwise, when she sees a wet Lily, there is no chance in hell I will pry from under the bed or behind the chair or wherever she goes to hide when it is bathtime. So I bathed Lily, dried her off, gave her a treat, got her collar back on, and went for Rosie. As usual, she was having none of it. I pulled out all the stops. I gave the “Who wants to go for a walk?” the old college try, followed by “Who wants a treat?” and then the final last stand of “Girls, naptime!”
Nothing. Rosie was not being fooled. I tried the “Who wants to go for a walk” gambit three times, and Rosie never played along. Lily was quite happy with her three solo walks, though. Finally, I put Lily in the bedroom and closed the door, and put a huge hunk of cheese on a plate on the floor next to my lazyboy, and eventually, Rosie took the bait. I snatched her up and she got a flea bath.
Now things got difficult. The only thing that pisses off a Jack Russell Terrorist more than not being in charge is being tricked, so now Rosie was pissed. I dried her off, and before I could give her the flea treatment, she bolted and hid underneath beds and behind chairs. I tried to get her out, but decided that safety was more important than winning. Another two “who wants to go for a walk” attempts later, I caught Rosie in the kitchen eating kibble, and was able to get her collar on and give her the Frontline treatment. And then she was gone for another couple hours. I did the “treats” thing a couple times, and Rosie would not appear (but again, Lily must have thought it was Christmas, what with all the treats and walks). Finally, about ten minutes ago, Rosie came out and jumped on my lap (where she normally is), and I was able to administer the Heartguard. And btw- they usually LOVE THE HEARTGUARD. It must taste great, because normally I just show it to them and they inhale it.
And such is the saga of owning a Jack Russell Terrier. I love the fact that both of my dogs are so different. When Lily looks at me, it is all “LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE THANK YOU LOVE LOVE LET ME LICK YOU LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU ARE THE GREATEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME.” She is not very smart at all, but she loves me and is just insanely good at being a lap dog. She sleeps in my armpit, wakes up at night to lick me, and some days I wake up and she is sleeping with her head on the pillow next to me. Rosie, on the other hand, when I look at her, I know she understands me and just doesn’t agree with me, and damnit, I need to play by her rules. If I move suddenly at night (translation: accidentally kick her) she bites me, and every time I get up to go to the bathroom she thinks it is time for a walk, so when I go back to bed I have to wait for her to jump back in bed, settle herself, and then I can go to sleep. I guess Lily pumps up my ego and Rosie keeps me grounded.
But just once I would love it if bath-time and the application of the meds they need to stay alive would not turn into an all day fucking ordeal. But, at the same time, I wouldn’t have it any other way. My only regret is that I waited so long to have my own dogs.
sb
Fun read. I think most dog owners have a few stories ending with “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” God, I love our little 5-pound rescue. :)
Sleep well, Cole. Seems like you need a few winks.
Corner Stone
This is just fucking sick. What the fuck is wrong with you?
BGinCHI
This post, as written by Shakespeare in the same period as Richard II.
King Cole: Prithee can we have cleansing baths and medicinals? Report to the bathing chamber!
[The King, great of stature and of voice, though not authority, points stage left]
Dog #1: To the bath I fly and to ingest the healing tablet is my deepest desire. Away!
Dog #2: The fat man will never rule me! Though thou play the toady and take coercion as anodyne, I will not so easily become the fool. Away? Away with thee!
King Cole: Oh Russell, vexation is thy game, but I am all alacrity, all stealth, and through my slothful Boy of Lazy strategems will lure you to inclination.
Dog #1: Still here. Can I go twice?
Dog #2: Your authority reeks to me as sharp as the surface of your flip flops, new that they are.
(To Be continued, forever)
LanceThruster
My cat Keba has a 6th sense for knowing baths are coming. I tried eliminating all potential cues but with no success. If I merely thought I’d give her a bath the next day, she’d be well hid in the AM. The only thing that seems to scramble her tapes is to decide on the spot to scoop her up, drag her into the bathroom (while making the door jamb out of her reach cuz she’ll lock onto it like an eagle with prey), and shut the door while the tub fills. She’ll hide behind the toilet and fight from being dragged out. I haven’t yet bathed her at the new place so she’s got eternal bed hair.
The lagacy cat, Lizzy (the one Bernie the Attorney left me when he sold me the house because she wouldn’t clear quarantine for New Zealand) has been bathed twice in the last two weeks because of the heat and is quite stoic. Plus as a long hair, she’s much more comfortable after the fact and seems to appreciate the effort.
When Keba has fleas, she seems to forgive me sooner as if she somehow makes the connection to the bath and the flea exodus.
Only had a chance to give Sylvester one bath at the old house and he never entered the “house of horror” on his own again. He never tied that torture chamber to the new place and became an indoor cat here for the rest of his days without a bath to “ruin” it.
Ash Can
And Tunch was sitting where he could get a good view of the proceedings and was cheering Rosie on, no doubt.
RoonieRoo
I had an awesome mental movie while reading this post.
dance around in your bones
All I would have to do to reduce my German Shep mix to a quivering blob of jelly was to say “Wanna take a bath?”
Ha!
But, really, if you put the flea drops on their neck, why the need for a bath? Dogs hate to have you wash off all their good stinky stuff.
shano
I would not be dosing those two medications together. Some dogs have terrible reactions to Frontline . It makes my nieces dog sick for a day or two. The heartworm meds are also something that has to circulate throughout the whole bloodstream to kill parasites in the laval stage.
Maybe that is why they resist so much. Just give the Heartworm pill at another time, in two weeks.
You know the laundry detergent 20 Mule Team Borax will kill fleas in your house. Just sprinkle it on the rugs and vacume it up. It is Boron, a mineral with about the same toxicity of table salt. Willl rid your house of fleas, which is probably how your dogs get reinfested after these baths….
Sorry, animals are my forte.
hitchhiker
My sweet old Golden (Rocky!! aaahhhh!) is gone . . . but this reminded me of trying to give him a bath. He was a doofus. You could get him to do a running jump off a dock if you did it first, but boy did he hate to get washed.
We have a roll-in shower for my disabled husband, so it wasn’t necessary to get the dog’s 90 lb bulk over the edge of a tub. My kids and I would lure him upstairs, but of course he knew what was coming and would plant himself, trembling, up against the bathroom door. We’d put his scary choke collar on and drag him under the shower.
A bathing-suited daughter would sit there hugging him, all miserable and head-bowed and dejected, while I washed him and the room filled up with wet dog smell. Poor guy. He’d look sadly at the door while we toweled him off, like a shorn sheep on a cold day.
Almost 2 years since we said goodbye . . . I’m ALMOST ready for another dog.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ (formerly IrishGirl)
Congratulations you made me laugh until I snorted. Haven’t you figured it out yet? Rosie is your wife and Lily is your Mistress. LMFAO.
This is not criticism or condescencin, but it is a little Freudian….I have had many pets who have fulfilled some important roles in my life as well, so I jest from the point of experience.
suzanne
I used to have a Cocker Spaniel with every dermatological ailment known to man. Required many baths. Fortunately, she had Lily’s attitude. My dog now, Luna, seems to share Rosie’s. Fortunately, though, being a Pit, baths are a rarity.
Love these silly creatures.
Ed in NJ
My 15 yo Shepherd Chow mix is no longer able to get bathed or groomed, since his arthritis is so debilitating. I can’t say I miss giving him the bath, which he hated, and I find that regular brushing keeps him relatively clean (or at least not smelly)
Jess
My Ridgeback mix is such a weenie. He’ll do the passive resistance routine until I actually get him into the bathroom and shut the door, but then he’ll play the martyr and get into the bathtub on his own like it’s full of boiling oil, looking piteously at me to make sure I’m acknowledging what a Good Dog he is. He really is an incredibly good dog, actually, and beautiful as well. He was a rescue from a kill shelter in Arkansas, and I just love him to death. Cole’s experience with Lily was the tipping point when I finally decided to take the plunge and get a dog. So glad I did!
BTW, Murphy’s Oil Soap makes an excellent dog shampoo. It’s the right ph, vegetable based, kills fleas, leaves the fur nice and shiny, and doesn’t stink like perfume (I think that’s what dogs hate the most!). Lots of breeders use it. I wash my dog once a month b/c I’m slightly allergic to the oils in his fur.
sb
@Corner Stone: Um… problem?
MoeLarryAndJesus
Jeezass, sometimes posts here make me want to add a dog to our stable of three cats.
This is not one of those times.
WaterGirl
Cole, 2 things about frontline:
My vet doesn’t even carry frontline anymore. Not sure if you have the same problem in west virginia, but here in central IL frontline doesn’t work well anymore. I had a flea problem for a year – using frontline religiously – switched to Trifexis (pill once a month0 for the dog and Vectra for the kitties and all the flea problems disappeared.
Second thing: my vet said to never give the dog a bath and then use Frontline – somehow frontline needs the oils on the skin in order to be properly absorbed. So they said if you put fronline on just after a bath it’s as though you never put it on at all, and you needed to use another dose. I believe they said to wait a few days after a bath (not just one).
Jebediah
This doesn’t happen to me very often, but boy howdy do I love it when it does. (typing one-handed because Juno is curled up on my left arm)
Linkmeister
@BGinCHI: Nicely done, nicely done.
Pink Snapdragon
John Cole, have you ever bothered to read the instruction sheet that came in that box of Frontline??? It says, repeatedly, do not put Frontline on your dog within 48 hours of giving your dog a bath. You just wasted the damn Frontline. Not to mention that flea and tick shampoo is some mighty nasty stuff. If your dog had fleas you would have been able to see them on the dog, especially around the head and neck and on the belly. And if you didn’t actually look for fleas on the dog, surely you would have noticed if their were fleas in the bath water. If there were no fleas in Lily’s bath water, it was highly unlikely that Rosie had fleas either. She’s right. You are trying to kill her!
You really ought to do some reading about flea preventatives and the appropriate frequency of use. This has got to be another guy thing. Only wimps, wusses and women bother to read the instructions.
1badbaba3
*Sigh* … Men…
JCJ
When I first visited my (future) wife’s family they had a dog that was just disgusting. Its fur was patchy and it had the constant smell of wet dog. No one else would pay him any attention but he saw the new person and would come to me. If you scratched him(which he loved)you would get all sorts of nasty smelling dog smell under your nails. I’m a cat person and only so-so about dogs, but this dog came up to me looking for scratching whenever I was around. My wife’s family kept giving the poor thing baths trying to get his skin to improve thinking he needed to be kept clean. It turned out he was allergic to whatever dog shampoo they were using. Once they quit using that the dog was good as new.
dance around in your bones
@Pink Snapdragon:
So so true. My guy would ‘fix’ things like the lawnmower and always have parts left over….he’d say “Ah, it didn’t need it anyway!”
Oddly enough, he was usually right. No idea why.
Twiggy
Try using Comfortis (spinosad) instead of Frontline. We found that Frontline has become ineffective here in Australia but when we changed to Comfortis the flea problem disappeared.
raven
@Twiggy: We use it on Lil Bit but Bohdi can’t tolerate it. We gave it to him twice and each time he basically slept for 2 days.
Percysowner
We are currently fighting a flea infection due to Frontline resistant fleas (not in our area yet, thank goodness, my daughter took our dog to visit a friend who doesn’t believe in chemical flea control and our dog brought home some really aggressive fleas). We just sprayed the house today. To avoid the bath issue and get rid of the adult fleas on your dog, go to Amazon and type in Capstar. You will get a page with Capstar (expensive) and generic Capstar (not a bad price). Get the right dosage for you pets. Then wrap the Capstar in a little cheese and make it a real treat (my dogs wolf it down, my cats fight until they realize the generic Capstar tastes like chicken). Within an hour flea infested pets are scratching like mad because the fleas are all dying off and are biting as their last stand. The Capstar lasts 24 hours and clears your pet completely of fleas. It can be given every day if you pets are really infested. It is a godsend for ridding them of fleas. It can be used as soon as they show signs of fleas and best of all, no baths. Just a suggestion.
jp7505a
Obviously you don’t understand the situation. Rosie is not your dog. YOU are her human and only on her sufferance!!!!!
Wayne
We had a tick/flea problem and I hate chemicals. I found Diatomaceous Earth. It is amazing. It’s not a chemical, it’s a fine powder of fossilized remains of microscopic shells created by one celled plants. Put on the dogs/cats, sprinkle into carpet, sprinkle out in yard.
You have to use the food grade NOT the swimming pool stuff. I got mine from Dirtworks.net, they have all the info on it. Wolfcreekranch also has info.
Paul in KY
@Wayne: You need to be careful with that stuff. If you inhale it, it can cut up your lungs.
Used to use it when I had a big aquarium. All sorts of warnings on the packages.
Wayne
@Paul in KY:
I doubt that is the same stuff, i.e. food grade. Also, you’d have to inhale a lot of it to hurt you. It’s not like you create a dust cloud when using it. I had not probs with it. YMMV.
LAC
I am glad I read this on a gloomy monday, you made me smile. That was adorable. I had a similiar “fun” time with our cat and the vet visit. I was running around doing the “Treaties, Deuce! Mommy loves you!” and my husband was dressed like a strangler with gloves in order to get him in the carrier. He hissed and growled, but ultimately gave up once trapped in the closet. Of course, once there (after a short car ride of wailing), he was putty in the hands of the staff, particularly the nurse who he curled up against. Back home, he was his usual weird, wonderful self (socializing with us and bringing a cricket up from the basement for me, yeck!!) They make a place in your heart and become family, don’t they?
Mo MacArbie
Food grade or not, what gets you with DE is the fine particulate nature of the stuff. Especially over a long time of unprotected use.
If you’ll excuse me, I have to go add some more to the beer filter.
JR in WV
We lost Boomer last Friday, he was a big old WV brown dog, 88 pounds, shorthair, white face, sweet as he could be to family and neighbors who all loved him.
Mean as a snake to the occasional sneak thief driving up to see what was available to steal on a sunny afternoon. We watched him run one thief back into his truck as soon as he showed up at the shop across the holler.
He had kidney failure, got weaker and weaker, I had to carry him on his last trip to the vet, where the staff was totally compassionate.
We’re down to one dog now, Happy, a rescue from our vet where she spent months in their kennel being treated for active heartworm infection, among other problems. She needed lots of TLC and training once we brought her home, where she could finally run to her heart’s content, which is round and round til she is too tired to even walk.
In the past 9 months we’ve lost two old cats, 19 and 17, to kidney failure, one dog to gone up on the ridge and dropped dead in the woods, and now Boomer. It’s been a bad year for us, after many happy years with a big crowd of friendly critters, we still have 3 young cats, who are still happy to ignore us until lunchtime, but Happy is lonely, so in a few weeks, once the shock of losing Boomer is over, we’ll look around for a rescue.
All our animals have been rescues of one sort or another. Boomer was dropped off in a litter of puppies, probably because he was gun shy. Any thunder sent him into the back of the walk-in closet, where it is more quiet and dark.
Clyde, who died alone up on the ridge in the woods, was a tiny puppy inside a huge ball of long black fur, who came walking down that same ridge nearly 14 years ago, as snow flurries fell around him. I could tell his momma had taken her litter up into the woods and gotten them good and lost, this as a coping tool for weaning a litter.
He had never missed a meal yet, and was full of self-confidence when I went out with a little bowl of dog food. He was my dog from day one after I fed him his first solid DF. I’ll miss him forever, just as I do all the other furry folk we’ve hosted for years.
John, do read the package inserts about these chemicals. I was at the vets once for routine booster shots once and saw a young woman run in with a small kitten she had put some kind of flea dose on – the kitten was having convulsions and was semi-conscious. The vet staffer grabbed the kitten and ran back into the treatment area, saying over her shoulder that they would do the best they could, but it was a dangerous situation.
Be sure you have the right dose and the right stuff for your area and your pet! Don’t put it on too soon after the previous dose, and don’t mix things that may not be compatible with one another. Be sure to follow directions from the package and from your Vet, who will know how much your critters weigh, their lifestyle, and where they live, all of which may affect what the Vet recommends.
WE love our furballs, and life would be much the less for lack of their love and companionship. If I could just get Roscoe Adkins Kitty to quit tearing up the furniture, life would be all good.
MikeInSewickely
I don’t get to write often but this is the only place I do so.
Because, to me, it is the most grounded in reality.
Yes, I scan about a dozen sites daily but you can only take so much reading of the continued grinding of our values by the ignorant, rich, and oh so religious.
Thanks, John. This makes my day better (even after my first carpal tunnel surgery today).
I must adore this site to write this with 1 hand.