Splish Splash

Tara and I go to puppy school at Multidog every week, I think it very important that Tara should be a well behaved doggy when she grows up. I watch Dog Borstal ( a TV programme on the BBC about a sort of boot camp for extremely misbehaving dogs and their owners) regularly and that is so not going to happen to Tara and me. A world of no to that as some dogs are so bad that their owners are considering putting them down. So puppy school it is for Tara and me. A well trained dog is a happy dog!

The pic above is of most of the gang at school. We had our last lesson of the year last Wednesday. It was nice and sunny but the field was rather muddy and wet.
Aukje (left), Tara's sister, attends the same lessons as Tara so that's fun for both of them but not us. Hanny and I have to keep them separated the whole time otherwise they will distract each other and learn nothing. Kooiker puppies are a bit of a handful in case you hadn't noticed.
We train the puppies outside and at this time of year it's pretty cold out so we are glad of the break when we can get a hot cup of tea or coffee and slowly defrost. After the lessons we usually play a game of footie (not really).
The sophisticated redhead is moi, the cute pooch Tara and the blond is our dog trainer Arno.

Because both puppies had not been able to play with each other at all during the lessons, we asked if Tara and Aukje were allowed on play on an enclosed field afterwards, seeing it was the last lesson and all that. They said yes so then the fun started. Tara and her sister played for half an hour and when we finally broke them up it was hard to tell which was which as they were unbelievably filthy. It had been more of a doggy mud wrestling match then anything else. I'd never seen puppies that dirty. Guess what happened after we got home?
That's right, splish splash, Tara had a bath and it was her first one in a real bath. (To get in the mood, click on the vid bar on the right.) As she is not afraid of water she thought the whole experience was great fun.
Before
Her coat is pretty wet as you can see but that's not from the bath but from the grass she was playing on earlier with her sister.
After
One soaking wet doggy after I had bathed her. You're left with only half the amount of puppy you had before or so it seems.
Just look how dirty the water is after her first rinse. When she was clean again I rubbed her dry with a big fluffy towel and then used the blow drier on her until she was dry. There are no pics of that as I needed both hands for drying her.
Tara was not the only one that day that took a bath. Russian Blue kitty Willow thought she needed one too.
But just her tail. Cats are very clean, you know, much cleaner than dogs ever are. ;-)
And little Tara? Well, completely dry she looked like her sweet fluffy angelic self again, see?But she's no angel as we all know far too well.
More a fallen angel, don't you think?

copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen except for the pics made in puppy school, they're copyright Rob Schagen