It all started when the kitchen floor was being replaced (because Dobby had been chewing on the linoleum), so someone was home all day to supervise the contractors, and thus Dobby got to spend a lot of time outside. Dobby discovered that the freshly turned garden beds were great for digging. So one day he had a good dig (while no one was looking) and upon being brought back into the house, was taken upstairs to have his usually-white paws washed of their grimy coating.
Up to the tub, where it took quite a lot of coaxing to get him to jump in, and he got his paws and his legs washed, while I also tried to stop him from drinking from the faucet. I managed to get him cleaned up with minimal wetness to the rest of him, and that was that.
Of course, it wasn’t.
The next day I was downstairs reading on the couch, when I suddenly looked up and realized Dobby wasn’t parked in any of his usual relaxation spots. I looked in the basement – was he down there eating socks? No. I looked in his crate – no luck. I called him, and when I got no response, went to look upstairs. Sure enough, I found this. He either discovered the tub as a cool place to lay down, or was waiting for his next bath. Who knows, but we shooed him out and he seemed fine with that.
Next day, instead of the usual morning shower routine, where we take showers and he positions himself as a convenient bath mat, he instead spent the whole time sticking his head between the shower curtain and liner, trying to drink out of the tub. Weird, but no big deal.
Right.
A week after this, I’m in the shower, doing the new things of trying to keep him from jumping in the tub while he tries to drink the water, and at one point I turn around and close my eyes to rinse my hair. I open my eyes, turn back around, and there is 65+ pounds of dog in the shower with me. This hulking beast, who shakes the house when he’s running and playing, hopped into the shower so quietly I never heard him. So, okay, you want in the tub? Fine, then you get a bath.
I reached for the shampoo I thought would be more dog-friendly and lathered him up. Oh, suddenly it’s no longer fun! There ensued a ten-minute struggle to keep him in the tub, or at least in the bathroom, til I could get the suds out of his fur and dry enough to get downstairs and outside without dripping too much.
Needless to say, we’ll be foregoing tub baths and instead opting for the hose outside.
The moral of the story is, Just because you’re not at the Bates Motel, doesn’t mean something weird isn’t going to get in the shower with you.