The True Meaning of Punchy’s Bath

Punchy has a bow on his collar.

He got it because he went to the groomer and had a bath. Yes, this 11-year old sled dog who got washed only by the rain all his life smells like shampoo and conditioner.

While he was gone we washed his bed and shampooed the carpet underneath it and when it was over we realized that we’d become so immersed in the incredible rankness of our environment that we didn’t even notice it anymore.

Yes, he was rank. The woman at the groomer’s called him “ripe.” He had the mud and grit and flying spit of hundreds of dogs embedded in his double coat. Oh, we noticed it the minute we met him. While we were driving away from his kennel, we rolled the windows down. “Phew, he really stinks,” we both said. But the days passed and we thought, hey, it’s getting better. That feral miasma seemed to dissipate so we settled in for the winter.

But the miasma didn’t dissipate, we acclimated. This is what people do all the time to deal with awful stuff. They get used to it. They accommodate it. They talk about how it could be worse. They imagine that it’s better. But finally they take the dog for a damn bath and that’s when they find out that their situation had been hideous.

I leave this bit of dog yard wisdom for you to contemplate.