Ah, spring. When a young dog’s fancy turns to the awakening smells of the world around her (or him).
I’ve already had to declare war on mud. People warned me when I moved to the Pacific Northwest that it would be rainy and it would be muddy. The rain, I can handle. I’ve got a knee-length waterproof coat with a deep hood and plenty of pockets for poo bags. But Moose, Lally, and I track in lots of mud.
These days, the war on mud is mostly under control. I’m now the proud owner of TWO vacuums — one small, cheap, light one for quick cleanups and one heavy-duty hand-me-down that used to belong to the cats-only boarding facility where I work. Between the two, I can win the war on mud.
Over the last week or so, the dogs started up a new war. The war of the smells.
Lally has always (as long as I’ve known her, which is nearly five years now) been a roller. If she finds something especially stinky, she’ll rub her face and neck in it.
It’s gross. Really gross.
Most of the time, I can catch her before she starts smearing. Sometimes I can’t, and that’s when I have to haul her into the tub to clean off. But with spring in full swing, there are lots of new and interesting smells out there. I have to be extra vigilant.
Last night when I got into bed, I smelled something… weird. It was kind of a sharp smell that hit me high in the nose. It was vaguely like skunk and vaguely like grass and a lot like something I couldn’t identify. So, at eleven-thirty last night, I had to strip the bed and throw the sheets into the wash. Bleh!
But I couldn’t figure out which dog had tracked whatever it was onto the bed. A quick sniff didn’t find the weird smell on Moose (who’d been in bed before I stripped it, making him the likely culprit) or Lally. Weird. And I didn’t smell it anywhere else in the apartment.
I just hope my mystery smell doesn’t come back.