Ok, I’m cheating.  His first bath was last Wednesday, but I was lazy about downloading the pictures.

Wickett had been bathed before by his first mom, but never by me.  And me, well, I’ve never bathed a dog so I was flying blind.  This, of course, means that things were not going to go smoothly and that amusing mishaps were bound to occur.  I was not wrong.

Firstly, I needed to cut the hair on his ears.  Apparently the hair weighs down the ears so if it isn’t cut, their little ears won’t stand up.  I read up on it, bought baby scissors, and embarked on the journey of being a hair stylist.  My one and only attempt at hair cutting was when I was about 6 years old.  I decided to give my poor little brother a hair cut.  My mother was mortified when she came home and immediately drove him to the hairdresser where they practically had to shave his head to fix the disaster that I created.  Oops.  No future in hair for me!  So, armed with my previous experience, I tried my best not to butcher Wickett’s ears.  Holding him still was really difficult, so I basically followed his head around with baby scissors and tried my best to cut ear hair when I could.  Of course I carefully avoided his actual ears.  Damn, it was hard.  I did an OK job, which is better than a bad job.  Maybe?

On to the bath.

I decided to bathe Wickett in the kitchen sink, as it was deeper than the bathroom sink.  He was still able to reach high enough to attempt to crawl out though, and didn’t stop trying to get out throughout the entire bath experiment.  Extra challenge.  Two hands trying to simultaneously keep the dog in the sink, massaging shampoo into the dog’s coat, trying not to get any in his eyes or ears, making sure no spots are missed, and then of course making sure he was fully rinsed so his skin wouldn’t get irritated.  Well, we did it!  We survived without any major catastrophes.  I ended up soaked.  The floor was covered in water, and poor Wickett was giving me the most pitiful look!  He was shivering even though I had turned up the air, so I quickly wrapped him in a towel and did my best to dry him.  

On to the blow drying.  Yes, yorkies need to be blow dried so they don’t get sick from running around with wet hair.  I don’t even blow dry my hair (well, on rare occasions I do and also when it’s cold but that’s it).  I decided it would be best to put Wickett on the kitchen table, where he couldn’t really run away.  Well, even on the low/warm setting, Wickett did NOT like the blow dryer.  He kept curling up against me to get away from it.  I ended up having to hold him against me with one hand while blow drying the exposed side with the blow dryer held very far away.  Then switching sides, etc until he was sort of dry.  In the meantime, just like when people blow dry their hair, I had to brush his hair to make sure all of it got dry.  Of course, Wickett was interested in playing with his brush.  And of course, since he was leaning against my wet shirt, he got moist.

In the end, I’d say Wickett ended up 90% dry, smelling wonderful, and with very soft hair.  I’d say that’s pretty good for my first time.

He’ll be getting his second bath today, as I can feel his hair getting dirty.  His hair really is like human hair, so weird!  His hair feels like mine would if I went 3 or 4 days without washing it.  I hate that, so I’ll treat him the way I’d like to be treated and bathe him weekly.

One more thing that I found highly amusing.  They make doggie blow dryers!!  How did I find this out?  I was telling Richard’s cousin (a dog enthusiast and owner of a maltese) about the blow dryer issue, when she told me that she had a special doggie blow dryer.  She then gave me a long explanation as to why it works, so I decided we needed one.  When we went to PetSmart for supplies, we looked in the grooming section and there it was!  A dog blow dryer!  It’s got a stand so you don’t have to hold it up, which is awesome because that means I can use both hands to control Wickett.  It’s also super quiet so as not to scare the dog, which is great because he is scare of the noise.  It’s also got some ion drying system “thing” that I can’t explain, but it’s supposed to dry hair faster.  

So today I will embark on my second bath experiment.  Since Wickett seems obsessed with our shower, I’m going to try bathing him in the shower, since he really can’t escape from me and I’ll be able to use both hands.  And then I’ll be using the new doggie blow dryer and see if it was worth the $30.  I’m totally having fun.

Below is a very cute picture of Wickett’s “sad” pos-bath face: