The Hair Of The Dog

photo courtesy of Spencer Greet

Well, now that the election is over and the excessive amounts of celebratory chocolate have been consumed and the spilled prosecco has been mopped up, it is time for me to go back to my daily routine, and to the mission that propels me during every waking moment of my life.

Vacuuming dog hair.

Our dog, Joey, the subject of a hagiographic earlier post, is the hairiest entity on the planet. He is an Irish Water Spaniel, and as such, has hair, not fur. It is beautiful hair, curly and soft and dark reddish brown, and when groomed he looks quite elegant.

He has not been groomed for a very, very long time.

Grooming him is expensive, and we are watching our pennies, as is appropriate in these fiscally apocalyptic times. One would think that, since we are saving money by not having him groomed, we would be bathing him and brushing him ourselves, and feeling virtuous and responsible by performing proper dog maintenance.

One would be wrong if one thought that.

Joey currently resembles a shag rug with legs and a tail. Brushing his coat is pretty much unthinkable. It has become fetchingly dreadlocked, and we now refer to him as Rasta Dog. If we actually did attempt to brush his coat, one of two things would happen:

- The hairbrush would be completely absorbed into the coat, never to be seen again.

- The hairbrush would become immediately immobilized and inextricably attached to the coat, so that Joey would amble around the house festooned with grooming implements.

There is another problem with the brushing issue. Joey would stand still for about three and a half seconds before escaping from such an alien and peculiar ritual, leaving us to the indignity of chasing him around with a hairbrush.

So, we have established that Joey never gets brushed. He does not shed, but he does lose hair in the way that a human does. Well, a human completely covered with fine curly hair. His hair falls off, and accumulates in tumbleweeds that are now approximately the size of sofa cushions. They are everywhere.

One particular dog-hair dropping was so large, I began to think that it had evolved into a life form by spontaneous generation. But when I prodded it with my foot, it did not get up and run away.

To add to the problem of droppage, Joey scratches himself more than one would think dogly possible. Each episode of scratching dislodges another three or four sofa cushions.

I am now reduced to running around the house non-stop with a hand vac. The big vacuum cleaner somehow manages to blow the hair as much as it vacuums. I have attempted to vacuum Joey, but while this seems like an idea that would work, it actually doesn't.

The endless, Sisyphean struggle to keep our house dog-hair-free consumes me, and reminds me why Sartre wrote No Exit. It certainly violates my tenets of moderate living.

So, today, finally, we have given in and decided to get Joey groomed.

Our friend Anne, who is a shepherdess with her own small flock, recently came over and observed that Joey was looking very sheeplike. She said that she knew someone who could spin Joey's hair into yarn.

To that end, Norm took a grocery bag with him when he took Joey to the groomers. Christmas is coming, you know.

Dog-hair sweater, anyone?