The Human, also known as lady-in-waiting to the Queen of the Universe, is whipped. What a day!
Did you notice that the Queen hit the big time? Yes. Hufflepup, newest entry in the Cuteness Derby, was amused by her Majesty’s habit of ordering the lady-in-waiting around. So, if Her Majesty needed a moment of fame, now she has one.
The Queen approves Hufflepup’s attempts to train his own Human, who apparently is even more refactory than the lady-in-waiting. Gawdawful amount of work, these humans, aren’t they?
This afternoon her Queenship deigned to bathe, the weather having reached an acceptable 80 degrees. The Royal Bath is always quite a production, involving the human trying to soap and rinse the Queen and the Queen taking off like a rocket. The Queen has an allergy to water.
Luckily, I learned a few handy clues from this video illustrating the grooming of another member of the corgi aristocracy.
First, I nabbed the idea of giving her a preliminary spray of diluted hair conditioner (don’t be fooled: conditioner is conditioner is conditioner, doesn’t matter whether it’s dog or human). As suggested, let it sit on her coat for 20 minutes before pouncing her for The Bath.
Then, I really like the idea of scrubbing her, without wetting her down, using a wet sponge with a dab of shampoo. This worked very well, with a lot less doggy trauma than soaking her in the hose and scrubbing her with large squirts of soap.
This was an easy way to clean fur in general and desperately filthy spots in specific, and it worked without disturbing her noticeably.
That meant the only real moment of terror for Her Majesty came when I had to rinse her off in the hose. First I poured a half-gallon of vinegar water over her soaped fur, which helped, in our hard water, to speed the horrible rinsing process. The result: it didn’t take long to rinse out the shampoo.
The Queen’s fur looks very lovely: fluffy and bright white (as appropriate) and rich brown and frightfully clean. And damp…she takes forever to dry. Blow-drying her this afternoon took some of the water out, but as usual it’s required a full day for her to come back to about normal.
Spent two hours at physical therapy this morning. While the boss was away, the mice decided to play: an excellent new employee decided to focus on whatever the hell ails me. She showed me a bunch of new exercises and worked on the endlessly painful hips, which seemed to help a lot.
Wrestling with the Queen didn’t help to preserve that improvement, alas. And there there was the fact that I haven’t cleaned in three weeks and so was reduced to vacuuming, dust-mopping, and steam-mopping 1860 square feet of tile this afternoon. This, after a bookkeeping frolic and a file-updating frenzy.
Since I worked until 2 this morning, I started out tired. And now am very, very tired.
And so, to bed…
The Queen looks very regal with her bright whites!
Kitty PoP conveniently came with a self-cleaning button, which we’ve had him set on for most of his life. 1 bath to remove the fleas he brought home with him from the rescue shelter was more than traumatizing enough for the both of us.
Poor Kitty! I had a cat that brought fleas into the house once. In those days, department stores and dime stores had pet departments. My mother bought this cat at a Broadway in San Francisco. We had a heck of a time getting rid of the fleas. And the cat was utterly neurotic…no doubt its brain was spavined by the flea fiasco.