This is a story about a woman and her smelly dog. Actually, she’s not too smelly most of the time––the dog, I mean. Not the woman… um, actually the woman isn’t particularly smelly either, but this is about the dog.[*]

And it’s a good thing too, that the dog is not normally very smelly, because her baths typically require two able-bodied adults, and involve the shredding of clothing, and the clean-up of long sudsy trails down the hallway.

Since we don’t relish that kind of drama, we last bathed her when it was warm enough to not feel bad about dousing her with the hose outside for a minute and calling it good. When it’s cold we just let her go about smelling like dog. I feel a little guilty about that because once I promised a certain someone she’d be bathed on a regular basis.