BEFORE
AFTER
You might think he looks cute. You might look into those brown eyes and coo like a baby at the little doggie-woggie, but this canine is Cerebus reincarated (minus the extra heads, natch). A few weeks back we tried to get Alex the Wonderdog an appointment with the local dog groomer. We’ve gone their for years and they’ve always moaned a little bit about how difficult he is to groom. An appointment was made and on the day of the appointment, a mere sixty minutes before I was due to drag him to his doom, I received a call hurriedly cancelling. Before I could reschedule another appointment, the woman said “We’re retiring. The business is closing. No more dog grooming” before putting the phone down on me.
Luckily, my mother recommended a new groomers in town and we got an appointment really quickly for a Saturday afternoon. The plan was set: we’d drop Alex off for his grooming, head for the shops to do some maternity shopping for The Missus (who know resembles a small elephant) and then head to the pub for a quick pint (for me, not the Missus who is booze-free these days, poor cow). This plan wasn’t to pass as we soon received a desperate phone message from the groomer asking to come over immediately. Thankfully, The Missus had done her clothes shopping and so we trudged back to the groomers. No pint for me.
Inside, we found the young lady who runs the groomers struggling with Alex and she’d called her father in. He was doing his best to hold our dog still but the little swine was wriggling like a greased pig. So I stepped in and did my best to restrain Alex while she continued to cut his fur. Her father retreated back to his day job. So for the next 90 minutes I struggled and gripped and did my best to stop this wild beast from biting the groomer. Several times he slipped his muzzle in a feat of escapology of which Houdini would have been proud. Once he jumped free of my grip and clawed down my inner forearm. Another slip of the muzzle and Alex got a mouthful of scissor as he tried to bite back. The groomer apologised but I told her the little git deserved his tongue cut off the way he was behaving.
So in the end we managed to get the shaggy carpet reduced to the sheep-like figure in the latter picture. I was covered in dog hair and spitting the stuff. After the ordeal was over and his lead and collar was on, the little sod trotted out of the place as if nothing had happened. He really is a devil dog.
Now as his fur is a lot shorter for the summer, all those allergens are getting to his skin. This means his skin condition has flared up and on Monday we had to take him to the vet. Now he likes the vet marginally less than he likes the groomer and again I had to act as a man-sized restraint to the dog. Luckily, no fingers were lost during the consultation, though you should have seen the look of surprise on Alex’s face when the vet stuck his digit up the dog’s rectum. Yes folks, we got Alex’s anal glands cleaned for free, which meant that I had to deal with the stench of rotten fish in the back of the car on the way home. The smell is so bad I nearly threw up.
The result of the consultation is that I have some more pills to give him and this means I have to find new and inventive ways in order to dupe Alex in order to take his pills. The white ones he doesn’t mind, but the pink ones are abhorrent to him. No matter how I disguise them, he manages to leave them behind or spit them out (and how the heck does a dog spit when it has no lips?). I’m sick of being outwitted by a West Highland White. Hid it in a sausage and the little blighter still manages to leave the pink tablet behind. Methinks some brute force is in order.
But despite all this, he’s still my dog and I realise he’s just like me: unpleasant, anti-social, strong-willed to the point of belligerence, a complete beast. But he’s my beast, I guess and he’d have been put down if I hadn’t got him…
Alex the Bastard