I had an epiphany the other day –
The blue milk Aunt Beru was serving to Uncle Owen at breakfast while he has a tantrum about Luke not being home wasn’t nutrition.
It was marinade.
Remember, kids, dark humor is like a complete and satisfying plot arc in the Star Wars Sequels – most folks don’t get it.
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Sequence for giving a labrador retriever a bath in the summer –
- Take your strongest leash out to the deck and affix it to one of the 4×4 posts securely.
- Barricade the gate to the deck stairs. This is crucial. It is amazing how agile a 13 year old lab is when he doesn’t want to do something, and he’ll do a stutter step that will bring a tear to Jerry Rice’s eye and squirt right past you and down into the mud puddle that is your back yard.
- Entice the lab out onto the back deck. He will have noticed your preparations, so this will likely include food of some kind. Normal treats like bones or fortune cookies will not work. This is more of a beef jerky situation.
- Clip the leash from step 1 onto the lab’s collar. That ring of canvas and cold iron is about to get the test of a lifetime.
- Take your preferred brush or other fur removal tool and give the hound a good going over. Enough fur to insulate a bald eagle nest will accumulate on the deck. The patterns the morning breeze in it are rather calming. Gather strength from that little moment of peace. You’re about to need it.
- Get your hose and start soaking the lab as best you can. Labs have, on average, 13.72 separate layers of fur, so this is going to take a bit.
- Side note – Labrador Retrievers, as a breed, were created for fishing and duck hunting, both of which require the dog to plunge into icy cold water. It can surprise the new dog washer to learn that labs can have that sort of fortitude, but are absolutely against the idea of cold hose water being applied to their person.
- Spread an ample helping of shampoo over the lab’s shoulders, back, and hind quarters. A good rule of thumb is 3 liters per 20 pounds of dog. Through the magic of fuzzy math, it usually takes approximately a 55 gallon drum of oatmeal/goat milk/enzymatic/unobtanium shampoo to thoroughly clean our Moonshine.
- I have always been able to use whatever’s cheapest in Walmart or even bar soap to wash my dogs, but this particular hound has sensitive skin. Use of any canine unguent that isn’t sold for several dollars an ounce will cause him to have dry skin flakes running through his fur and throughout the house. Cleaning up when he sheds is bad enough. Have you ever seen a black lab with a bad case of dandruff?
- Once the wet dog is thoroughly coated in suds, get your hands into a ‘claw’ configuration and proceed to scrub the everliving whey out of that hound’s fur. You’re trying to scrub soap down into all of those layers of hair, so you might have to be a bit more aggressive. Take frequent breaks to flip handfuls of sudsy fur into the yard. The pile you make will survive several thunderstorms, but will be prized by the local gopher population as they soundproof their latest tunnel under your air conditioning unit.
- A side benefit to this activity is that it gets in your cardio for the day. Not only will you be bent over, vigorously moving your upper extremities repeatedly, but you’ll also be wrestling with a sopping wet dog that thinks you’re playing with him. At some point in this process, there will likely be as much suds on you as there is on the dog.
- Once every square inch of his body has been thoroughly raked with your clawed hands at least thrice, let the shampoo sit in his fur for a few minutes. Use that time to look down at your clothes and start thinking about what you’re going to change into after your second shower of the day. This is not only caused by the almost constant contact you have with your pet. In an effort to make you feel like you’re part of the process, he will helpfully shake while you’re 3 inches from him, flinging globs of wet fur and soap bubbles in every direction at speed. Any part of your body that faces him from any angle is going to get slimed.
- After the mandatory cool-down period is over, retrieve your hose from where it got flung during the scrubbing portion of this process, and start rinsing. As the fur barriers have been broken with shampoo, it will take less time for the water to soak through to the skin, but that doesn’t mean the shampoo will wash away quickly. You see, labrador fur is more of a sponge than you think. Once that hard, waterproof shell has been overcome, your dog will soak up several times his body weight in water and soap. It will then fight to keep it as if its life depended on it. If you’re monitoring water and time usage, a good way to estimate is to take the number of gallons it took to soak the dog, multiply that by the number of minutes it took to soak the dog, put that result to the power of the number of quarts of dog shampoo you had to use, then multiply by pi. By some coincidence, the result of that formula is both the number of gallons of water and the number of minutes it will take to get most of the soap out of your dog’s fur.
- Once the water runs clear of shampoo and the rate at which fur is washing off of your dog’s body has slowed somewhat (Fur loss will never be equal to zero), the drying process can occur. What I do is release the hound from his leash, letting him shake and dance around the back deck. Water will continue to flow and drip from him for several minutes. A side benefit to doing this is that all of the plants on your deck will get watered and mulched. We will cover cleanup later, but keep in mind that every drop of water he shakes off has at least 2 grams of hair in it, so you’ll have to wash off your deck, siding, and furniture when this is all over to prevent five o’clock shadow.
- If it’s a warm, sunny day, now is a good time to just let the dog air dry for a bit. You could towel him off right away, but most households don’t have enough terry cloth to soak up the amount of water your dog is carrying around. Let gravity and evaporation do its thing for half an hour. This is a great opportunity to go inside and have a second cup of coffee or cold beverage of your choice.
- Important safety tip – DO NOT sit upon any upholstered furniture at this time. You are almost as fuzzy as your canine companion. Contact with a couch or chair that is important to your spouse before you have a shower and change clothes could put your relationship at risk. Also, do not shower yet. You’re not done accumulating second hand fur.
- After you notice that your dog is no longer dripping and the breeze is moving the fur at the top of his back, it’s time to towel him off. I suggest using the oldest, most delapidated towels you have for this. I prefer using a couple of old beach towels.
- Important safety tip – Clear whichever towel you’re going to use with your spouse, especially if you’re the husband. While you may be smart enough to not use the special towels you’re not allowed to touch, they may have assigned some significance to the tattered, stained, worn out scraps of cloth you want to use. Perhaps it’s the towel they used to give your child their first bath, or maybe it’s the beach towel she packed for your honeymoon. No matter its condition, make sure they’re OK with you rubbing it on the dog’s butt before using it.
- You will notice that the towel changes color drastically while you dry off your hound. This is because even more fur is coming off of his carcass. Before taking the towels back in the house, hang them on something to dry, then give them a good shaking. Failure to do so will cause you to be finding dog hair in the washer, dryer, and refrigerator for days. Again, this contact with your dog will be taken as an offer to wrestle, so expect at least one tail slash and one head butt.
- Now that he’s mostly dry, get your brush out and give him another thorough going over. You’ll be shockd at the volume of fuzz you remove, but it’s better that it comes off outside. Vacuum cleaners are expensive, and what he’s going to drop over the next day or so will destroy even top of the line models. Let the wind, rain and birds take care of it, not your Electrolux.
- Once that’s accomplished and your dog has had a couple of good shakes, you might be tempted to let him go run in the yard for a bit to defuzz and finish drying. Do not do this. Your dog has already selected something smelly and dead to roll in, or has a designated dusty area for post-bath shenanigans. Give him a treat, make sure he has water, and leave him up on the deck long enough to finish drying all the way.
- A proud homeowner will keep his property looking nice, so take the time and effort now to rinse all the fur and soap residue off of your deck and house. Pay special attention to the gutters. A large enough gob of wet fur will plug up a gutter, and nobody wants their basement to flood because you gave your dog a bath three months before the storm of the century hit your neighborhood.
- Once your dog is clean, dried, and defurred, it is time for self care. The clothes you are wearing have been soaked, sudsed, and fuzzed enough that you will need to make your way to your spouse’s second favorite bathroom, peel down, and get a shower. Make sure you put a screen or something similar on the drain, because you’re about to shed almost as much as the dog. Your outer clothes should be taken outside and hung up next to the towels. This is done to avoid putting 3.7 pounds per square foot of fabric worth of dog hair into your washing maching and dryer. Letting both the towels and your clothing air dry and then giving them a thorough shake before washing them will save you an expensive service call.
- After your shower, check on the dog. A smart dog will have figured out how to get through the gate, so you will likely be greeted by the sight of him rolling around in whatever he had in mind in step 16.
- Enjoy your cleanish dog for the exactly 3.7 hours it takes before he starts to smell, well, like a dog again.
DaddyBear’s Den 
