Hi, it’s me, Leia!
Yes, I know, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy. I’ll fill you in. All in good time. But first I must take a moment to cover a most nefarious practice we sheepdogs are regularly subjected to, and I bet you didn’t know this: GROOMING!
I’ve been meaning to alert you all about this, but, well, frankly, my mouth has been kind of busy stealing my brother’s treats and yelling at my aunts to play with me.
In between practicing being loud - and I do mean really, REALLY ear-piercingly loud; my pot cassé is of the soprano variety - I’ve learned a few things. For one, fourteen-year-old nanas do not appreciate being pounced on as a method of waking them up. And I do mean really, REALLY do not appreciate this. She still loves me. Most of the time. Sort of. Except when she doesn’t. But I digress.
I’m a little taller and a little wider than when last we spoke. I also have more hair. This is a problem. The hair, I mean. The hair just grows and grows and grows and, apparently, we go through some kind of transition from icky puppy coat to slightly less icky juvenile coat.
The transition itself is, well, icky and requires hours and hours and hours of being BRUSHED. There should be legislation limiting this. Puppy labor laws or something. Because having to sit or lie still for that long is horrifyingly laborious. However, apparently we are through the worst of it. So now I’m onboard with the brushing, mostly.
I don’t spend a lot of time being trimmed because, well, I’m going to be really, REALLY honest here: upright stinks at it. For decades, she has not been permitted to own scissors. Spoiler alert: she has some illicit ones stashed away anyway. Come confiscate them. Please! I beg of you.
Now, rumor has it that she is trying to learn how to use them properly (you should hear my aunts laugh about that one!) So, OK, she has these scissors with training wheels and gets regular advice and then I go out in public and, long story short (because sure as heck my bum was not!), a couple of them staged an intervention. Apparently they weren’t aware that those European types think in millimeters. At the rate she was trimming me, I was going to be giving beardies a run for their hairies.
So one trimmed the back half of me and the other, at a later date, stripped and trimmed the other end. I kid you not. And then the two ends had to be blended together and, honestly, the horror of it all. I’ll be in therapy for a long, LONG time, I can tell you that.
But what I really, REALLY want to talk about is the true atrocity nobody warns you about: BATHS!
First of all, why baths? Why is this even necessary? You should love me just the way I am. But, noooo, if my whites aren’t bathed every week they get dingy, possibly even stanky. And occasionally I need a full body bath to combat – can you believe this? – dirt and stench. What it comes down to is anytime I’ve had too much fun, boom! In the bathtub I go.
Laws, people. We need laws. Nobody should have to live like this.