It’s time for ‘The Big Shed’
Well spring is coming to an end and summer is just around the corner. It’s the season of blooming flowers, leafing trees and enough pollen in the air to make one almost pine for winter. Almost. More importantly it’s the beginning of what my bride and I like to call the “big shed.”
I am not referring here to the building used to store garden implements and such but rather the commencement of our dog’s moulting season. For the next four months Brando the Wonder Dog will cast off enough winter-worn fur to stuff a warehouse full of Serta mattresses. Like the Peanuts cartoon character, Pigpen, he will leave a cloud of dust whenever and wherever he moves. The dog hair will cover the floor, collect in balls beneath the furniture and waft gently in the air.
My darling will be forced to retire any black articles of clothing, and she has a lot, to her wardrobe for the duration. One sweep of Brando’s tail and a simple, dark, outfit is reduced to something resembling a medieval hair shirt. The once-over, final brushing before leaving the house is now a ritual lest I arrive at a friend’s house with an unsightly wad of dog felt clinging unnoticed to my posterior.
We have tried in vain to combat this bristle bonanza. Vacuuming is a stop gap measure at best. No sooner has the love of my life dragged the Dyson through the living area of the house than a new layer of fur settles into place. To add insult to injury Brando loves to follow the vacuum cleaner from room to room leaping with fiendish joy at the light beams reflecting from the stainless steel fittings on the machine.
In desperation, and egged on by the smirking man with the two dogs in the Swifter commercials who makes cleaning up after his canine friends a snap, I tried using one of the fluffy wands. It took only one room of “swifting” before the wand and the lower part of my arm were completely encased in dog hair. It looked as if I had had an accident with a brown cotton candy machine at the local fair.
Why not give him a bath you say? Simple, “Been there and done that.” Although a good scrub removes a lot of the excess, makes him smell considerably better and cost $50, it is no solution. The last time I took the family fur ball to the groomer he began shedding again on the ride home. By the time we reached the house the back of my car needed a trip to an automobile groomer.
It’s not as if we haven’t tried the obvious. A couple of times a day we spend six or seven hours stroking his coat with a variety of brushes and combs. There is one for the shorter hair on his back, a different one for the feathery hair on his legs, a wide-toothed one for his chest hair and one that seems to clog up after two swipes. The hair comes off in abundance but two hours later he’s still shedding.
I once spoke to a woman who raised collies and she admitted facing a similar problem. Her solution was to make the best of a bad situation. She collected the hair, had it woven into dog wool and knitted sweaters for her friends.
The problem here is that I don’t have enough friends. Besides, I’ve smelled my dog when he’s wet and what use is a sweater that you can only wear when it’s sunny.