I have given our poor dogs a haircut.
They did not like this.
Being a dog-hairdresser is a sort of cross between being an all-in wrestler and a Mafia throat-cutting barber, the sort who combines haircuts and nuisance-disposal all in a single visit.The dogs are not troubled by concerns of appearance, and so I just give them an all-over shave. I think this is called a Brazilian although I do not know why since as far as I am aware the people in Brazil are not bald.
The dogs are bald, and we are all completely traumatised.
They saw me getting the clippers out and promptly dived off and hid under the table, but to no avail. Rosie was first, because although she is very small she fights the hardest, and even holding her down with my knee in her chin it was still not easy. Shaving a dog is a complicated thing because there are all sorts of bits that you don’t usually think about. You need to do the worst bits first, before they get so sick of it that it has become a silent and bloody fight to the death. The worst bits are their paws and knees, which are surprisingly difficult to do. It is very easy to finish up with peculiar tufts on their knees if you are not careful, and it is difficult to be careful when you have got somebody in a stranglehold with the other hand and they are trying their best to bite you. I was very glad indeed when I got to the eighth knee and there were no more.
Roger Poopy cried all the way through his, with piteous little wails that would have melted the most savage of hearts, except mine, of course, because I knew perfectly well that he was not hurt and just likes his nice warm shaggy coat. I know that he is not hurt because I cut Mark’s hair with the same clippers and he does not cry at all. I like Roger Poopy’s shaggy coat as well, so long as it is on his back, but I know that we are just a very few weeks away from it beginning to leak out all over the carpet. This is not a merry way to spend the winter, and so today was their final and definitive haircut of the year. It has got to last until bird-nesting time in the spring.
They had a bath afterwards, which was almost as bad, and I got nearly as wet as they did. It is quite difficult to give somebody a good soapy massage when they are trying their best to run away, but it was done in the end, and their collars scrubbed and dried over the fire, and they are tidy and clean again.
They have been too hot in Cambridge this week, and had been scratching and fidgeting madly, because they had furry thick coats grown in response to the Lake District weather, which is seasonally dreadful, I did not even bother with the washing line for today’s laundry. Of course they are back in the Lake District now, but Mark has swept the chimney and serviced the boiler, and at last we have lit the fire, because winter is on its way. They will at least be warm when they are in the house, and when they are outside they can charge about and keep warm like that.
Mark took them to the farm afterwards. They charged about for a little while but then went and shivered under Mark’s greatcoat in the boot of the car. I cleared up the enormous smelly pile of dog hair and went upstairs to get on with writing my story for my dissertation.
I have written five thousand words, so only another ninety five thousand to go. It would be easier to write them if I knew for certain what I wanted to say, but I don’t and keep being surprised by the things that happen next. It is set in nineteen fifty, which is difficult because I was not alive then, and have to keep checking up to see if things had been invented. Fortunately I don’t think any of my tutors were alive then either, so they won’t notice.
I am going to go away and carry on with it.
