wet dog smell

for those concerned about animal cruelty, guthrie can:
a. swim very well and does not swim unattended
b. jump into and out of the bathtub on his own, empty or full

guthrie likes the bathtub. now, to be fair, he's never really had a problem with baths so this should be no surprise. when we toss him in the tub, we toss in a toy right along with him and he splashes around while we scrub his furry self but here in this new apartment and this new bathroom with its new bathtub (which is actually a fairly old, heavy and reasonably deep monster) guthrie swoons. he runs to snuggle up next to the cold enamel, tail tucked under the radiator, any time he hears water running for a bath. and he will wait. he loves the taste of soap and will wait there by the side of the tub while i soak in the warm water. he will wait until i pull the plug and water starts its spinning down the drain. he will be there still in the dark on the bathmat after i've gone, listening for slurping sound the water makes when there's not much of it left.

in the other end of the apartment, down a very long hall, the sweetie and i sit with books or laptops or television until there is a thump and a soft clicking of claws, then the quiet nothing that makes any reasonable person feel cold inside. the silence of a dog busy doing something. and when i go in to find him, flip on the light and nearly blind his big, intense eyes, he is there in the middle of the tub, licking the sides, devouring any trace of soap or bath salts or oils he can find.

but there are days he smells like dust and his own horrible breath and we fill up the tub just for him. he swims like those tiny turtles in the buckets on chinatown streetcorners, floaty, without much direction, wide paddle feet moving slowly on stubby legs, one at a time. but he is suspicious of deep water and mostly he is like those small children you see at the pool, bobbing near the edge, clutching the lip of the overflow drain, tippytoeing toward the deep end in fits of bravery, then scurrying back to the safety of feet firmly planted on rough pool bottom and head well above lapping water. but for all his concern about deep-sea monsters or rip tides or whatever might be the dogbrain version of those terrors, he shoves them aside for a bright pink bit of rubber, a small toy always floating away from him as he splashes after it.