Tristan has a sheath that, let’s say, is on the messier side.
The good news is that he could care less about me messing with it, and it’s not a chore I find completely awful. Obviously, it’s not my favorite, but I don’t have much of a gag reflex nor am I squeamish. I go right up there and clean things out.
Not too often – I know that tends to then make things dirtier – but when I need to.
Much more often, I find myself scrubbing his hind legs. See, he gets crud all over his legs. It’s really annoying. It does not brush off the way mud does – it’s kind of sticky and gummy. It gets all over things.
It’s not a problem in the summer – I just squirt some Dawn or shampoo and hose or scrub it off when I’m hosing him down or giving him a bath. Quick and easy.
Winter, though – winter is a pain in the ass. On all levels.
Yesterday, I faced up to the growing crud problem and got to work.
The plan, which worked reasonably well, was to heat up a kettle’s worth of boiling water, then add cold water from the faucet until it was just hot and not scalding. Then I used a scrap towel to wet down his legs, then dolloped on small amounts of shampoo and scrubbed.
Then I used another scrap towel to “rinse” his legs, and a third to more or less dry them. It wasn’t to cold yesterday – mid 20s at worst – so I wasn’t too worried about leaving them damp. Later in the winter, I’ll go through more towels to dry his legs more thoroughly.
Do you have any other grooming tasks that are made harder in winter? How do you work around the cold?
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